Thomas Jefferson

An American President with Wine-Passion

“People who live where wine is cheap don't get drunk. Where wine is expensive and strong spirits are used instead of wine, no one is sober.”

The above quote, as you might guess from the title, belongs to Thomas Jefferson. Jefferson, who wrote the ‘American Declaration of Independence’ and is one of the "Founding Fathers" of the United States, also served his country as president for 8 years. Of course, the policies of countries can change over time for both internal and external reasons. The same America, ruled by a President whose passion to wine so deep, has also experienced another freak era, called PROHIBITION, which started in 1920 and ended in 1933. But that is the subject of another article.

The importance of Thomas Jefferson for us is his strong bond with wine. Jefferson was an intellectual who can look at wine from many angles. At the forefront of these is the identity of a wine-lover, who knows wine like a professional and keeps this knowledge alive with an amateur passion throughout his life. He acquired the information first hand during his years in Paris, where he was the newly appointed ambassador to the United States. During this duty, thanks to the trips he made to the wine regions of France, he both made on-site observations and had the opportunity to establish direct contact with the producers.

The second characteristic of Jefferson is that he realized very early on the wine potential of his young country, of which he was one of the founders. His identity as a visionary statesman taught him that true independence is agricultural self-sufficiency. He realized early on what could happen to them if they depended on imports, that is, on products from other countries. As an application of this principle, he had 193 acres of his own land prepared and planted as a vineyard. Although he did not get positive results from these attempts, he did not lose hope. As a matter of fact, a few years later, the Italian immigrant Mazzei, with whom Jefferson collaborated on wine, succeeded in producing two barrels of wine from six varieties of wild grapes of the region. Although the adventure at that time was not carried out as a commercial activity, the activity continues in the same region today under the name “Jefferson Vineyards”.

Jefferson's suggestions as a wine expert could have been made by only a handful of appraisers of that era. When the first acquaintance with wine was left behind and he started to buy wine with the experience he gained in France, his first recommendation to everyone was to make their purchases directly from the producer. The main reason for this was that forgery in wine was rampant.

Records show that during the eight-year period he later sat in the President's Chair, White House purchased expertly-chosen wine mostly from distinguished French producers, amounting to 16,500 USD (estimated to be 300-350,000 USD in today's value). When we look back, we see parallel lines between Jefferson’s and Ataturk’s, the founder of Turkish Republic, approach about becoming self-sustaining agricultural countries. Building up an ‘Experimental Farm’ in the middle of Ankara, assigning Turkish Monopoly Company to start wine production are the two samples that come to mind. Maybe in the future we will see the days when the same understanding is dominant again in our country.

For an article about Jefferson’s wine love:

https://www.npr.org/2008/09/28/95087999/thomas-jeffersons-love-affair-with-wine