Winner of Two Emmy Awards
- Cinematography
- Musical Composition
The Parent of Misery
Wine, being among the earliest luxuries in which we indulge ourselves, it is desirable that it should be made here and we have every soil, aspect and climate of the best wine countries. – Thomas Jefferson
Winemaking has a long tradition in America, and has especially deep roots in the rich red clay of Virginia. Both English settlers in Virginia and Spanish missionaries in California brought wine grapes to North America. At Jamestown, wine was to be produced and consumed by settlers as a substitute for clean drinking water, which was always in short supply.
In 1773 Thomas Jefferson hired a famous Italian merchant and physician, Phillipo Mazzei and his crew of Italian vignerons to plant vines and make wine at Monticello. During his brief stint in Albemarle County, Mazzei and his cohorts produced only a few bottles of wine made from native vines and none from European stock. In a letter to George Wythe in 1787, Jefferson describes his winemaking efforts as “The Parent of misery.” To add insult to injury, warhorses from a Hessian prisoner of war renting Colle trampled out the vineyards completely. It would be another 35 years before Jefferson again planted grapes at Monticello.