Catawba (grape)

Catawba is a red American grape variety used for wine as well as juice, jams and jellies. Grown predominantly on the East Coast of the United States, this purplish-red grape is a likely a hybrid of the native American Vitis labrusca and the Vitis vinifera cultivar Sémillon. Its exact origins are unclear but it seems to have originated somewhere on the East Coast between the Carolinas and Maryland.

Catawba played an important role in the early history of American wine. During the early to mid-19th century, it was the most widely planted grape variety in the country and was the grape behind Nicholas Longworth's acclaimed Ohio sparkling wines that were distributed as far away as California and Europe.

Catawba is a late-ripening variety, ripening often weeks after many other labrusca varieties and, like many vinifera varieties, it can be susceptible to fungal grape diseases such as powdery mildew.

The exact origins and parentage of the Catawba grape are unclear. While most sources agree that Major John Adlum was growing the variety at his nursery in Georgetown, Washington, D.C by at least 1823, where he got the cuttings of the vine is unknown with two widowed Maryland women given attribution by different writers. Wine writer Bern Ramey and University of California, Davis viticulture professor Lloyd A. Lider credit Mrs. J. Johnston of Fredericktown, Maryland who wrote to Adlum and said while her late husband always called the grapes "Catawba", she did not know where he got the original vines from. Historian Thomas Pinney describes a similar story with Adlum receiving the cuttings in 1819 from a Mrs. Scholl of Clarksburg, Maryland whose late husband grew the grape. Again, the story goes that Mrs. Scholl told Adlum that while her husband always called the grape "Catawba", she could not recall where the vines came from. It is possible that the source of the Catawba grapes came from the Rose Hill property, in Rockville, Maryland, which was acquired early in the 19th century by Lewis and Eliza Wootton Beall, as part of Eliza's dowry from her father Richard Wootton. It is during their ownership of Rose Hill that grapes were first cultivated on their property. The remnants of these grapes are still evident in the sole surviving grapevine that runs eastward from the side of the barn towards the Rose Hill Mansion. According to J. Thomas Scharf, the presence of Catawba grapevines at Rose Hill can be traced back to the early decades of the 19th century. Cuttings of the Catawba grape, first discovered in western North Carolina around 1801, are believed to have been transported to Montgomery County before 1816, when they were left by a traveler with Jacob Scholl, an innkeeper in Clarksburg. They appeared at Rose Hill shortly thereafter when Eliza Beall obtained some cuttings from her brother Singleton Wootton, who had, in turn, gotten them from Scholl.

The Catawba grape is one of the earliest Vitis labrusca grapes used in wine production, but can also be eaten or made into grape juice, jam, or jelly. The Vitis International Variety Catalogue gives credit to the Scholls and describes Catawba as a crossing of the North American species Vitis labrusca with the European species Vitis vinifera and list 1819 as its likely introduction. The Oxford Companion to Wine states the vine was identified in North Carolina even earlier, in 1802, but does not state who discovered the variety. British wine expert Oz Clarke also places the vine's origins in North Carolina but claims that it was first identified in 1801.

The possible Carolina origins do correspond with circumstantial details about the name "Catawba". In the Carolinas there is the Catawba River, which flows through the territory of the Catawba people. While the Catawba Indian Nation is currently centered in South Carolina, the Catawba people have historically populated the entire area that extended from the western Piedmont of North Carolina across the South Carolina border.

From its obscure origins, the Catawba grape began appearing on nursery inventory lists across the United States and soon became a major grape in the growing American wine industry. From 1825 to 1850, it was the most widely planted grape in the United States. One early adopter was Nicholas Longworth of Cincinnati, Ohio who founded America's first commercially successful winery. After difficulties cultivating the Alexander, Longworth purchased Catawba cuttings from Major Adlum and planted a vineyard along the Ohio River. After accidentally stumbling upon sparkling wine production in his winery, Longworth began producing a sparkling Catawba modeled after the wines of Champagne.

From the 1830s through the 1850s, Longworth's still and sparkling Catawba were being distributed from California to Europe where it received numerous press accolades. In the 1850s, a journalist from The Illustrated London News noted that the still white Catawba compared favorably to the hock wines of the Rhine and the sparkling Catawba "transcends the Champagnes of France". The wines were also well received at home in the United States where Henry Wadsworth Longfellow published a poem dedicated to Nicholas Longworth titled Ode to Catawba Wine. The popularity of Longworth's wine encouraged a flurry of plantings along the Ohio River Valley and up north to Lake Erie and Finger Lakes region of New York. So influential was Longworth's Catawba wine that newspapers began referring to him as "the founder of wine culture in America, author of sparkling Catawba."