America's first great wine connoisseur.

Thomas Jefferson has been called America’s First Wine Geek. And although other Founding Fathers were known to have enjoyed wine (John Hancock, John Adams, George Washington, Benjamin Franklin), none approached Jefferson’s level of interest, study or commitment.   He was quite frank with this famous quotation: “Good wine is a necessity of life for me.”    I got reacquainted with this topic as a byproduct of my “social distance” Internet reading of The Billionaire’s Vinegar , an interesting and informative book about easily duped wine critics and naïve, deep pocket wine collectors.   The story revolves around sales of fake bottles of wine from 1787 which were represented as having been owned by Thomas Jefferson. That book led me to John Hailman’s Thomas Jefferson on Wine , a nifty $2.00 Amazon softcover purchase! It’s overly detailed and documented, even for this wine-obsessed enthusiast, but it does reveal how Jefferson, through his relentless pursuit of wine’s vario

by noreply@blogger.com (tom) · source ↗