Dear Member,
The year was 1811. His vines—so carefully imported from France and Germany—had failed yet again.
For all his skill as a collector of wine, Thomas Jefferson was beginning to suspect that his genius did not extend to growing grapes. He had been certain that Virginia—with soils rich enough for tobacco and hemp—would also be a perfect home for European vines. After all, wild American grapes seemed to grow everywhere.
Centuries earlier, the Vikings had made the same observation, naming the land Vinland. Spanish missionaries, too, were encouraged. Unlike Jefferson, their experiments succeeded, producing a “mission grape” communion wine. It was sickly sweet and hardly desirable—unless you had a great deal of sin to atone for—but wine had nonetheless gained a foothold in America.
Why an American Collection
When we launched the Bonner Private Wine Partnership, we had no intention of assembling an American collection.
Then we discovered the so-called three-tier distribution system.
Thanks to this bureaucratic maze, non-residents of California, Oregon, and Washington generally never see wines from the small-batch producers of those states—vineyards where sheep keep the grass trimmed, natural compost replaces chemical fertilizer, and winemaking remains a traditional craft rather than an industrial process.
For context: the largest winery in America, Gallo, produces roughly 75 million cases per year. You can find a bottle of Gallo anywhere. By contrast, just 900 cases were made of the first wine in this collection—and it is not even the smallest-production wine included.
Looking for an Older Idea of American Wine
When the coronavirus forced us to stay home—Diego in Buenos Aires wasn’t even allowed to step outside his apartment—we decided the time was right to finally build that American collection we had long discussed.
Our goal was to look past fad and fashion in search of an older idea of American wine:
Soils formed by ancient floods
Clones of old European (often Burgundian) varieties
Even a winery whose history traces back to the Oregon Trail
In This Box
You will find six bottles:
Ruby Vineyard Laurelwood Blend Pinot Noir 2016
Peju Cabernet Sauvignon 2016
Martelloto “La Bomba” Cabernet Sauvignon 2018
El Jefe Tempranillo, Stoneridge Vineyard 2016
Anarchist Red 2016
Sojourn Durell Vineyard Chardonnay 2017
In uncertain times, we went searching for the old spirit of America—the one that made Jefferson so confident that the United States would one day rival Europe in wine quality.
In these six bottles, we may have found an echo of it.
To your health,
Will Bonner
Founder, Bonner Private Wine Partnership
