A Great New Wine Book
American winemaking as you never knew it.

Imagine if we all took our wine vacations in Hermann, Missouri, instead of Napa. If not for a few cruel twists of fate and unfortunate circumstances, the likes of Francis Ford Coppola would be doing their malolactic fermentations in the Midwest.

The Wild Vine, an exhaustively researched and thoroughly entertaining new book by Todd Kliman, follows the cast of characters and events surrounding the birth, rise and fall of the Norton grape, starting with the doctor who first bred it in a fit of suicidal despair. Norton wine production boomed in Missouri in the late 1800s, only to be nearly eradicated by Prohibition. It was eventually rediscovered, and today has a fiercely loyal following.

Kliman first tasted a Virginia-made Norton only a few years ago, but was inspired enough to make the case that no grape has been more polarizing throughout history. Sure, the wine quality is open to debate. But what other grape can claim feuds over credit for its creation, an American Dream story of immigrants that turns into a WWI- and Prohibition-fueled nightmare, and even a modern struggle to restore its place alongside the world's best Cabernets and Merlots?

But Norton's story might still even be in its infancy, Kliman hinted as he spoke to us yesterday.

TDS: Your first introduction to drinking Norton is somewhat accidental. How did you make the leap from first sip to committing to writing a book about it?

Kliman: It was a series of discoveries, I guess. I didn't have the intention of writing a book on Norton after I had my first sip. Little by little I learned more about it. It's this peeling-of-the-onion sort of thing. You learn something, and that something leads to something else. I was fairly far along when I realized I wanted to pursue this as a book.

There were a lot of gaps, and the challenge was to move into them and find out this history and mystery. And also be able to connect someone like [Virginia winemaker] Jenni [McCloud] with this larger story. That meant for me going so far in, in a way I'm not just writing about this grape, I'm writing about the meaning and soul of the grape, and that's a story of outsiders. Everyone connected with this grape is an outsider. You have a doctor who longs to be part of that world, and of course has this amazing discovery and is then discredited. Then you have the German immigrants who become targets of the Prohibition war because that links arms with the anti-war movement in the teens. You have a hog farmer who restores it and is a reluctant vintner. And then you have Jenni. Everyone is not at that center.

A book about Cabernet is a book I never would have written.

Which is more interesting, the grape or the cast of characters that escort it through history?

It depends on your perspective. There are people who are not Norton fans at all. It's a wine of love and hate, and nothing in between. It's a grape of extremes. People either like it from the first sip or they're never going to like it. And, of course, these are characters of extremes. I wanted to be exploring Norton from every side, its people, its champions, its outsider identity. And that's what was important to me. The grape has this role in Americana. It has a presence in every American age.

The early criticisms Dr. Norton received would suggest that nobody was right or wrong about the quality--that back then as now, it's all about personal taste.

Even with some high watermarks like the Judgment of Paris, you see that same sort of dynamic playing out with California and everywhere else. It's unfortunate, in this country, too...that the collective American palate a century and more ago was so varied and different from what we drink now. When France was on the verge of collapse from Phylloxera, these were the wines they were considering replanting the Languedoc with. What changes is that Prohibition comes in and it's repealed--but the effects of it linger on for decades. Taste itself changes, and that acceptance of these kinds of wines is lost.

What might have happened if these vines hadn't been uprooted, and continuity kept? Virginia and Missouri would be seen as the venerated, noble wine regions of America because those would be the oldest vines.

Is it possible that the early praise for Norton, having won a wine competition in Austria in the 1800s and several other accolades, came because winemaking standards around the world were pretty poor overall? Was it just luck?

One theory I heard, was that someone had speculated the reason Norton was winning these awards is that European winemaking was so down. But there's no way of knowing. I would have loved to have been able to taste those Nortons going back 50 or 100 years, so we'll never know. [Similarly], it's hard to compare ballplayers from different eras. But those wines were the best of what was around then. Wine across the board in the past 20, 25 years, you're seeing great advances that have helped certain regions advance that wouldn't have otherwise.

California, in the 1870s, in Norton's heyday, was very much lagging. It was speculated that nothing was going to happen. Some believed the terroir wasn't suited to good winemaking.

It's interesting how many times the Missouri wine history has repeated around the world in other regions: Start small, get bigger but not necessarily better, then collapse, then resurgence. Does Hermann, Missouri, have the potential to be the next Napa? Or is its fate sealed after the roller-coaster ride its wine industry has seen?

Well, it was the first Napa. It was Napa before Napa. Napa is so huge and there's so much money in there, it's a world unto itself. The wine industry has come back, but I don't think it can have the heyday that it had--that was the golden age for that industry. I don't think it's going to reach those heights because you have California now--and Washington and Oregon. It's a different landscape, and tastes have changed. It's a shame, because had there not been that rupture, it'd be amazing to think what Missouri might be today. They're not quite the scene that they were over a century ago.

What do you say to the person who loves the story of Norton, but doesn't love the wine?

I would laugh, because that's kind of fitting. There are people who won't like the wine at all, and some who will love it. I would hope that people would accept or be open to the idea that the book is a highly personal document--it's not intended to be an objective, verifiable truth for everybody. If it were, I wouldn't have written it.