The Field Guide
The United States
America's own grapes, grown where vinifera struggled. Long before Napa, native vines like Norton and Concord built a wine country of their own — and the regions that still champion them are the country's real underdogs.
Native ground · America's underdog regions
The United States
The history
When phylloxera destroyed Europe's vineyards, American rootstock saved them. The native vines that did it — Norton, Concord, Catawba, Muscadine — built a homegrown wine culture that Prohibition nearly erased.
The land
Continental extremes vinifera can't always take: brutal Midwest winters, humid Southern summers, high dry plains. Native and hybrid grapes shrug them off.
Wine styles
Norton's dark, wild-berried reds from Missouri and Virginia; foxy Concord and Catawba around the Great Lakes; sweet Muscadine in the South; crisp emerging whites on the Texas plains.
Find your underdog
Take the two-minute taste quiz and get a starter list matched to what you already love — the lesser-known bottles worth chasing.
Take the taste quiz