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Sure, the United States hasn’t been making wine since ancient times from vineyards studiously plotted out over the centuries by monks. But the country has packed plenty of wine accomplishments into its 250 years of existence, thanks to all the European settlers who couldn’t tolerate life in the New World without a good drink.

From the earliest explorers to more recent immigrants, people have turned to both native grapes and imported European varieties to see which can make the best wines ‘from California to the New York island’.

While the most important events in the founding of our country were fuelled by imported wine, American winemakers and viticulturists have since proven sceptics wrong, shocked French wine judges, resurrected near-dead wineries and lured prestigious European wine companies into expanding to the States.

How much do you know about US wine history, from the colonial era up to the early 1990s? Find out with our 14-question challenge.

Take our US wine history quiz

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Dana Nigro
Dana Nigro
North America Regional Editor

A longtime U.S. wine writer, New Jersey–based Dana Nigro joined Decanter in June 2026. Previously, she spent more than 25 years with Wine Spectator in New York City, as news editor, then senior editor and digital managing editor.

She fell in love with wine while studying journalism in New York’s Finger Lakes region, where she took advantage of the excellent wine program at Cornell University’s School of Hotel Administration.

While reporting on U.S. wine, Nigro covered the battle to legalize direct shipping up through the U.S. Supreme Court decision in Granholm v. Heald, the rise of women in California’s wine industry, and sustainability in wine, including the evolution of West Coast winegrowing from its early certifications to its movement toward regenerative farming.