Planting began at Pontchartrain Vineyards’ 34.5 acre vineyard site north of Covington, in the fall of 1991. The location is approximately 140 miles north of the Gulf of Mexico and 20 miles north of Lake Pontchartrain in the first hills arising off the flat coastal plain of south Louisiana. The vineyard is approximately 150’ above sea level and has well drained, sandy loam soils from the Savannah and Ruston series of the soils of the upland terraces. Pontchartrain Vineyards, which is a registered trade name of Distinctive Wines of Louisiana, Inc., was formed in 1992.

The planting of the first 5.5 acre block was completed in the spring of 1992 and the vineyard’s first harvest resulted in a modest 200 cases of wine from the 1993 vintage. Beginning in the fall of 1994, these 200 cases of wine were marketed exclusively to fine restaurants in New Orleans and on the Northshore.

Pontchartrain Vineyards produced a little over 2,000 gallon or approximately 800 cases of wine from the 1994 vintage. These wines were marketed exclusively through fine restaurants on the Northshore and in New Orleans, or were sold directly out of the winery.

A 2,400 square foot winery building at the vineyard site was partially completed in time for the 1995 crush which yielded wine production of about 1,500 cases of wine. Most of the 1995 vintage wines were released in the fall of 1996. The winery building was completed in 1996 and that year’s production totaled about 1,800 cases or 4,300 gallons of wine.

In 1997, construction of a French provincial style tasting room and visitors center overlooking the vineyards was completed. Current ( i.e., from the 1999  and 2000 vintages) production is approximately 6800 gallons or about 2,850 cases of wine. Pontchartrain Vineyards wines have been awarded numerous medals in both national and international wine competitions over the last several years, and are well represented in the finer eating establishments and wine stores in the New Orleans, Baton Rouge and Northshore areas.  With the exception of the Panhandle area of Florida, the wines are generally not available outside the state of Louisiana.

Approximately 11 acres of vines are presently under cultivation, and now producing. Another approximately 5 acres is scheduled for planting in the spring of 2002.  The main varieties grown are Blanc Du Bois (white) and Cynthiana/Norton (red). It is anticipated that estate vineyards will eventually provide sufficient fruit to produce 5,000 cases or 12,000 gallons of wine annually.

Our love for preparing, enjoying and getting together over food in Louisiana is truly extraordinary, even by European standards. When I left Louisiana in the late 60’s for Europe, I was still more or less oblivious to our remarkable food culture, and no one here was really paying any attention to wine - certainly not to wines being produced in America.. The quest to produce world class table wines in the modern era was just beginning in California and Ella Brennan still hadn’t discovered Robert Mondavi (or was it the other way around?). But things were changing and by the time I returned in 1973, a question was ripe for the asking: Where’s the wine?

Wine is food in Europe. Hardly an evening (and in some places, a daytime) meal is eaten which is not accompanied by wine. I certainly became accustomed to the routine of having wine with supper. It was a wonderful revelation to experience how wine enhances the way food tastes and helps to relax people and bring them together. With our strong French and Spanish heritage in Louisiana, and obvious passion for food, what happened to the wine?

I assumed, probably like most folks, that there must be something wrong in Louisiana - the soil isn’t right or the climate isn’t suitable, or something, or else, for sure, our European ancestors would have certainly brought their love for wine with them and started growing grapes and making wine here long ago. Well, they certainly did bring their love for wine with them as attested to by the fact that the importation of wine from Europe through New Orleans and stops along the Mississippi was an important and viable trade that goes back at least to the early 19th century and almost certainly, earlier. In fact, beginning in the early 19th century, a principal business of Laura Plantation (presently under restoration as an authentic Creole Plantation, just down river from Vacherie, Louisiana), was that of a wine merchant for many of the families of the Mississippi Valley. It seems good, or perhaps, fine wines from Europe were readily available to the Creoles and well to do families of Louisiana.

But wine was not and is still not the drink of the common folk of Louisiana. My first job after returning to Louisiana was as law clerk for the Hon. F. Stephen Ellis, then judge of the First Circuit Court of Appeal, State of Louisiana The judge was researching and writing his history of the Florida Parishes at the time. I posed the question to him - where’s the wine? Why didn’t our French, Spanish and German ancestors here grow grapes and produce wine? They did so in California and perhaps New York, didn’t they? What’s wrong with Louisiana?

Well, the judge informed me, I was wrong in some assumptions. Our continental European forbears indeed had planted grapes and indeed had made wine! As it turns out, most of the wine growing in Louisiana took place in the Florida parishes, primarily St. Tammany, in the late 19th century. To learn more of our early viticulture efforts in this state, I recommend Judge Ellis’ book L’ Autre Cote DuLac, particularly his chapter on post reconstruction agriculture which documents this early wine growing experience. This fascinating episode in our history, particularly noted by Judge Ellis' good friend and author, Walker Percy, in his forward to the book, came to an end as the long shadow of Prohibition began to descend across the American landscape in the late 19th and early 20th century.

Interestingly, our experience in Louisiana was not remarkably different from the rest of the country. Except for pockets of immigrants from continental Europe, there were no deep well springs of tradition and knowledge of how to cultivate the grape or how to explore the potential for developing new wine grape varieties that would be suitable for the growing conditions found on the North American continent. Early enthusiasts and men knowledgeable of wine, including the passionate and worldly oenophile, Thomas Jefferson, saw the potential for developing fine wines in this country based primarily on native grape stocks. He recognized that it would take time to do so since it was apparent from "the outset" that Vitus vinifera (the species of bunch grapes which includes chardonnay, cabernet sauvignon, merlot, sauvignon blanc, semillon, and the like,) was not at all happy in the new world, at least not until it crossed the Rocky Mountains and took hold in the Mediterranean climates close to the Pacific Ocean.

Prior to the Civil War, cultivated "wild/native "species, crosses between native varieties, some crossed with some vinifera selections, intentionally or perhaps accidentally, began to appear. Some of the selections first appearing in the early 19th century, noted in Judge Ellis’ history as being grown in St. Tammany Parish for wine in the late 19th century, included herbemont, catawba, concord and Norton, or Virginia’s Norton (also known as Cynthiana). These "improved" selections which had already migrated westward to Ohio, Indiana, Missouri and Arkansas by mid century, became more widely available after the Civil War through nurseries and catalogues. Some states with heavy European immigrant populations such as Missouri with a strong German population west of St. Louis along the Missouri River, became major wine producers producing wine from these indigenous American cultivars. On a smaller but familiar note, as observed above, these varieties began to interest the newer European arrivals to Louisiana.

As Gerald Asher, regular wine columnist for Gourmet Magazine noted some years ago in an article on Missouri wines in which he traced the history of wine growing in that state, early English wine experts were extremely impressed by the quality of the red wines being produced from the Norton (Cynthiana) grape, maintaining that it held great promise for the future of New World wines. Producers in Louisiana were gaining some notoriety as well. First generation Frenchmen and Germans took home medals for St. Tammany produced wines at the World Industrial Exposition at New Orleans in 1885. Interestingly, by the late 1880's a consensus seemed to be building that the Norton or Virginia’s Norton, or Cynthiana, produced the finest red wine of the region.

By the turn of the century, the picture goes dark, not just in Louisiana, but all over the country. The swelling tide against demon rum, of course, spread to all forms of alcohol, and particularly took root in the rural/farming communities of the nation before it overran the cities and finally became the subject of a Constitutional Amendment in the 1920's. A generation or more had passed before the dark cloud of prohibition ended, lingering in most states long after the repeal of the 19th Amendment in 1934. By that time, wine growing in Louisiana, was but a faint memory. 44 years later, things were ready to change in the state many consider to be the food capital of North America.

Encouraged by the history I had "discovered", and not yet terrorized by the devastating effects of Pierce's disease (the bane of nearly all bunch and therefore wine grapes in the Gulf Coastal South, and increasingly, a serious threat to the wine industry in California), in 1978, I laid out and planted an "experimental" vineyard on hillside property belonging to Carol and Ray Finely north of Folsom in St. Tammany Parish. My research had pointed me towards planting the so-called French-American hybrids. These "interspecific" grape hybrids developed by French viticulturists and nurserymen in the late 19th and early 20th century represented crosses of species native to North America - for their disease resistance and cold hardiness, with various vitus vinifera cultivars native to Asia Minor and Mediterranean Europe - for their fruit/wine quality. Ironically, this "new" spectrum of vines was just becoming available to the world as the United States was slipping ever deeper into the abyss of "The Noble Experiment". Perhaps even more ironically, the French, partially driven in their desperation to find a solution to the immensely tragic phyloxera scourge of the late 19th century, turned to a Kansas (birthplace of the prohibitionist movement in this country) born Texan, Dr. T.V. Munson for the vine material on the North American side of the cross. Munson, a horticulturist/viticulturist based in Denison, Texas (near Dallas) roamed the hillsides and creek bottoms of eastern Texas, southern Oklahoma, southwestern Arkansas and northeastern Louisiana (apparently a zone of considerable vitus {vine} species differentiation) collecting and propagating much of the material that the French used not only for rootstocks to save European (and California) viticulture from the ravages of phyloxera, but also as parent material for hybridizing new plants. My "theory" (hope) was that perhaps some of the genes that enable the native species to ward off or deal with the most pernicious of the diseases threatening bunch grapes (e.g. Pierce's disease) might endure in some of the crosses.

This initial experience of growing a number of French American hybrid selections and finally having locally grown grapes to begin exploring our potential for producing wines worthy of the great culinary traditions of Louisiana was significant and encouraging on two fronts. Yes, we could grow bunch/wine grapes, and yes, the grapes we were able to grow seemed to have character and quality attributes worthy of the challenge to produce "serious" wines here. Besides certain French American hybrid selections, some of the newer crosses (Blanc Du Bois), developed in Florida began to reveal their promise at another experimental project I started at another friend's farm near Folsom (Maurice J. LeGardeur's Hog Hollow Farm).

By 1991, the stage was set to pursue serious wine growing in Louisiana. With financial support of several backers, I secured access to the 34.5 acre parcel we would eventually purchase to begin planting the first 5.5 acre block of a planned 19/20 acre vineyard. In 1992, we formed Distinctive Wines of Louisiana, Inc., a Chapter S corporation, with a small group of stockholders. I withdrew entirely from the practice of law to devote full time to our mission to grow and produce fine wines in Louisiana to compliment the extraordinary cuisine of the area.

Like most things in life, the most difficult and trying questions do not often yield clear, definitive answers. Somewhere in the gray, rather than the black white, the truth resides. My "theory" about the French hybrids has proven partially true: some selections appear no more tolerant to Pierce's disease than vitus vinifera; others, however, although not resistant, definitely show a tolerance and recovery potential from certain levels of infection. The wine quality these vines are able to achieve in Louisiana's climate, soils and growing conditions is extremely promising, warranting further efforts at developing strategies for helping these somewhat tolerant selections succeed in their struggle with Pierce's disease. The situation cries out for serious research at the institutional level to help achieve this state's potential for serious wine production. Unfortunately, the state, to date, has not seen fit to invest any significant resources into bunch/wine grape research.

In the meantime, Pontchartrain Vineyards' experience with growing and making fine wines from the Blanc Du Bois grape (white) and old American variety Cynthiana/Norton (red), has been most promising. While Blanc Du Bois is clearly resistant to Pierce's Disease, Cynthiana/Norton appears to be able to tolerate high levels of the bacterial pathogen without showing symptoms of the disease or any serious dysfunction of the vine's physiology. Pontchartrain Vineyards' growing efforts at this time are focused on these two Varietals while work with some of the French American hybrids (Villard blanc in particular) continues in other vineyards just now getting started in the state.

Louisiana presently has six (5) bonded wineries all of which, except Pontchartrain Vineyards, produce wine primarily from Muscadine or other non-grape fruits. Pontchartrain Vineyards is the only winery in the state producing table wines exclusively from traditional bunch/wine grapes.