The Irish contribution to wine in America, California and around the world is untold yet is incredible.

The most successful vineyard of the colonial period was planted at the Charles Carroll family estate in Annapolis, Maryland in 1770. Charles Carroll, of Irish Ancestry, was a signatory of the Declaration of Independence.

James Mease, son of a distinguished Irish merchant in Philadelphia, was a principal of the Pennsylvania Vine Company, the first commercial winery established in the USA circa 1793.

The White House wine cellars were designed by Irish archictect James Hoban in 1799.

Irish born Bernard McMahon, wine consultant to Thomas Jefferson, was the first viticulturalist to advocate the practice of grafting some of the best European varieties on our most vigorous native vines, as being the right policy for American viticulture in 1806.

The oldest commercial surviving winery prior to prohibition, the San Jose winery, built by the Santa Barbara mission in the early nineteenth century, was owned by Irishman James McCaffrey from 1853-1900.

These are a few facts from the past. The present has more than fifty California wineries owned by families of Irish ancestry. I remember in the 1980s when the wines from Sullivan Winery and Fitzpatrick Winery were served the head tables at the Fairmount in San Francisco to honor the Lord mayor of Cork (sister city of SF) celebrating Cork’s 1,000 years. And serve at the White House on St. Patrick’s Day to a select crowd of 200 including the Clintons, Sinn Fein leader Jerry Adams, Senators and Irish delegates including the prime Minister. And there’s been many times Fitzpatrick wines were there to honor the Irish, their achievements, music, poetry, writings, film and stage.

The induction into the Order of the Wine Geese at the Desmond Castle in beautiful Kinsale Ireland was a grand moment to be considered an Irish influence in the world of wine.

Another first is the ‘When Irish Wines are Smiling’ big get together in Napa this march 14th where California’s wineries of Irish roots will be seen en masse to the wine drinking public. Names like Murphy, Sullivan, O’Brien, Fitzpatrick, Roach, Keenan, Fogarty, Allen, etc., etc.

 One of the obvious ones is Fitzpatrick Winery & Lodge which hides nothing of this connection from it’s label design, to some proprietary wine names like Eire Ban, Tir na nOg, Joyce’s Preoccupations to Wilde’s Soul of Man to their gift shop of Irish, or more appropriate Celtic wares.