Jim Warren

When Concord was King! Jim Warren

The beginnings of a wine industry in Eastern Canada are rooted in mystery. Why did imported European vinifera grapes, not indigenous here, prove impossible to grow for more than 300 years? What were our original winemaking grapes and where and when did they originate? Who were our first winemakers and what kinds of wines did they produce? What inspired them to start their wineries just when the Temperance movement was gaining strength and threatening the prohibition of all alcohol sales in Ontario? When Prohibition finally arrived how did our wineries manage to carry on and how did the industry continue to survive the challenges of government control, the Depression, and World War II?

After researching the early history of our native wine industry I have written this book to answer such questions and set the record straight about an industry that had shrunk from over 50 wineries in the 1920's to just 7 in the early 1970's producing much-maligned wine essentially from one grape, the infamous Concord. At this time the successful planting of 'new' grapes, numerous French Hybrid and Vinifera varieties, would see our native grapes begin to vanish and soon, along with them, the historical wines that could no longer be produced.