Andrew Michaux made an overland trip in Kentucky. Among his visit was one with Jean Jacques Dufour, the founder of the Swiss Colony in Vevay. Michaux gave details of Dufour and the operation of his first Vineyard in Kentucky.
Journal of André Michaux, 1793-1796 ...
Michaux, André, 1746-1802.
CREATED/PUBLISHED
Cleveland, 1904.
NOTES
Translated from the original French journal first published in the Proceedings of the American Philosophical society for 1889, p. 1-145.
About fourteen miles from Lexington I quitted the Hickman Ferry road, turned on my left, and strolled into the woods, so that I did not reach the vineyard till the evening, when I was handsomely received by Mr. Dufour, who superintends the business. He gave me an invitation to sleep, and spend the following day with him, which I accepted.
There reigns in the United States a public spirit that makes them greedily seize hold of every plan that tends to enrich the country by agriculture and commerce. That of rearing the vine in Kentucky was eagerly embraced. Several individuals united together, and formed a society to put it in execution, and it was decreed that a fund should be established of ten thousand dollars, divided into two hundred shares of fifty dollars each. This fund was very soon accomplished. Mr. Dufour, the chief of a small Swiss colony which seven or eight years before had settled in Kentucky, and who had proposed this undertaking, was deputed to search for a proper soil, to procure vine plants, and to do every thing he might think necessary to insure success. The spot that he has chosen and cleared is on the Kentucky river, about twenty miles from Lexington. The soil is excellent and the vineyard is planted upon the declivity of a hill exposed to the south, and the base of which is about two hundred fathoms from the river.
Mr. Dufour intended to go to France to procure the vine plants, and with that idea went to New York; but the war, or other causes that I know not, prevented his setting out, and he contented himself with collecting, in this town and Philadelphia, slips of every species that he could find in the possession of individuals that had them in their gardens.
After unremitted labour he made a collection of twenty-five different sorts, which he brought to Kentucky, where he employed himself in cultivating them. However the success did not answer the expectation; only four or five various kinds survived, among which were those that he had described by the name of Burgundy and Madeira, but the former is far from being healthy. The grape generally decays before it is ripe. When I saw them the bunches were thin and poor, the berries small, and every thing announced that the vintage of 1802 would not be more abundant than that of the preceding years. The Madeira vines appeared, on the contrary, to give some hopes. Out of a hundred and fifty or two hundred, there was a third loaded with very fine bunches. The whole of these vines do not occupy a space of more than six acres. They are planted and fixed with props similar to those in the environs of Paris. Such was then the situation of this establishment, in which the stockholders concerned themselves but very little. It was again about to experience another check by the division of Mr. Dufour's family, one part of was on the point of setting out to the banks of the Ohio, there to form a settlement. These particulars are sufficient to give, on the pretended flourishing state of the vines in Kentucky, an idea very different to that which might be formed from the pompous account of them which appeared some months since in our public papers.I profited by my stay with Mr. Dufour, to ask him in what part of Kentucky the numerous emigration of his countrymen had settled, which had been so much spoken of in our newspapers in 1793 and 1794.
His reply was, that a great number of the Swiss had actually formed an intention to settle there; but just as they were setting out, the major part had changed their mind, and that the colony was then reduced to his family and a few friends, forming, in the whole, eleven persons.
