Living in Napa Valley, it is easy to think that the world of American wine revolves around us, so it’s sobering to think that the colonists under Capt. John Smith at Jamestown in Virginia planted grapes and made wine soon after they arrived on May 13, 1607.

Of course, the European grapes they planted died, and the wine they made, probably from native Muscadine grapes, isn’t something many modern wine lovers would enjoy. With time and modern viticultural technology, however, Virginia has finally become a viable wine-making state.

Recently, wine history expert Gordon Murchie was in the valley, talking at Copia, the Napa Valley Grill and the Heart and Health Symposium about the history of wine in the U.S. focusing on the role of his state, Virginia. He shared a number of surprises.

It’s well known that Jamestown wasn’t a good site for a colony, much less vineyards. It was foggy and misty, surrounded by marsh and water. That was good for protection of the 104 men and boys from Native Americans, but was a terrible place to grow grapes.

The settlers did find “hedge” grapes, probably native Muscadine Scuppernong.

In 1610, Smith went home, but documents indicate the colonists made 20 gallons of wine from the native grapes. In 1611 the Virginia company declared that stealing vines was a capital crime, and in 1619 required every male settler of age to plant at least 10 vines to make wine. In 1622, wine was shipped back to London.

The British wanted to produce wine in the colonies to replace that from France, which England seemed to perpetually be fighting. The climate doomed the efforts, however, and Port-like wine from the Portuguese island of Madeira was the primary wine drunk in the colonies. The signers toasted the Declaration of Independence with Madeira.

Soon, however, tobacco replaced wine as the focus of the colonies, and in 1699, Williamstown became the capital and Jamestown was largely abandoned.

Murchie notes that no one produced wine commercially in Virginia until the 1950s. “They didn’t have the knowledge and technology we have now.”

In the mid-1700s Thomas Jefferson tried to grow vinifera (wine grapes) on his plantation at Monticello. He offered 200 acres to French grower and winemaker Philip Mazzei, who sold shares for $50 in the venture, but they never produced wine commercially. A record-breaking hailstorm in 1774 devastated the vines, and then Hessian horses trampled the vineyards during the Revolution.

George Washington also tried for 11 years to establish wine grapes. He was a successful farmer, but never succeeded with grapes, though he had an extensive wine cellar.

Americans gave up on vinifera grapes and made wine from native grapes, mostly labrusca such as Catawba, Concord, Delaware and Niagara.

One apparent native, Norton, was identified by a Dr. Norton, and it makes a red wine difficult to tell from vinifera; it’s the primary red grape of Missouri, which was one of the largest producers in America before Prohibition.

Of course, California had an ideal climate for wine grapes, and though the padres had long made wine from mission grapes for sacramental purposes, the first commercial winery was created at Buena Vista in Sonoma in 1859 using grape vines imported from Europe.

Meanwhile, in the 1930s Paul Wagner planted so-called French hybrid vines in the East. French researchers had developed these vines by combining vinifera and native grapes in an unsuccessful attempt to try to overcome phylloxera infestations introduced from North America. These grapes could stand the rugged climates of Eastern North America, and had more muted — offensive to most wine lovers —- native grape flavors (think Concord grape juice) than pure natives.

These hybrids soon became widely planted all over the eastern U.S. as well as in the Midwest, and helped create viable local businesses, though not wines drinkers of traditional European wines could love.

Over time, Eastern growers mastered the art of growing vinifera vines. They must accept grapes that generally don’t get as ripe, poor vintages and occasional devastating freezes or hail. Nevertheless, the number of wineries in Virginia alone grew from three in 1975 to more than 125, and every U.S. state has wineries. Half of America’s 40,000 wineries are outside California, in fact.

Virginia is unlikely to overtake California — it has 3,000 acres in wine grapes compared to the Golden State’s more than half a million — but the state has finally proven the promise those early settlers saw 400 years ago.