American native wine grapes were not what I expected, and they sent me down my latest rabbit hole.

It started with a winery practically in our own backyard doing something I didn't realize anyone was doing: exploring what American wine might taste like if we stopped trying so hard to make it taste like somewhere else.

That place is TerraVox Winery, located among the rolling hills north of Kansas City, Missouri.

TerraVox is experimenting with dozens of native, hybrid, and historically significant American grape varieties, many carrying names most wine drinkers have probably never encountered. Its work preserving and exploring American native wine grapes raises a wonderfully simple question:

What does America taste like when we allow it to taste like itself?

The more I learned about TerraVox, the more the question changed; it wasn't really a wine story.

It was a story about place.

Who Decided Which Grapes Were Noble?

Spend enough time around wine and eventually you'll encounter the term “noble grapes.”

Traditionally, six varieties are commonly included: Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, Pinot Noir, Chardonnay, Sauvignon Blanc, and Riesling.

They're extraordinary grapes. They've produced some of the world's greatest wines, and their ability to express different soils and climates is part of the reason they've been planted around the world.

But here's where the rabbit hole opened.

“Noble grape” isn't an official classification.

There isn't some international council sitting in a stone cellar in France that bestowed nobility upon six grapes and condemned everything else to the peasants.

It's a convention.

And conventions have histories.

Which made me wonder:

What happened to all the other grapes?

More specifically:

What happened to ours?

American Native Wine Grapes Have a Story of Their Own

North America has its own extraordinary viticultural history.

Wild grapes were growing on this continent long before Europeans arrived. Over generations, growers, horticulturists, and breeders experimented with native species and crosses, attempting to discover grapes capable of producing distinctive wines while thriving in American soils and climates.

These American native wine grapes were not simply substitutes for European varieties. They represented something different—grapes shaped by this continent and the people trying to understand what could grow here.

One of the most fascinating characters in that history was Thomas Volney Munson, better known as T.V. Munson.

Working during the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Munson became one of America's foremost authorities on native grape species. He collected them, classified them, experimented with them, and developed new varieties.

His work also became connected to one of the great crises in wine history.

During the 19th century, phylloxera devastated European vineyards. The tiny insect attacked the roots of European grapevines with catastrophic consequences.

Part of the solution came from America.

European grape varieties could be grafted onto resistant American rootstock, allowing vineyards to survive. Munson's knowledge of American grape species contributed to identifying appropriate rootstocks for European vineyards.

There is something wonderfully ironic about that.

American grapevines helped preserve European wine culture.

Yet somewhere along the way, Americans became increasingly convinced that serious American wine should be made primarily from European grapes.

Meanwhile, many American native wine grapes largely disappeared from the broader conversation about fine wine.

That's where TerraVox enters our story.

A Missouri Farm Boy Finds an Old Book

TerraVox founder Jerry Eisterhold grew up around wild grapes in Missouri's Gasconade River Valley, upstream from Hermann.

Then, in 1978, while living in Midtown Kansas City, he discovered Munson's Foundations of American Grape Culture.

Apparently Jerry did what any properly curious person does when encountering an almost-forgotten chapter of history.

He started pulling on the thread.

And kept pulling.

He requested grape cuttings connected to Munson's work and planted them in his Kansas City backyard.

It didn't go particularly well.

Too much shade.

Too many squirrels.

He tried again in Overland Park.

Still shade. Still squirrels. Now sparrows joined the conspiracy.

Then came Peculiar, Missouri, where the growing conditions improved considerably.

Unfortunately, horses got into the vineyard.

They ate the grapevines.

Most people would probably have taken the hint.

Jerry Eisterhold was not most people.

Eventually, he and his wife Kate reportedly rented an airplane and flew over the Kansas City region looking for land with the combination of topography and soil he wanted.

By the mid-1990s, Jerry was establishing experimental vineyard rows north of Kansas City, ultimately working with more than 60 varieties.

He later traveled to California for extension courses at UC Davis covering winemaking, chemistry, pest management, irrigation, and sensory analysis.

Think about that for a moment.

This began with an old book.

It became decades of experimentation with American native wine grapes most of us have never tasted—or even heard of.

That is the kind of obsession I find fascinating.

A Vineyard Full of Names You've Probably Never Heard

Today TerraVox works with grapes bearing names that sound almost like characters from a forgotten American novel:

Wetumka.

Cloeta.

Hidalgo.

Albania.

America.

Herbemont.

Lenoir.

Marguerite.

Volney.

Wine King.

And, more familiarly to Missouri wine drinkers, Norton.

These aren't the names most of us encounter walking through the wine aisle.

And that's exactly the point.

TerraVox says every grape used in its wines is grown on its own property. No fruit or juice is purchased from somewhere else and brought in to make the wine.

That matters.

Because this experiment with American native wine grapes isn't simply about producing unusual bottles of wine.

It's about discovering what these grapes can express from this particular piece of Missouri.

Consider Wetumka.

Developed by T.V. Munson in the 1890s, Wetumka can produce a wine TerraVox describes as carrying aromas of green pineapple and lemon verbena, with substantial natural acidity.

When was the last time someone asked you whether you'd prefer Chardonnay, Sauvignon Blanc...

or Wetumka?

Exactly.

That's what makes this so much fun.

Maybe We've Been Asking the Wrong Question

American wine conversations often begin with comparisons.

Is this Cabernet as good as one from Napa?

Does this Pinot resemble Burgundy?

Can this sparkling wine compete with Champagne?

Those are legitimate questions, but they're not the only questions.

There's another one:

What can we taste here that we cannot taste anywhere else?

That's where American native wine grapes become particularly interesting.

Because wine becomes something more than a beverage.

It becomes geography.

Agriculture.

History.

Climate.

Culture.

People.

Story.

It becomes terroir.

If we're genuinely interested in terroir, shouldn't we occasionally stop asking whether a place can successfully imitate another place?

Perhaps the more interesting question is whether it can reveal something entirely its own.

American Native Wine Grapes and the Meaning of Terroir

We talk frequently at Epic Explorations about American terroir—the idea that landscapes, agriculture, food, craft, traditions, and people can help us understand a place.

Exploring American native wine grapes may be one of the most interesting ways to experience that idea.

Wine is an agricultural product.

A grape grows somewhere.

Its roots enter a particular soil.

It experiences a particular amount of rainfall, heat, cold, wind, and sunlight.

Someone tends it.

Someone decides when to harvest it.

Someone decides what to do with the juice.

Eventually someone pours it into a glass.

And then someone else tastes that place.

That's terroir.

But with American native wine grapes, there may be another layer.

What if the grape itself carries a story?

What if it nearly disappeared?

What if generations of people experimented with it before most of us had ever heard its name?

What if someone spent decades trying to understand it?

What if its ancestors grew on this continent while America's wine identity was still being imagined?

Now the glass contains something else.

Memory.

And suddenly tasting an unfamiliar wine isn't simply about deciding whether we like it.

It's about discovering something.

What Does America Taste Like?

That's the question I can't shake.

We talk frequently at Epic Explorations about experiencing the world through stories and the people who carry them.

The story of American native wine grapes fits beautifully into that philosophy because the wine isn't really the destination.

It's the doorway.

A glass of wine can lead us into geology.

Agriculture.

Immigration.

Botany.

History.

Commerce.

Family.

Tradition.

Innovation.

And the beautifully obsessed people who refuse to let something interesting disappear.

That's what fascinates me about Jerry Eisterhold and TerraVox.

He didn't simply decide to open another winery.

He encountered a nearly forgotten piece of American viticultural history and apparently asked:

What if there's still something here worth discovering?

Decades later, he's still working on the answer.

That's a story I want to hear.

Maybe American Wine Doesn't Need to Taste Like Europe

To be clear, none of this is an argument against European grapes.

I happen to enjoy many of them.

There is a reason Cabernet Sauvignon, Pinot Noir, Chardonnay, Riesling, and the others became some of the most celebrated wine grapes in the world.

But appreciating those wines doesn't prevent us from being curious about something else.

Perhaps there is room at the table for both.

We can appreciate Burgundy while wondering what Norton tells us about Missouri.

We can enjoy Riesling while becoming curious about Wetumka.

We can drink Chardonnay while asking why someone has spent decades preserving grapes called Cloeta, Hidalgo, America, and Albania.

That's the part of American native wine grapes that intrigues me most.

They aren't asking us to abandon something familiar.

They're inviting us to taste something we've forgotten.

And perhaps they're asking us to reconsider what we mean when we talk about an authentic American wine.

The Story Is Bigger Than a Bottle of Wine

This may be where my curiosity about TerraVox begins moving beyond wine altogether.

Because preserving American native wine grapes raises questions we encounter everywhere when we travel.

What gets remembered?

What gets forgotten?

Who decides which traditions are worth preserving?

Why do certain foods, crafts, agricultural practices, and stories become celebrated while others quietly disappear?

And what happens when one person becomes curious enough—or obsessed enough—to bring something back?

That's why places like TerraVox interest me.

We're not simply talking about a winery.

We're talking about someone preserving biological material, agricultural history, and a piece of American culture while simultaneously asking whether those old grapes might have a future.

That's much more interesting than simply ordering another glass of wine.

So We're Going to TerraVox

This rabbit hole has officially moved beyond my computer screen.

Linda and I are going to make a day of it.

We'll head toward Weston and visit TerraVox.

I don't particularly want to arrive with the objective of deciding whether wines made from American native wine grapes are “better” than Cabernet, Chardonnay, or Pinot Noir.

That misses the point.

I want to taste something unfamiliar.

I want to stand in the vineyard.

I want to understand why someone would devote decades to grapes most Americans have never heard of.

I want to hear the stories behind Wetumka, Cloeta, Albania, America, and whatever else ends up in our glasses.

I want to understand what Jerry sees in these grapes that convinced him they were worth decades of his life.

And I want to begin understanding American native wine grapes through the people actually growing them and turning them into wine.

Most of all, I want to explore the question that started this entire rabbit hole:

What does America taste like when we allow it to taste like itself?

I don't know the answer yet.

That's why we're going.

And that's really the whole point of being a Resonant Explorer.

Sometimes you find the story.

Sometimes the story gives you a reason to get in the car and go looking for the rest of it.

And every once in a while, a nearly forgotten American grape is enough to start the journey.