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Viticulture flourished in the Great Plains during the last half of the nineteenth century, especially in Kansas, Nebraska, and Texas, due to the wine-growing traditions introduced by European immigrants and the promotional efforts of Thomas V. Munson of Texas, one of the nation's leading viticultural authorities. However, the industry was destroyed by "Dry" interests and Prohibition and did not revive until the 1970s, when the United States became involved in a wine-growing boom that spread to most states.
A short growing season in the Northern
Plains of the United States and the Prairie
Provinces of Canada limits viticulture to coldtolerant
American table grapes or hybrid wine
grapes, which are of little commercial significance.
Viticulture is most prominent in the
Southern Plains, where the industry focuses
almost solely on vinifera, or European, wine
grapes for premium wine production. Texas
leads in wine grape growing in the Great
Plains. High Plains farmers in Texas have long
been interested in finding alternative crops to
cotton or grain sorghum that require less water
from the dwindling Ogallala Aquifer, and
many have planted five to ten acres of wine
grapes as a water-conserving, high-value, supplemental
crop. The arid/semiarid climate of
West Texas is conducive to growing vinifera
grapes, a fact already proven by turn-of-thecentury
experiments. The region has impressive
natural advantages (warm days, cool
nights, low humidity, high elevation, fewer
harmful insects and diseases) over more humid
or higher-latitude regions. The only significant
climatic problems are the erratic
weather and occasional damage from late
spring frosts. Texas usually ranks about fifth
in the United States in wine grape acreage
and produces more than a million gallons of
wine a year. Over 80 percent of its more than
3,000 vineyard acres are located on the Southern
Plains and in the Pecos Valley. All of
Texas's five designated American Viticultural
Areas and about half of its twenty-seven wineries
are located in West Texas or the Hill
Country, either within or on the fringes of the
Plains.
Viticultural acreage on the Southern Great Plains continues to expand, and Texas's wine-growing industry alone employs more than 2,200 people and has an estimated total economic value of over $100 million per year. Legal impediments in some Plains states are doubtless more important than adverse physical factors in inhibiting the spread of viticulture in the region.