One of These Days, Norton!

I don’t plan my vacations around alcohol.  I really don't!  It just happens that way.

I try to plan my vacations around fun stuff my daughter might like, and what we all might have fun doing together as a family.

Yeah, it's a real place.

And sometimes, our vacations come about because my wife needs to travel somewhere for work, which is the only possible explanation on how I ended up in Normal, Illinois.

I’m going to refrain from making any Normal jokes.  Not that any of my jokes are ever normal.  (See? The damned things write themselves!)



Funny thing is, there's not even a
Krispy Kreme on this road.

I have to say, despite the ominous tornado warnings, Normal was a fun place to hang around.  The hotel had a swimming pool, where we spent no less than four hours each day.  And Normal also has a fantastic children’s museum, not to mention tons of nice playgrounds, a mall, Toy R Us, good restaurants, with kids menus, in short, everything a parent could possibly need.

We loved the Children’s Discovery Museum in Normal, and my daughter helped me find a geocache in the parking lot. I don't think I've blogged much about geocaching before.  I could go into it here, but better to save it for its own full entry, except to say that a couple days later, in Chicago, between deep dish pizza and baby back ribs, my daughter found a geocache all on her own. Such a proud moment.

“It’s around here somewhere.”

“Oh, Daddy, I see it! I’ll get it!”

I’ve raised her well. Even my wife was impressed. More than worth the price of visiting the two-story American Girl store.

But a beer nerd on vacation in Illinois is still a beer nerd, and some time around our second day there, I realized how close this part of Illinois is to Missouri, and realized this might be my best chance yet to get my hands on a Norton.

What, you ask, is a Norton?  Is this some kind of anti-virus joke?  Ed Norton joke?  And what does Ed Norton have to do with beer?

No, nope, and nothing.  In fact, none of this has anything to do with beer.  This is about wine, and about Thomas Jefferson’s dream for America.

I told you I was a nerd.

Thomas Jefferson, like most of the Founding Fathers, loved wine (except for John Adams, who was a hard cider man).  And Jefferson also saw agriculture as the key to this nation’s future.  One of his greatest dreams was the rise of a wine industry in America to rival that of Europe.  To that end, Jefferson, among others, sought to make wine from any of the native North American grapes that grew profusely in Virginia.

"The tree of liberty must
be refreshed, from time
to time, preferably with
a good wine."

Just one small problem: the wine was crap.  North American grapes, it turns out, while fine to eat, make terrible wine.  So Jefferson executed his Plan B.  He brought vines over from France, to create French wine on American soil.

Here, a second small problem arose: the vines all died.  Virginia, and North America in general, has a very different climate than central Europe, and that climate is all wrong for wine grapes.  And so the dream of an American wine industry died, at least during Jefferson’s lifetime.  But as we know, that is not the end of the story at all, since it turns out that parts of California are perfectly suited to growing Europe grape varieties, hence the Jefferson dream has come true.

Except, Jefferson dreamed of a uniquely American wine. 

And during the late 1800s, that dream almost came true, thanks to another Virginian named Dr. Daniel Norton.  He discovered a variety of native North American grape that made a decent wine.  Not only decent, but good enough, complex enough, to compete with European wines.

German immigrants in Missouri started growing the Norton grapes, and America’s first wine industry was born!

Unfortunately, America’s first wine industry was soon destroyed, like its beer industry, by Prohibition.  And while the post-World War II wine industry has focused on California, vintners in Missouri are still making Norton wines, and by God I was going to get my hands on one!

This turned out to be easier than I thought.  I found the largest liquor store I could find and found the local wines.  There, I quickly found bottle after bottle of Norton.  Mission accomplished!  It was off to more child-oriented activities.

Returning home, with a camera full of memories and a suitcase of wine, I tried the Norton for the first time.  I found it to be okay, while my wife thought it tasted like artificial cinnamon-covered pine cones.  I think I'll put that one in the "Not terrible" category, call it a victory and move on.  Besides, who cares how it tastes.  I have a bottle of wine that says Norton on it!  Time to find some more geocaches!

Before I finish off this entry, I would be remiss if I did not say a few words about the people of Normal.  Both my wife and I were amazed at how friendly, kind, welcoming, and genuinely nice everyone we met there was.  Compared to everyone else we met on the trip, they were anything but normal.

 (Sorry!  I can’t help myself!)