Cincinnati Ohio River Wine
Where Nicholas Longworth launched America's first wine boom in the 1840s with Sparkling Catawba, Cincinnati's reviving wine scene combines urban tasting rooms with Ohio River bluff vineyards.
About Cincinnati Ohio River Wine
Cincinnati has the deepest wine heritage of any city in the Midwest. In the 1840s and 1850s, lawyer and wine enthusiast Nicholas Longworth made Cincinnati the center of American wine production, with his Sparkling Catawba wines shipped to New York, London, and praised by no less than Charles Dickens. Phylloxera, the Civil War, and Prohibition ended the era, but a modern revival is underway. Urban tasting rooms in the Over-the-Rhine and downtown neighborhoods serve Cincinnati's passionate food culture, while a handful of estate wineries on the Ohio River bluffs south of the city grow Catawba, Riesling, and Chambourcin on the same rolling hills where Longworth's vines once stood. The combination of Cincinnati's culinary renaissance, historic German heritage, and the Ohio River's beauty makes this one of the Midwest's most culturally rich wine destinations.