page_title: New Jersey wine
section_title: Viticulture in the New Jersey colony and early America
hierarchical_section_title: New Jersey wine / History / Viticulture in the New Jersey colony and early America
caption_attribution_description: English: Antill-Ross House in Piscataway Township, New Jersey. Built 1739, destroyed 1954-1958. Home of colonial politician Edward Antill 2nd and later Dr. Alexander Ross. From 1900 publication, photo 1900 or before. Other information Antill-Ross House in Piscataway Township, New Jersey. Built 1739, destroyed 1954-1958. Home of colonial politician Edward Antill 2nd and later Dr. Alexander Ross. Antill owned a large plantation in Piscataway, orchards and vineyards for which he was recognized by the Royal Society of Arts in 1767.
context_page_description: The production of wine in New Jersey has increased significantly in the last thirty years with the opening of new wineries. Beginning in 1981, the state legislature relaxed Prohibition-era restrictions and crafted new laws to facilitate the growth of the industry and provide new opportunities for winery licenses. Today, New Jersey wineries are crafting wines that have earned recognition for their quality from critics, industry leaders, and in national and international competitions. As of 2019, New Jersey currently has 51 licensed and operating wineries with several more prospective wineries in various stages of development.
  According to the United States Department of Agriculture's 2012 Census of Agriculture, the state's wineries and vineyards dedicated 1,082 acres to the cultivation of grapes. New Jersey wineries are growing Vitis vinifera, Vitis labrusca, or French hybrid wine grapes, and producing or offering for sale over eighty types of wines. In 2010, 1.72 million gallons of wine were produced by New Jersey wineries; making it the seventh largest wine-producing state in the United States.
context_section_description: In 1758, the Royal Society of Arts (formally, the "Society instituted at London for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce") sought to incentivize agricultural innovation and cultivation in the North American colonies by offering a "premium"—or cash award—of 100 British pounds (£100) for the planting of vineyards and the production of "five tuns of red or white wine of acceptable quality." The initial award was unclaimed by 1762, and the Society augmented the bounty to £200 if the goal were reached by a colonial farmer by 1770 adding that at least five hundred vines should be planted and the wine produced equal "those Sorts of Wines now consumed in Great Britain."
  In 1767, two men had been recognized by the society for their undertakings. William Alexander (1726-1783), the self-styled "Earl of Stirling," informed the society in 1767 that he had planted 2,100 vines at his estate in Basking Ridge, in central New Jersey's Somerset County. Sterling had reported that his plantings were 
  "chiefly Burgundy, Orleans, Black, White and Red Frontiniac, Muscadine, Portugals and Tokays." Edward Antill (1701-1770) who inherited his father's estate and operated a large brewery at Raritan Landing across the Raritan River in Piscataway Township from the city of New Brunswick, advised the society that he had a vineyard of 800 vines of Madeira, Burgundy and Frontenac grapes as well as a few "Sweet-water Grape vines, and of the best sort of the Native Vines of America by way of tryal."  Antill had remarked in a 1765 letter that he had been "thought by some Gentlemen as well as by Farmers, very whimsical in attempting a Vineyard." and had planted his vines "on the south side of a hill facing a public road so that his experiment could be advertised to the skeptics."
  The society had discussed offering the £200 to both men for their achievements.  However, the Society raised concerns about the legitimacy of Alexander's claim to a title of nobility.  On 2 December 1767, the Society offered the cash award to Antill, and three weeks later offered Lord Stirling a gold medal "for having planted 2100 vines in North America in pursuance of the Views of the Society."  Shortly after his death, Antill published an 80-page tract entitled An Essay on the cultivation of the Vine, and the making and preserving of Wine, suited to the different Climates in North-America (1771) and this account influenced scholarship well into the nineteenth century.
  The developments of Antill and Lord Sterling did not translate into a long-term success or establish the industry in the state.  Within a few years after their deaths, Antill in 1770, and Lord Sterling in 1783, their prize-winning vineyards were neglected and gone.  In the colonial period and early nineteenth-century, the prevailing market in the New Jersey was for Jersey cider and distilled spirits.  During the 1840s, in Newark, producers were creating sparkling apple cider and marketing it as "champagne"—so much so that Scottish traveller Alexander Mackay asserted that he learned that most "imported champagne" in America came in fact from Newark.  While Mackay thought that it was "excellent as a summer drink" he quipped that, "many is the American connoisseur of champagne who has his taste cultivated on Newark cider."
caption: The Georgian-Dutch Colonial home of Edward Antill (later called Ross Hall) in Piscataway built 1739, destroyed 1954.  Antill owned a 370-acre plantation with meadows, an orchard, and a vineyard of 800 vines for which he received an award from London's Royal Society of Arts in 1767.
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