INDUSTRY: American Wine Comes of Age

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Whatever the outcome, it is almost inevitable that more Americans will become wine drinkers. Some converts to the grape will come seeking a change from the burning toughness of gin and bourbon. Others will move up from pop wine to drier, more complex wines. Americans seem to be shedding the nation's raw, hard-drinking past for a new, more subtle way of indulging themselves. As Thomas Jefferson said: "No nation is drunken where wine is cheap; and none sober where the dearness of wine substitutes ardent spirits as the common beverage."