Dufour Jean Jacques

In 1796, the young Swiss winegrower Jean Jacques - later John James Dufour (1763-1827) emigrated from Vevey (canton of Vaud) to America and travelled through what are now the states of Pennsylvania, Illinois and Kentucky. It was in the latter that he first tried his hand at viticulture. Together with some citizens of the town of Lexington in Jessamine County, he founded the "Kentucky Wineries Association", which was reorganised in 1981 and still exists today. In 1798, Dufour acquired 1,500 cuttings of 35 different grape varieties from a Peter Legaux from Pennsylvania. He planted them in 1799 south of Lexington on an area of five acres on a loop of the Kentucky River. Among them was the Alexander, which Dufour called "Cape Grape" because Legaux had mistakenly informed him that it came from the Cape in South Africa. Most of them were European vines and died, mainly due to mildew, which is unknown to European varieties, and extremely bad weather, but Alexander was one of the few varieties to survive.

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Dufour Jean Jacques

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