(WashingtonPost) - Early explorers wrote about the masses of grapes weighing down vines along the Virginia shores. Captain John Smith wrote that early colonists in Jamestown made 20 gallons of wine from the grapes. In the early 1600s, winemaking was a requirement for the men of Williamsburg because the British were so intent on fostering a wine industry in the colonies. “For 200 — heck, for almost 400 — years people did attempt to plant European wine grapes” in Virginia, said John Boyer, a professor at Virginia Tech, “and just failed miserably.”