(W&V) - Members of the Vineyard and Winery Association of West Georgia joined staff from the University of Georgia Tuesday in planting 20 Norton vines for a trial vineyard at the university’s campus in Griffin. Working on behalf of the Missouri Wine and Grape Board, the University of Missouri’s Grape and Wine Institute recently sent the vines to re-establish the grape and wine industry in western Georgia. 

The vines planted Tuesday will be trained on a Geneva double curtain trellis. Norton vines received earlier from Chrysalis Vineyards in Middleburg, Va., are being grown on a Watson trellis system, a V-shaped trellis that was developed in Texas and increasingly is being used across the South. The Griffin vineyard currently has four other cultivars planted: Blanc du Bois, Lenoir, Lomanto and Herbemont. 

The area west and south of Atlanta, Ga., is not presently known for its grape and wine industry—mostly because for the past 100 years there haven’t been any grapes grown or wine made in that region. In the early 1900s, however, western Georgia and eastern Alabama had 20,000 acres of grapes planted, and growers and winemakers shipped train loads of grapes and wine all over the country. Prohibition started early in Georgia (in 1907) and didn’t end until 1935, with the result that the grape and wine industries were completely shut down.