War and Wine in American History

American history has been toasted, and fought, in wine — from the Madeira raised over the Declaration of Independence to the American soldiers who ended the Second World War by draining Hitler’s cellar.

The United States is not thought of as a wine nation the way France is, yet wine runs quietly through its wars all the same — as a symbol of the founders’ world, a comfort to soldiers abroad, a target of one of the country’s strangest crusades, and finally a trophy of victory in Europe.

The Revolution: a republic toasted in Madeira

The wine of the American founding was Madeira. Fortified and famously indestructible on long sea voyages, it dodged the trade restrictions that burdened other European wines and became the drink of the colonial elite. It is widely held that the signers toasted the Declaration of Independence in Madeira, and it flowed at the celebrations that followed.¹²

George Washington reputedly drank a pint of Madeira with dinner; Thomas Jefferson, the founders’ great oenophile, cellared and consumed more Madeira than any other wine before his tastes turned to France.¹² Wine, in other words, was present at the creation — a small but real thread of the Revolution. (For the vine’s role in the other great revolution of the age, see wine in the French Revolution.)

The World Wars: American soldiers meet French wine

When American armies crossed the Atlantic, they met wine at the source. In the First World War, hundreds of thousands of doughboys encountered French wine country first-hand — among them a young artillery captain named Harry Truman, who commanded Battery D in France and wrote home about the war between the fighting.³ The encounter left its mark on a generation of American drinkers, even as Prohibition was about to shut the country’s own cellars.

Prohibition: the war on wine itself

Between the world wars America waged a different kind of campaign — against alcohol. Prohibition (1920–1933) was the only period in which the United States turned the machinery of the state against wine, closing wineries and criminalising the trade. It is the great exception in this story: the one American war whose enemy was the drink. Its history, and the ways the wine industry survived it, are told in our article on winemaking during Prohibition.⁴

1945: the liberation of Europe’s cellars

The Second World War made wine a spoil of victory. As the Nazis had systematically looted French cellars during the occupation, the Allied advance turned that theft back on itself. The most storied episode came at the very end: at Berchtesgaden, Hitler’s Alpine retreat, American troops overran an extraordinary hoard of wine, champagne and cognac in early May 1945.⁵⁶

Units of the 3rd Infantry Division reached the area first, on 4 May, discovering Hermann Göring’s cache of wine, champagne and cognac stored in the town — some sixteen thousand bottles — and reportedly loading six trucks with it. The 101st Airborne arrived on 5 May, and the celebration that followed became legend, with looted grand-cru Bordeaux and Champagne poured freely among the men who had crossed a continent to get there.⁵⁶ The full story is in our article on Göring’s prized cellar.

Why wine and war run together

The pairing is not a coincidence of anecdotes. Wine is portable wealth, a marker of status, and a comfort in hard conditions — which makes it both a thing armies carry and a thing they seize. It is also a symbol: to toast a new republic in Madeira, or to drink an enemy dictator’s reserve in his own mountain house, is to make a political statement with a glass. Across two centuries of American history, wine kept turning up wherever the stakes were highest.

This day in wine history

• 4 July 1776 — American independence is declared — and, by tradition, toasted in Madeira.
• 4 May 1945 — US 3rd Infantry Division troops reach Hitler’s Berghof and Göring’s wine cellar at Berchtesgaden.
• 5 May 1945 — The 101st Airborne arrives at Berchtesgaden as the war in Europe closes.

Read more

• Blitzed: wine, the Nazis and Göring’s prized cellar
• Winemaking during Prohibition
• The role of wine in the French Revolution
• The history of wine: a complete timeline

References

1. Decanter, “Independence Day Celebrations: Madeira and the Founding Fathers.” ↩
2. Massachusetts 250, “Madeira Wine: The Colonial Drink That Toasted a Revolution.” ↩
3. Harry S. Truman’s WWI service with Battery D, 129th Field Artillery, in France (corroborated). ↩
4. U.S. Prohibition, 1920–1933 (18th and 21st Amendments) — the wine industry under Prohibition (corroborated). ↩
5. The National WWII Museum, “Million Dollar Hangover: Victory Celebration at Berchtesgaden.” ↩
6. Accounts of the 3rd Infantry Division and 101st Airborne at Berchtesgaden, 4–5 May 1945, and Göring’s cellar (corroborated). ↩

Want to read more? Try these books

Wine and War Don & Petie Kladstrup

The Story of Wine Hugh Johnson

Ancient Wine Patrick E. McGovern

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