Pumpkin Wine History

Wine has been from grapes since 8000 B.C. in Georgia and other areas of the Middle East. But it does not have to be made from grapes. It can also be made from fruits, starches, and flowers. Apples, elderberries, dandelions and marijuana are all potential sources for wine.

Winemakers have even experimented with making wine from carrots and fish (seperately, of course, not together). But it is the common use of rice, and thus starch, to create wine that lets us know that provides the most encouragement for the possibility of pumpkin wine.

Pumpkins are originally from ancient America and were introduced to by the Native Americans. The Pilgrims used pumpkins to make beer, since it was plentiful and grain was not. So it probably wasn’t long before some enterprising American without grapes started experimenting and figured out how to make wine from a pumpkin. By the 1700s, early americans had learned that pumpkin could be used to make wine by emptying the pumpkin and adding sugar, cider or fruit to ferment. During prohibition, that was one of the techniques that Midwestern farmers used to circumvent the law.