noted that the still white Catawba compared favorably to the hock wines of the Rhine and the sparkling Catawba "transcends the Champagnes of France". The wines were also well received at home in the United States where Henry Wadsworth Longfellow published a poem dedicated to Nicholas Longworth titled Ode to Catawba Wine. The popularity of Longworth's wine encouraged a flurry of plantings along the Ohio River Valley and up north to Lake Erie and Finger Lakes region of New York. So influential was Longworth's Catawba wine that newspapers began referring to him as "the founder of wine culture in America, author of sparkling Catawba." Longworth was a fervent champion of Catawba, particularly grown in the Ohio River Valley, as a grape that he believed would lead the American wine industry for years to come. Prior to his sparkling Catawba, no other American wine had received the level of critical acclaim in Europe that his wines received. In the American journal Culture of the Grape and Manufacture of Wine, Longworth wrote in 1847, "The day is not distant, when the Ohio River will rival the Rhine, in the quantity and quality of its wine. I give the Catawba preference over all other grapes, for a general crop, for wine." The year 1859 was Catawba's peak in the Ohio wine industry, with the state being the largest producer in the United States, producing more than of wine from acres of mostly Catawba vines. But the 1860s brought an end to the enthusiasm when powdery mildew decimated Catawba plantings and the economic turmoil of the American Civil War led to many vineyards being pulled up or abandoned. Another labrusca variety, the Concord developed in 1849 in Concord, Massachusetts by Ephraim Wales Bull soon eclipsed Catawba in plantings and ended its dominance of the American wine industry. Description and viticulture Like many Vitis labrusca varieties, the Catawba grapevine has large leaves that can be mono-lobed or moderately three-lobed with the slightly smaller leaves that are closer to the apical meristem of the vine shoot. The upper surface of the leaves have a medium green color with a leathery texture while the underside has dense white tomentum (wooly hairs). The vine produces moderate size clusters that are nearly cylindrical and fairly compact. The large berries have an oval shape with what Bern Ramey describes as'"a dull purplish-red with a lilac-colored bloom". The Catawba has the