(John James DuFour) 1763-1827

Compassion for the troops of Lafayette fighting in the American Revolution was the spark that fired the imagination of Jean-Jacques Dufour.

As the 14 year old son of a winegrowing family in Châtelard, near Montreux on the shores of Lake Geneva, Dufour heard that the French soldiers were missing their wine. He decided it was his mission in life to bring vineyards across the Atlantic.

Nearly 20 years passed before he was able to make good his ambition. But in 1798 he founded the Kentucky Vineyard Society to grow grapes along the Kentucky River. The first commercial vineyard in the USA was established near Lexington, in Jessamine County.

The business prospered so well that Dufour summoned a group of Swiss winemakers – many of them his brothers and sisters - to come out to help him. But difficulties set in in Kentucky, and in the early years of the 19th century they moved to the northern bank of the Ohio river, in Indiana.

The new vineyard was given the name New Switzerland. It produced first-class wine – good enough for the Dufours to present two barrels of it to President Thomas Jefferson in person. Jefferson, a well-known connaisseur from the time he had spent in France, welcomed the fact that good wine was at last being produced in the USA, and proudly served it to members of Congress.  

The Dufour clan founded the town of Vevay, named after the Swiss town not far from their original home. It is still a thriving township with a population of nearly 2000, which cultivates ties with its Swiss sister – including an annual wine festival. And where they settled is called Switzerland County.

The vineyards of Vevay no longer exist, but wine is now produced all over the US, in no small measure thanks to the Dufours of Switzerland.