Winemaker Steve Fennell Tries Small and Solo

Steve Fennell’s connection to wine is rooted in, of all places, the balmy flatlands of Florida.

The state’s tropical heat and humidity isn’t ideal for growing fine wine vines, but that’s what got his grandfather, Joseph E. Fennell, wondering why native grape species thrived in so many regions of the world, whereas Europe’s coveted Vitis vinifera required more temperate climes. A plant breeder by profession, Fennell began hybridizing indigenous North American vines with European ones, experimenting with groundbreaking combos in Florida, Puerto Rico, and Costa Rica from the 1930s until his death in 1990.

“He was not the first to put forward the idea of using native wild varieties as the basis for a cultivated grape suited to Florida and the tropics,” wrote his son, and Steve’s dad, Lee Fennell in a paper presented during the Florida Grape Growers Conference in 1991. “But the evidence clearly suggests that Fennell was indeed first — and for a while alone — in actively pursuing this approach to grape breeding in a systematic way on a relatively large scale. And to this day, he appears to stand alone in the intensity and scope of his search for promising wild varieties.”