German Nauvoo: Vineyards, Wine Cellars, and the Town's Third Life
Near Nauvoo, Illinois
After the Icarians dispersed in eighteen fifty-six, the town that had been a Mormon city and then a utopian commune became something quieter and more lasting. German, Swiss, English, Irish, and Scottish settlers had been arriving throughout the eighteen forties and fifties, and once the communes departed, German culture dominated so completely that Nauvoo became the largest German-speaking community in Illinois. German was spoken on the streets more commonly than English.
Lutheran and Catholic churches conducted services in the German language. That continued, with gradual erosion, until the First World War, when the community largely stopped using the language publicly, and the last German church services ended in nineteen eighteen. What the German settlers planted still shapes the town.
The limestone bluffs above the Mississippi proved excellent for wine grapes, and by January of eighteen sixty-six Nauvoo counted two hundred fifty vineyards and twenty-three stone-arched wine cellars cut into the hillside. Wine shipped by river steamboat to Saint Louis and Saint Paul in lots of fifty barrels. Grape shipments reached markets by river ferry and rail through the eighteen seventies.
The caves cut into the bluffs for wine storage were cool and humid throughout the year, suited also for aging cheese, and Nauvoo eventually became known for a locally produced blue cheese that continues to be made in the region. Today Nauvoo has a handful of wineries continuing the tradition the German settlers established, and several of the nineteenth-century stone wine cellars still stand on the hillside, among the most tangible remnants of the town's third and longest-lived identity.
