“When the first European explorers cast eyes on the strange shores of North America, they saw a plentitude of native grapes.” So wrote viticulture authority University of South Carolina professor Dr. George S. Shields. In September 1683, 13 years after the English settled at Charles Town, one Louis Thibou observed in a letter, “The native vines also produce very good grapes but the pity of it is they produce too much wood and too heavy a growth of leaf, which hinders the fruit from ripening; all the same I have planted several which have done well.”