In the history of wine, one name is pivotal to the development of winemaking in America. He is considered by wine scholar Hugh Johnson to be the father of American viticulture. He is the guy on the nickel: Thomas Jefferson, the third president of the United States, writer of the Declaration of Independence and inventor of the dumbwaiter.

I was sitting down enjoying a bowl of Dom Perignon’s chicken and stars soup and thinking about Jefferson. Then the light bulb went on over my head: I need to meet T.J. Being that I was a good friend of Mr. Peabody, I just had to give my dog friend a call and I could use the famous Wayback machine to go back and visit the famous president.

After talking with the genius beagle, I found myself in front of the Wayback machine with its X-mas colored lights and its bubbling sounds preparing to go back in time to visit the president at his home in Monticello.

As I waited for the Wayback machine to work its magic, I thought about why Thomas Jefferson is considered to be the father of American viticulture. He was a leading wine expert in his day, having been the wine adviser to Presidents Washington, Madison and Monroe. When T.J. was an ambassador to France, he toured Bordeaux, Italy and Germany and wrote extensively about wine. He also grew wine grapes in his Paris garden and later in his home in Monticello. But he failed in producing any wine in America.

Jefferson called wine a “necessity of life” for him. He had two wine cellars in Monticello, one that contained bottled wine and the other wine casks. He used dumbwaiters, which he invented, to bring bottles of wine from the basement to the side of the fireplace. T.J. loved champagne and popularized it when he was president.

I brought two bottles of wine with me – a 1961 Chateau Lafite-Rothschild and a 1999 Frog’s Leap cabernet sauvignon. When the Wayback machine dumped me off, I was outside of Monticello, where I saw the red-headed president outside.

He noticed me and the two of us started chatting. I told him I was from the future and that I’d come back in the machine behind me. He was curious about the future, of course, but I’d been warned by Mr. Peabody to watch what I said or did when I went back in time – I didn’t want to change the future.

T.J. liked my blue jeans and my Jimi Hendrix T-shirt. I did tell him, though, that slavery was no more where I was from, and that brought a huge smile to his face.

I showed him the bottle of ’61 Lafite. “So are you from the ’60s?” he asked.

I smiled and said, “I guess I am.”

We went to the living room and cracked open the Lafite. It was superb.

He had a bottle of 1790 Chateau Mouton already on the dumbwaiter, which we proceeded to drink. It was full of fruit, with a great nose, and was soft and elegant.

I smiled and told him that I was in the wine business in California.

“So wine has become very important in the nation?” he asked.

“Yes. In 2008, the United States will become the largest consumer of wine in the world, outpacing the consumption of Italy and France,” I said.

T.J. clapped his hands. “That is great news!” he exclaimed.

I pulled the Frog’s Leap out of my bag. “And a lot of great wines are being produced right here in America,” I said. “Our wines have fared very well against the great houses in Bordeaux, and have won blind taste tests.”

I poured him a glass of Frog’s cab. He took the wine to his long nose, sniffed and said, “What an abundance of fruit and spice on the nose.” Then he took the glass to his lips, swirled it around in his mouth and swallowed. “Great burst of fruit on the palate, and the lingering black currant, leather and red berries are wonderful.”

I knew what he was going to ask next.

“I have failed to grow wine grapes here in Monticello. Do you know why?” He gave me a look that I had to answer.

“It’s because of pests, and the worst pest is a root louse called phylloxera,” I explained. “It kills vines. Native American root stock is resistant to the pest, so just graft your cabernet over the stock and your grapes will grow fine.”

As I left, T.J. gave me a hug. And as I came back to the future, I knew I had changed the past when I saw Mr. Peabody holding in his mouth a copy of a book by Thomas Jefferson entitled Making Great Wines in America.