All-Weather Passage and Main House Basement

The cellar level of Monticello house was a hub of activity and a crossroads of interaction between Jefferson family members and enslaved workers from across the plantation and beyond.

Jefferson has been described as America’s “first distinguished viticulturist” for his support for the establishment of an American wine industry and his efforts to grow Vitis vinifera at Monticello and regularly purchased wine from Europe. Located just below Monticello’s Dining Room, the Wine Cellar brings to life the story of Thomas Jefferson and wine with interpretive signs, reproductions of period wine bottles, and a restored original wine dumbwaiter.

At Monticello, beer was a "table liquor" served during dinner, and Jefferson's earliest designs for his plantation included spaces for brewing and the storage of beer. The Beer Cellar tells the story not only of beer and brewing at Monticello but also of its various brewers like Joseph Miller, English sailor, and Peter Hemings, Monticello slave.