William Alston (ca. 1757–1839), planter and public official, served as a captain in the 2d South Carolina Regiment of the Continental army, 1779–81, and rose to colonel in the South Carolina militia after the Revolutionary War. He sat in four successive sessions of the South Carolina House of Representatives, 1776–84, before declining to serve a fifth term in 1785. Alston represented Prince George Winyah Parish in 1788 at the state ratification convention, where he voted in favor of the new federal constitution. Following a special election, Alston entered the state senate in 1788 and served during six sessions, 1788–94 and 1810–13, refusing a final election in 1814. He was a presidential elector for both TJ in 1800 and James Madison in 1812, held local offices, including tax inquirer and collector, and was a founder of the Georgetown Library Society, of South Carolina. Alston was a leading rice planter and among the prominent racers and breeders of thoroughbred horses of his day. In 1791 he hosted George Washington at his Clifton residence. Alston befriended TJ at Warm Springs in 1818. Over his lifetime he amassed landholdings totaling nearly thirty thousand acres, and at his death in Charleston he left an estate valued at well over half a million dollars, including 723 slaves (ANB description begins John A. Garraty and Mark C. Carnes, eds., American National Biography, 1999, 24 vols. description ends ; BDSCHR description begins Walter B. Edgar and others, eds., Biographical Directory of the South Carolina House of Representatives, 1974– , 5 vols. description ends , 3:35–8; Heitman, Continental Army description begins Francis B. Heitman, comp., Historical Register of Officers of the Continental Army during the War of the Revolution, April, 1775, to December, 1783, rev. ed., 1914, repr. 1967 description ends , 70; Donald Jackson and Dorothy Twohig, eds., The Diaries of George Washington [1976–79], 6:123–4; MB description begins James A. Bear Jr. and Lucia C. Stanton, eds., Jefferson’s Memorandum Books: Accounts, with Legal Records and Miscellany, 1767–1826, 1997, The Papers of Thomas Jefferson, Second Series description ends , 2:1363, 1377; Edgefield [S.C.] Advertiser, 11 July 1839).

In American usage at this time, claret could mean any light red wine. The 4. crops were Margaux, Latour, Haut-Brion, and Lafite, generally acknowledged to be the premier Bordeaux wine estates (John Hailman, Thomas Jefferson on Wine [2006], 36–7, 152–3).