Certain American presidents have demonstrated interest, even passion for wine. President Richard Nixon, for example, was a great fan of Chateau Margaux, a famous and pricey Bordeaux—although he was known to serve guests something much cheaper. President Ronald Reagan liked to showcase wines from the Golden State. But President Thomas Jefferson was easily the most famous, and knowledgeable, Oval Office oenophile.

I recently discovered that the New York Public Library had one of Jefferson’s account books that included notations on wine purchases made from 1791 to 1803, reaching into the early years of his presidency, which ran from 1801 to 1809.

The book has been in the library’s possession for more than 100 years but it has only very recently been digitalized, thanks to a grant from the Polonsky Foundation.

The small brown leather book normally rests in a temperature-controlled environment below ground in the library’s main branch on Fifth Avenue at 42nd Street, according to Thomas Lannon, assistant director of manuscripts, archives and rare books at the library. It isn’t on display and is only available to researchers. However, Mr. Lannon and his colleague, Mark Boonshoft, a postdoctoral research fellow, manuscripts and archives division, were kind enough to allowed me a peek at its pages last week.

I was initially struck by the meticulousness of Jefferson’s record-keeping. It seemed that he kept track of every single expenditure, not to mention every mile traveled, by land or sea, in this book, transcribed in his tiny, precise script. I was further struck by the many different types of wine that Jefferson had purchased, not to mention the quantity.