The Outlook of American Grape Culture. 49 



can hope to compete with foreign productions, or the product of the western 

 coast, which must place its main reliance on the vinifera class. That each 

 locality will have to experiment for itself until it finds the varieties entirely 

 suited to it seems to me self-evident. In any event, the present time would 

 seem the most propitious. When France has dwindled, through the ravages 

 of phylloxera and from other causes, from a production of over 2.000,000,000 

 gallons of wine to not enough to supply her home demand, and must rely 

 on Italy, Spain, Hungary, and still more on the skill of the wine doctor, to 

 keep up her trade, while the ravages of the insects are felt in all the wine- 

 producing countries of Europe, it would seem a good time for tl e universal 

 American nation to step in and assume its part of the world's wine markets. 



And every locality at least should grow its own table grapes. The grape 

 is the healthiest of all fruits, and should be eaten and enjoyed by every one 

 in this nation, which threatens seriously to become a nation of dyspeptics. 

 We want grape cures established throughout the land, just as they are on 

 the Rhine and other streams in Germany, where the tired city merchant 

 and his family can go from the heat and impure air of the cities to recruit 

 up in pure air and on a daily diet of fresh grapes. While horticulturists, as 

 a rule, are among the healthiest of men, just because they have more or less 

 of fresh fruit every day, the nation as a whole is, perhaps, the most dyspeptic 

 on the globe, and were it not for the constant admixture with foreign ele- 

 ments, which bring new life to it, it would become hopelessly so. It is, 

 therefore, not a question of profit to the grower merely, but of vast national 

 importance and welfare, that we should have grape cur' s established in 

 every grape-growing community, and these alone would us ; up a large 

 amount of fresh grapes. 



When we come to the consideration of the question here in California 

 and on the Pacific slope I am more at home, and can speak more under- 

 standing! j\ I know what I saj' when I claim that we can raise grapes prof- 

 itably at $15 to $18 per ton, and can make wines good enough to compete 

 with the choicest European brands, nay, even surpass them. If our best 

 brands have not been so generally produced or disseminated as to establish 

 the name and fame of California wines as they deserve to be, it has been 

 simply because the industry is very young yet, was commenced with infe- 

 rior varieties, often manipulated with little or no skill, and our wines came 

 upon the market in an immature condition. Our industry is too young yet 

 to have come near perfection. We need better average wines than we have 

 had so far; we want diflferent methods than have been employed to bring 

 them before the public; we want wine storage houses, which will enable 

 the vintner to put his product where it can be matured, and a more uniform 

 grade established; we must come to the conviction that our inferior wines 

 had much better go to the still, or be manufactured into vinegar, than be 

 imposed upon the public as California wine, and ruin its reputation. But 

 we have already enough of really good wine to stand upon its own merits- 

 We should despise the trickery of sending it under French and German 



