State Agricultural Society. 405 



GRAPE CULTURE AND WINE MAKING IN SONOMA. 



The business of raising grapes and making wine has already become 

 one of the important industries of Sonoma County. We have a large 

 area of land fit for nothing else, but excellent for this. Such lands 

 unimproved, within three to seven miles from Santa Rosa, can be bought 

 from eight to thirty dollars per acre. Farms tolerably well improved 

 with buildings, fences, orchards, and some vines, within the same radius, 

 can be bought from thirty to one hundred dollars per acre, according to 

 location, improvements, etc. A vineyard for profit should contain forty 

 acres, and two men with two horses and two plows, can cultivate that 

 amount. Fencing in this valley costs about four hundred and fifty dol- 

 lars per mile. Plowing, to prepare the ground for the cuttings, costs 

 three dollars per acre. On tue steep hillsides, where the lands are low 

 in price, it would cost, perhaps, five dollars, and from ten to fifteen dollars 

 to grub and gather the stones so that it could be plowed. Harrowing, 

 one dollar and fifty cents; laying off, two dollars; digging holes, three 

 dollars per acre; cuttings can be had for nothing; planting costs from 

 three to five dollars. The cultivation the first year, suckering, plowing, 

 and harrowing, from three to four dollars; second year, pruning, tak- 

 ing away brush, plowing, harrowing, and suckering, ten dollars; third 

 j*ear, pruning, suckering, plowing, etc., sixteen dollars. This year the 

 crop will average ten dollars, or half a ton to the acre. In the fourth 

 3'ear the vinr>s should pay a profit, and they will if properly managed — 

 one and a half tons to the acre, the fourth year, is not too much to 

 expect. The picking and hauling are to be added to the expense of the 

 previous years, but a handsome profit will be left after paying expenses. 

 The fifth year the vines ought to yield three tons, and after that from 

 four to five tons to the acre. 



The grapes sell at the wine cellars for from twenty to thirty dollars 

 a ton, according to condition and variety. Most farmers sell their 

 grapes, though some of them make them into wine and brandy. If the 

 farmer makes wine it involves an expenditure of some three thousand 

 dollars, for cellar, press house, vats, crusher, hose, pumps, casks, etc., 

 for a vineyard of thirty acres. But grape growing and wine making 

 will soon become two distinct occupations. All the expense of culti- 

 vating, picking and marketing an acre of six-year-old vines, is about 

 twenty-five dollars, and the crop sells at from eighty to one hundred 

 dollars, leaving a net profit of from forty-five to seventy-five dollars, 

 less the interest on cost and taxes. Sixty dollars is about the average 

 cost of planting and rearing an acre of vines for three years, and 

 deducting ten dollars per acre for the third year's crop, leaves a net 

 cost of fifty dollars per acre, besides the cost of the land, which varies. 

 Uncle Dickey Fulkerson, a careful and experienced farmer near Santa 

 Rosa, who owns about twenty-seven acres of good bearing vines, and 

 who sells his grapes, hauling them seven miles, says he would not take 

 thirty dollars per annum per acre for the crop, if the purchaser would 

 do all the work and pay the taxes and interest on the cost besides. This 

 shows that grape growing is more profitable than wheat growing. It is 

 highl}' probable that the business is yet in its infancy, and that the pure 

 juice of the California grape will now take the place of the abominable 

 stimulating mixtures called wine and brandy, with which the world is 

 supplied. The grape land of Sonoma County extends from the bay on 

 the south, to Mendocino County on the north, and from Napa County 



