State Agricultural Society. 301 



makes but a hundred gallons a year — than does a hundred or a thousand 

 men who cultivate their hundreds of varieties of grapes and annually 

 make their hundreds of thousands of gallons of wine, one half of which 

 will have finally to be sold for vinegar, and the other range all the way 

 from poor to good, according to its accidental favorable or unfavor- 

 able treatment. While experimenting upon the kinds of grapes as 

 above intimated, we have at the same time been as carefully and eagerly 

 carrying on experiments in the manufacture of the wine, until we are 

 now prepared to produce a good article of wine of the variety desired, 

 providing we have good grapes, with the same certainty and uniformity 

 as the miller produces good flour from good wheat. 



If all other wine growers and wine makers had been equally careful, 

 the reputation of California wines would have been very different from 

 what they now are, and with one half the annual product the value of 

 that product would have been at least doubled. The Orleans grape 

 being a good thrifty grower and prolific bearer and late to mature, we 

 plant this variety on the sunny exposures of the hills, and the lieisling 

 being the reverse of these in their habits, they are planted on the north 

 slopes of the same hills. The association own now eight hundred and 

 fifty acres of land, situated in the foothills of the Coast Range of moun- 

 tains, in Yolo County, of a soil of as favorable a chalky formation as that 

 upon which are located the celebrated vineyards of Johannisberg. On a 

 portion of this land they have ninety thousand vines of the two varieties 

 above named, and are annually adding more. In the year eighteen hun- 

 dred and sixty-nine the association produced twenty thousand gallons 

 of wine, in eighteen hundred and seventy, eighty thousand gallons were 

 made, and the present year they will make an equal quantity. They 

 have never experienced any trouble to find a ready and remunerative 

 market for all the wines produced, nor would they if the product were 

 increased ten or a hundred fold. They have adopted and unifoimily 

 practice the plan of closed fermentation, and rind it much better for our 

 California climate. As a satisfactory test of their wines, the association 

 have imported pure German wines, made by the father of the President 

 of the association from the same varieties of grapes, and submitted 

 them, with those of their own make, to disinterested good judges. The 

 reports of these judges have uniformly been most favorable to the Cali- 

 fornia product. 



These wines have also been exhibited for competition at the Fairs of 

 the Mechanics' Institute and the State Agricultural Society in eighteen 

 hundred and seventy and eighteen hundred and seventy-one, and have 

 received at both places most encouraging commendation, securing a 

 greater number of first premiums compared to the number of kinds 

 exhibited than the wines of any other exhibitor. If the committee 

 award the gold medal in the fifth department to the exhibitor who has 

 really contributed most by skillful experiment and successful results to 

 the advancement of the wine industry of the State, then we think the 

 Orleans Hill Vinieultural Association justly entitled to that award. 



Eespectfully, 



JACOB KNAUTH, President. 

 Carl Strobel, Secretary. 



