ON GRAPES AND WINE. 



plier who has spent his life in studying nature and the Looks, to such good results, 

 shall not have a million for his discovery ? 



ON GRAPES AND WINE. 



BY N. LONGWORTH, CINCINNATI, O. 



Mr. Downing — There is much experience, and the best of all sense, common sense, in 

 your remarks in your Dec. No., on the cultivation of the foreign grape in the open ground. 

 But you say " Mr. Longworth has tried it ona, small scale." Had you expended as large a 

 sum as I have done on this wild goose chase, for twenty years, if a Jerseyman, jou would 

 deem it a large scale. There never was a year, for twenty years, that I did not collect 

 foreign grape roots from some of our eastern cities. I also imported over 5,000 grape roots 

 from Madeira, of all their best wine grapes. As many from the middle part of France, 

 and from Germany. All lived, and were cultivated for a few years, and finally discarded. 

 As a last trial, I imported 6,000 roots, composed of 24 varieties of grapes, from the moun- 

 tains of Jura, in the north part of France, where the vine region suddenly ends. Their 

 vineyards are for months covered with snow. My success was no better than with vines 

 from a warmer latitude. Grafting a foreign grape on wild stock, as you truly observe, 

 does not render the graft more hardy. I have had the grafts to grow with great vigor, 

 but occasionally they were killed, even down to the native stock. "VYe must look to our 

 native grapes and seedlings from them, and to a cross Avith the best foreign, for our sup- 

 ply. In our latitude, even for the table, few foreign grapes can surpass the Herhemont, 

 Ohio, Missouri, and some others recently introduced. 



I hope to send you a sample of sparkling Catawba manufactured by Mr. Fournat, as 

 it has now been in the bottle nearly two years. Those heretofore sold, were bottled by 

 my former manufacturer. Two reasons lead me to believe my sparkling wine will com- 

 pare favorably with the best French Champaign. It is better flavored, because it is made 

 from the Catawba wine, only. In Champaign, three or four kinds of wine are mixed 

 together, as they say, because the one possesses the aroma and flavor, another the effer- 

 vescence, another the strength. If true, the wine cannot be as well flavored, or as healthy, 

 as it would be from a grape containing all these requisites, which the Catawba does. 

 A second reason is, that no wine made from a mixture of three or four kinds, can be as 

 healthy to the stomach as where made from a single variety. If the Champaign manu- 

 facturers were allied, even in the forty-second degree, to Yankees or Jerseymen, I should 

 suspect a stronger reason for the mixture — i. e. : the wine of fine aroma and flavor costs 

 $'1 per gallon. The others, from 50 cents down to 25 cents per gallon. My opinion of 

 the healthy character of the sparkling wine, made from one variety of grape, is confirmed 

 in a letter I received a few days since, from a physician of Boston, whose name will 

 give credence to the principle wherever it is known. 



lie says, " From some trials made of your Champaign wine, I am induced to believe 

 it possesses peculiar advantages for the sick, and that it might be important to have some 

 of it at hand. J. C. Warren." Yours truly, 



N. LONGWORTH. 



[What our correspondent says about the grape culture is full of practical value. His 

 ing wine is rapidly gaining favor, and we are confident that the wines of the 

 pure, and wholesome, will at no distant day be in high repute. Ed.] 



