ESSEX AS A WINE-PRODUCING COUNTY. 47 



There can be little doubt, however, that viniculture, as a 

 regular industry, had begun to decline, not only in Essex, but 

 throughout the whole south of England, soon after the time when 

 more or less regular commercial intercourse was opened up with 

 the chief wine-producing countries of South-western Europe. 

 This may be said to have taken place about the beginning or 

 middle of the fourteenth century. It is known that a voyage to 

 England was one of the six annual trading voyages sent out under 

 the auspices of the Senate of Venice at this period, and that wine, 

 spices, and drugs were among the commodities sent to this 

 country to be exchanged for cloths, hides, and tin. The 

 " Flanders Voyage " (as it was called), during which England 

 was visited, was regarded as the most important of these six 

 annual voyages and was made regularly, in each ordinary year, 

 from 1317 to 1533. On the list of those who commanded each 

 year appear some of the noblest names in Venetian history. 39 

 Owing to the great commercial enterprise ot the merchant- 

 seamen of Venice, it may be doubted whether the inhabitants of 

 wine-producing countries much nearer England, such as France 

 and Spain, commenced to supply us regularly with wine in 

 any large quantities at an earlier date than the Venetians. On 

 this point, however, it is impossible to do much more than hazard 

 a few surmises. 



Be the cause of the discontinuance of wine-making in Essex 

 what it may, it is certain that viticulture, as distinguished from 

 viniculture (the culture of the vine, that is, for the sake of grapes 

 themselves, rather than for the sake of the wine the grapes will 

 yield), is still possible, in the open air, in Essex. There is 

 scarcely an old farmhouse throughout the county wdiich has not 

 a vine trained against some outer wall, either of the house itself 

 or of an adjacent out-building, while the same may be said of 

 many labourers' cottages in rural parts of the county. In any 

 ordinary year, these vines ripen their grapes fairly well and they 

 are quite palatable, especially, of course, in such hot summers as 

 those of 1887 and i8g8. Still, now and then there comes a 

 summer in which the grapes fail to ripen altogether or only do so 

 very imperfectly. A case in point was the summer of 1879 — one 

 of tlie most wet and sunless of the present century — when, as I 

 find recorded in my journal, it was most noticeal)le that " out- 



39 Much adiiitioiial information as to the importance, both to England and Venice, ol 

 this annual ■' Flanders Voyage ' is to be found in Mr. Rawdon Brown's preface to the 

 Calendar of State Papers and Manuscripts {Venetian) relating to English Affairs, vol. i, 1302- 

 1509 (London, 8° , 1864). 



