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Port wine is repeatedly dosed with spirits until it contains at least as much as 
24 per cent. of alcohol. Fifteen years’ age is required before it is fit to drink, 
not because the wine is slow to ripen, but because the spirit needs to remain 
15 years befure the disturbance it causes can subside, aud the antagonistic 
ingredients of the mixture harmonize. 
Notwithstanding bold and persistent assertions to the contrary, it has been 
satisfactorily proven to your committee that the adulteration is made not to pre- 
serve the wine, but solely to make it sw@et and stimulating. 
As America is destined to become a great wine-producing country, her people 
ought to be better acquainted than they are with the higher grades of foreign 
wines, but they have as yet drunk so little of these, that their standard of 
excellence remain comparatively low. Now, except in California, none of the 
European vines will grow in America, and we are compelled to search in our 
forests, and develop in nurseries and vineyards the varieties which are in the 
future to be our reliance for competing with foreign producers, and finally, it is 
to be hoped, emancipating ourselves from them altogether. Of course then the 
higher our standard of taste is, that is, the higher our aim, the better will be 
our success. Our vine growers have much more to learn of the character and 
quality of good wines than they have of cultivation and manufacture, for really, 
as to the preparation of the soil, planting, cultivating, pruning and training the 
vines, gathering, selecting, and pressing the fruit, fermenting and keeping the 
wine, (white wine, at least,) our experienced vignerons have but little to learn 
of European rivals. 
Our American vineyards compare very well with those of France, and so do 
our cellars, presses, and casks, so that an elaborate report on methods would 
be of but little benefit, and might even mislead, for there seems to be no one 
method in use here, in any stage of vine-raising or wine-making, concerning 
which there is not a confusion of practice and a conflict of theory, such as it 
would be hopeless to attempt to reconcile. Probably sound reasons for much 
of this diversity may be found in peculiarities of soil and varieties of vines that 
are local and special, and with which we have nothing to do. Still, a pretty 
thorough tour among the vine districts of France has not been wholly barren 
of suggestion. 
_ SOIL AND EXPOSURE. 
The soil of Medoc, where stand ‘ Chateau Margeaux,” “Chateau La Fitte,” 
and “Chateau La Tour,” is a bed of coarse gravel, among whose pebbles the 
eye can barely detect soil enough to support the lowest form of vegetable life. 
In the vicinity of Bezires, on the other hand, the land is rich and strong 
enough to yield any kind ofa crop; yet Medoc grows wine that often sells for 
ten dollars per gallon, while that of Berzires sometimes sells for the half of ten 
cents per gallon. In Burgundy there is a long hill, on whose dark red ferru- 
ginous limestone sides a wretched thin covering of earth lies, like the coat of a 
beggar, revealing, not hiding, the nakedness beneath. Here stand little starve- 
ling vines, very slender and very low; yet here is the celebrated ‘‘Clos Vaugeot,”’ 
and this is the hill, and these are the vines that yield a wine rivalling in excel- 
lence and value that of Medoe, and to the fortunate proprietor the Cote d’or 
is what it signifies, “a hillside of gold.” At its base spreads out a wide and 
very fertile plain, covered with luxuriant vines, whose juice sells from ten to 
twenty cents per gallon. 
If you go further northward and examine the hills of Champagne, you will 
find them to be merely hills of chalk; and these instances only illustrate the rule 
derived not fiom them alone, but abundance of others, that, for good wine, you 
must go to a dry and meagre soil. Yet we should be sorry to have to extend 
the rule, and say that the poorer the soil the better the wine, for there are cer 
