149 
which is to lay the vines on the ground, cover them with straw, and on. the 
straw throw the earth; without this it is said they could produce no wine at all. 
Our native grapes are generally hardy, and will live wherever their fruit will 
ripen, but occasionally there is a severe season which seems to touch the very 
heart of the wood, and so enfeeble it that it falls an easy prey to disease. It 
was noticed that the mildew set in with great destructiveness after the two hard 
winters of 1854 and 1856. 
The thorough covering employed in Hungary would secure it against such 
occasional risks, and also might render it possible to grow European vines in 
our country. By its means, too, we could, perhaps, make the ‘“Scupper” live 
in our northern Siates, and obtain from it a sparkling wine, of foam and flavor 
unsurpassed. From these considerations and others, we recommend to the wine- 
growers of our more northern States to lay down and thoroughly cover their vines 
regularly every fall; and to those in milder regions, to bank up the earth against 
the stalks as is done in France. 
We have derived most of our instruction in vine-dressing from the Germans 
in whose native country there are no sunbeams to spare; and the celebrated 
“Risling’’ grape is said to hardly ever ripen, and thus, perhaps, we have been led to 
attach too much importance to letting the fruit remain on the vine as long as 
possible before gathering. If we have been in error, it would be well worth while 
to know it, for, besides the loss by shrinkage, the ravage of insects and birds, 
quadrupeds and bipeds, during the last fortnight of the vine-dressers’ watchings’ 
is most disheartening. Now, it is contended by good authority in France that 
early vintages are the best, and that it is important, not merely in regard to 
quantity but quality, also, to gather the fruit before it beeomes.over-ripe. Pos- 
sibly what is true of white wine may not be so of red wine, to which last named 
kind attention is so widely directed in Europe. Here the proportion of white 
wine to red is very small, and it may be said that red is the rule, and white the 
exception. 
Our wine-growers in America understand very well the principles to be 
observed in the manufacture of white wine, and many of them, as regards care 
and nicety, are as good models as need be desired. But it cannot be denied 
that the practice of selling the ripest and finest grapes for table use, and convert- 
ing the unsalable into wine, prevails to a great extent among American vineyardists, 
and the result is the manufacture of much inferior wine. This has already 
injured the reputation of American wines, both at home and abroad. Of the 
much more complicated. process of making red wine, however, American manu- 
facturers are but little informed, for the reason that until recently they have had 
no grapes suitable for the purpose; but now that we have discovered those 
excellent varieties, the “Morton” anu “Ives” seedlings, our estimate of the 
value of which has been very greatly raised by comparing wine from them with 
some of the highest grades of foreign productions, a few observations of methods 
of fermentation for red wine as practiced in France may be appropriate. 
In France, they will make either white or red wine from the same grape; but 
in America they have grapes whose pulp is so rich in coloring matter that they 
yield a very pretty tinted wine without any further treatment than what is given 
to make white wine, and a pure white wine cannot be made from them; of this 
kind is the “Morton” seedling. Yet not for beauty alone do they put them 
through the process of fermentation on the skin, but because that process imparts 
qualities which, as affecting the palate, stimulation, digestion, &c., are quite 
different from what the other process imparts; many persons find red -wine 
essential to their health, who cannot use white wine, and vce versa. 
STEMMING. 
The fruit having been gathered and selected, the next thing to do is to stem 
it. In “Medoc” and all the “Borderlais” this is invariably dove. But in 
