484 AGRICULTURAL REPORT. 



occurs lit the period of growth best fitted to develop the sugar, and whose 

 autumn is sufficiently long for the perfection of the fruit. We have seen that 

 by the table of comparative temperatures for summer, and the hottest month, 

 that those places in the wine regions on the north, having a mean in July 

 below 66° Fahrenheit, produce no good wine ; that as the temperature for 

 July rises, and the highest heat occurs in August, as we proceed south, the 

 wines, as those of Burgundy and Lisbon, improve in quality until we reach the 

 highest temperature in July and August near Naples, and with it the highest 

 excellence. 



This hasty sketch of the chief varieties of grapes grown for the production 

 of the best wines of Germany, France, Spain, and Italy, with notices of the 

 climatic peculiarities adapted to each class, has been made for the purpose of 

 impi-essing more strongly upon our incipient wine-producers, who seem bent 

 upon diverting this fruit from its true purpose, the dessert and the cuisine, to 

 the jirodivction of a fluid of questionable utility in its more diluted alcoholic 

 condition, certainly injurious in its stronger states — the importance of select- 

 ing each for his own district those kinds only which are adapted by constitu- 

 tion to the temperature and other peculiarities of each zone or grape region of 

 our Atlantic States. That such zones exist has already been made sufficiently 

 clear to those Avho have brought an intelligent understanding of the subject 

 to the study of an article on the "Climatology of American grape vines" in the 

 report of the Department of Agriculture for 1862, to which the reader is re- 

 ferred for further information. 



Different climates impress upon the grape peculiarities easily distinguished 

 in the wines produced by the same kind of grape grown under different in- 

 fluences. Thus the German Hock grapes yield a wine possessed of distinct 

 qualities when grown along the Main or the Rhine. The same sort of grapes 

 grown near Lisbon yield the Bucellas wine, which retains some of the 

 peculiarities of the original, while the same grapes grown at the Cape of Good 

 Hope yield Cape Hock bearing scarcely any resemblance to the true Khenish ; 

 and the Sercial of Madeira, produced by the same sort of grapes, though a deli- 

 cious wine, has scarcely any qualities, except durability, like that of the original. 



The experience of the European vigneron of the effects of climate in modi- 

 fying the quality of grapes and tlieir product is paralleled in our own country. 

 In the above we may find an explanation of widely diverse views of gi-owers 

 in different sections, and the varying estimates placed by them upon the value 

 of Concord and other American varieties. 



A cultivator on the banks of the Hudson denounces the Concord grape as 

 having a thick, acid pulp, repulsive, " fit only to sell to those who do not know 

 it," and exhausting his enthusiasm in raptures over the " Delaware," finds his 

 opinions indorsed by the experienced editor of a horticultural journal ; while an 

 extensive grower in Missouri asserts that the Concord grown in his grounds 

 is almost without pulp, of fine flavor, thin-skinned, sweet, and very good, 

 scarcely inferior to the Delaware, which he cannot succeed in growing pc> 

 fectly. Were the influences of climate and location properly regardpd and al- 

 lowance made for the increased temperature of Avestern localities, even in the 

 same latitude during the ripening season, such wide diversity of opinion would 

 be readily understood and acknowledged to be honestly entertained, and dis- 

 graceful personalities be laid aside. The genial sun of the Mississippi valley 

 dissolves the pulp of the Concord grape, and sweetens and matures its juices 

 beyona anything that the summers in the valley of the Hudson can exhibit, 

 rendering it decidedly better than the Catawba, while it is much more produc- 

 tive, healthy, and hardy. As the cultivation of the Concord is extended fur- 

 ther south on the Atlantic slope, its qualities improve from the increased heat 

 of summer in lower latitudes. 



