GRAPES AT CINCINNATI 63 



grapes as in gold dust, Jerseyrnau though I am, I shall 

 be more gratified to receive a grape cutting than the 

 largest lump of gold that region has ever produced." 

 In 1841, he sent a few bottles of wine, made in his own 

 vineyards, to London "for distribution among the Eng- 

 lish horticulturists." This wine was two years old, and 

 was made of "the pure juice of an American grape." 

 At that time, Mr. Longworth had forty acres in grapes, 

 and he cultivated "American grapes only, with one 

 exception, and that was sent, me as a native." 



This vine-growing spread until, in 1859, Cist declares 

 that "the number of acres in vineyard culture within 

 twenty miles around Cincinnati, is now estimated at two 

 thousand. An average yield for a series of years, is 

 supposed to be two hundred gallons to the acre, which 

 is about the average for France and Germany." Long- 

 worth wrote, in 1849, that "our vineyards may have 

 produced 800, and possibly 1,000 gallons on an acre, 

 but 110 vineyard has averaged 300 gallons for ten years." 

 The wine was worth, at the press, from one dollar to a 

 dollar and twenty -five cents a gallon, and twenty -five 

 cents a gallon more when secured at the cellars of the 

 vintners. The same authority, Cist, in "Cincinnati in 

 1859," speaks of the rise of grape -planting in Tennes- 

 see, Georgia, Alabama, and the Carolinas, and says that 

 "for the last three or four years past, the sales of 

 grape roots and cuttings in Cincinnati, for the South 

 and Southwest, have averaged about two hundred 

 thousand roots and four hundred thousand cuttings 

 annually, and principally of the Catawba grape." 



Longworth is called by E. J. Hooper "the father of 

 American grape culture." Robert Buchanan writes, in 

 1850, that "to Mr. Longworth, more than to any other 



