214 Jfotes on the Cultivation of Vineyards 



Art. II. J^otes on the Cultivation of Vineyards in the United 

 States. By A. J. Downing, Botanic Garden and Nurse- 

 ries, Newburgh, New York. 



Your readers may not generally be aware of the progress which 

 the cultivation of the grape is making in various parts of the 

 Union. Although not encouraged, like the silk culture, by le- 

 gislative premiums or acts of the state government, yet individu- 

 al enterprise is demonstrating that the United States will yet be- 

 come as celebrated for its wines as its other agricultural products. 

 It cannot be doubted that the culture of a plant that produces 

 more than one hundred and fifty millions of dollars to France 

 annually, and employs so large a proportion of her laboring 

 class, will find a genial soil and climate in a country that ex- 

 tends from the 25th° to the 48th° of latitude. We are in- 

 duced to believe, from observation, that the milder and more 

 temperate portions of the Middle and Western States will be- 

 come the field of the finest vineyards at no very distant period. 



All the successful experiments which have been made among 

 us in the vineyard culture of the grape, have been made with the 

 native varieties. This should be well understood, as many per- 

 sons have been induced to believe, from the failure of those who 

 have attempted to introduce the wine grape of Europe into ihis 

 country, that the soil and climate were unfavorable to the produc- 

 tion of wine. Thousands have been expended upon the culti- 

 vation of the European varieties, but the results have been, in 

 every instance, most unfortunate, while those few persons who 

 have turned their attention to the indigenous varieties have re- 

 alized their most sanguine expectations. 



The late Major Adlum, of the District of Columbia, Mr. 

 Herbemont, of South Carolina, and Mr. Longworth, of Ohio, 

 have been the most successful cultivators of our native grapes, 

 on a large scale, in the Union. Their wines have been pro- 

 nounced, by connoisseurs, equal to some of the most celebrated 

 foreign productions, and their success in the field culture of the 

 grape has been such as to remove all doubts of the entire feasi- 

 bility and profit of wine-making among us. Mr. Longworth, a 

 gentleman of ample means in the neighborhood of Cincinnati, 

 has probably made the most extensive experiments in the culture 

 of American grapes, and, we are happy to say, with the 

 most decided success. We have lately had the pleasure of re- 

 ceiving a communication from him on this subject, in which he 

 states that he has produced wines of qualities so nearly resem- 

 bling those of the finest Rhenish and Madeiras, that the best 

 judges have been deceived by them, and have pronounced the 

 domestic to be the foreign wines. Mr. Longworth states that 



