in the United States. 215 



the average crop of grapes and quantity of wine per acre, in this 

 country, will far exceed that of Europe, and believes that the 

 only secret of making the finest wine hes in the fermentation. 

 This opinion receives confirmation from the well known fact that 

 in Europe there is often a difference of two hundred per cent, 

 in the value of wines made from vineyards adjoining each other. 

 The number of gallons to the acre in Europe is rarely so great 

 as one thousand. The Scuppernon vines in the south have 

 yielded, in one instance, (Capt. Burlingham's,) two thousand 

 gallons, and INIr. Longworth informs us that he has obtained one 

 thousand four hundred and seventy gallons to the acre from the 

 Isabella. This product will be considered enormous, until we 

 recollect the remarkably prolific nature of the American grapes 

 as compared with the foreign varieties. The Schuylkill Muscadell 

 is the wine grape of the Swiss in Vevay; but Mr. Longworth 

 considers the Catawba decidedly the first of all our native grapes 

 for wine. The wine made by him from this grape retains a de- 

 licate aroma, quite unique and peculiar; that made from the 

 Schuylkill Muscadell, with a few years of age, strongly resembles 

 Madeira, and is sold for that article in the coffee houses at Cin- 

 cinnati. 



The cultivation of the grape has been greatly retarded in this 

 country by too rigid an adherence to the European rules and 

 practices. As it is now ascertained that it is impossible to na- 

 turalize the European grape for vineyard culture among us, we 

 should make such deviations in the management of the best 

 American varieties as reason and experience may dictate. The first 

 of these is giving the vines a greater extent of surface in training 

 than is practised abroad, in consequence of their greater vigor 

 of growth. Instead of being trained upright to single stakes, 

 they should here be suffered to extend themselves several feet 

 laterally, and a less severe method of pruning should be adopted. 

 From the greater thriftiness and exuberance of growth in our vines, 

 a stronger soil may and should also be chosen for their culture. 

 The old decomposed soils of many of our mountain ridges in 

 the Middle States, where now the native vines clamber in wild 

 luxuriance from tree to tree, will, we have no doubt, become, in 

 time, the site of many of the finest vineyards, whose products 

 will equal in celebrity the famous wines of the Cote Rotie, 

 Hermitage, &c. of France.* Thus runs the old song in favor 

 of the hills: 



" Toujours le bon vin croit siir les montagnes 

 Dans les rochers, et siir lescotcaux; 

 Ct'lni qui croit dans les vases campagnes, 

 Ne vaul rien, a cause des caux." 



* These fine wines are produced upon decomposed granite soil, strong- 

 ly analogous to those of the valley in and near many of our granite 

 hills. 



