REPORT OF COMMITTEE ON PUBLICATION 21 



What is the result? The market is glutted with dry wines. The great 

 bulk meets a common price level in the selling markets, the law of supply 

 and demand comes into play, and selling prices of dry wines are ruinous to 

 the producers. There is loss on every hand the dry-wine producer is 

 engulfed along with the sweet-wine maker. 



And now to consideration of the table-grape and raisin-grape vineyardists. 

 Here in California normally, 40 per cent of their tonnage is not fit for table- 

 grape and raisin markets. These are the culls and second-crop grapes and 

 they have always brought money because the wineries could use them. 



What winery will want these grapes now? Who will pay the cost of even 

 picking them? What winery can afford to make them into brandy for fortify- 

 ing purposes when it will cost that winery more than $40.00 per ton for those 

 grapes in tax money alone, not considering the cost of the grapes? Why 

 should wineries buy grapes when dry wines are a drug on the market? The 

 answer is simple. This 40 per cent of the table and raisin grape crop will 

 yield nothing to the owners of the vineyards. It will be a total loss. Markets 

 for unfermented grape juice and grape syrup offer practically no relief. They 

 are not big enough and the possibilities of enlarging them are very remote. 



California's State Viticultural Commission has tried to avert this crush- 

 ing blow to her vineyard interests. The Commission intends even yet to use 

 every powerful, plausible and honest effort to make Congress see what an 

 injury it has done to millions of dollars worth of property in California and 

 many thousands of her people. It is inconceivable that the Federal Govern- 

 ment should decide within one year's time to levy a tax on California wines 

 amounting to 36 times what it was before. 



To correct an injustice of this nature is a task in which the California 

 Viticultural Commission must have the enthusiastic support of all who are 

 interested in vineyard work not alone in our own State but in New York, 

 Ohio, Missouri, Virginia and every other State in the Union where the grape- 

 vine thrives. We should be successful if we have hearty co-operation, and 

 the work to be undertaken is in the opinion of our Commissioners the most 

 important that has come to the notice of the Board. Let us not think of 

 failure in our effort. Fair-thinking men in Congress who have no pecuniary 

 interest in viticulture or in agricultural pursuits will surely see the error in 

 such an act of the Government and will not be ashamed to right a great 

 wrong that has been done to viticulture and particularly to those vast inter- 

 ests in California. 



There is endless work for a Board of Viticultural Commissioners in this 

 State, and the present Commission is going about the task before it in a 

 systematic manner. With insufficient financial means at its command, it is 

 gradually completing a roster of the vineyardists of the entire State. This 

 will be an office adjunct of invaluable importance and it will be renewed 

 constantly to keep pace with changes in ownership of these vineyard prop- 

 erties. There will be available in our office the name and postoffice address 

 of every man who grows grapes. In addition, the extent of his vineyard will 

 be known as well as the varieties of grapes he grows. I need not explain to 

 you of how much importance and value this data will be to *he office of the 

 Board as well as to each of the individual growers. We shall then be able to 

 reach every vineyard with advice as often as we wish and need not depend 

 on general publicity mediums. 



