:. :- AMERICAN GRAPE 6ROWIXG 



CHAPTER LY. 



WISE MJUOXG IS CJLLIFOE3TCA. 



Wine Baking is much more simple and less laborious 

 here than in Missouri and the Eastern States, as our 

 dry summers always mature the grapes sufficiently to 

 make a good, salable wine, if well handled in ferment- 

 ing. The practices of Gall and Petiot are neither useful, 

 necessary, nor profitable here, where grape-juice, if proper 

 varieties are sekcted, is perfect enough to make a good 

 wine, and is cheaper tiian additions of sugar and water. 

 In my practice here, during two vintages, very dissimilar 

 in their product, I have not found the least difficulty in 

 making a good, sound wine from every grape I have han- 

 dled; my wines were always fully through fermentation 

 in less than six days, and clear enough to be marketed 

 in six weeks from the time they were made. They were 

 shipped as far East as Connecticut, when not more than 

 a year old, and arrived in perfect condition. 



Let it be understood, therefore, that all the practices 

 given in the following pages relate only to pure grape- 

 juice, and the wine made from it. I am indeed glad 

 that I am making wine in a State where all these manip- 

 ulations, necessary a* they are in a leas favorable cli- 

 mate, are entirely superfluous. 



The directions about the construction of cellars and 

 fermenting rooms, as given in Part 3 of the book, will 

 also, for the most part, apply here, although it is not 

 necessary, in this temperate climate, to have the fer- 

 menting room under ground. On this place we hare a 

 three-story wine-house, with a capacity of sixty thousand 

 gmilnmm whk'h admirably answers all purposes. It is 

 built of stone, forty by sixty feet; the lower story is 

 mostly under ground, and twelve feet high, not arched, 

 but with a double floor, which is supported by a double 



