256 RESOURCES OF CALIFORNIA. 



developed to give eight or ten per cent, of spirit in the wine. 

 The defects of flavor are partly owing to the bad situation of 

 the vines, their bad quality, or the bad management of fer- 

 mentation. The low lands in which most of the vineyards are 

 planted, though they can be cultivated with little trouble and 

 produce most abundantly, will not give the best wine. The 

 hills are better for quality, though worse for quantity. The 

 main stock of our vines is of the Mission variety, which bears 

 abundantly, and yields a berry rich in sugar, sometimes turn- 

 ing partly to alcohol on the vine, so that a person with a sen- 

 sitive stomach will get dizzy from eating a large bunch of 

 grapes ; but it lacks aroma and tartness, both of which are 

 necessary to high excellence. Many of the foreign varieties 

 contain less sugar, more aroma, and more tartaric acid ; and 

 they are gradually replacing the others, being set out in all the 

 new vineyards, and in some places being used for grafting the 

 old ones. The defects of fermentation are chargeable to lack 

 of experience and of good cellars. 



The cellar is a matter of great importance to the wine- 

 maker. From the moment when the grape juice comes from 

 the press until the wine is brought upon the table to be drunk, 

 it should be kept in a cellar ; and it is only in a cellar that the 

 equability and coolness of temperature proper to favor fermen- 

 tation can be obtained. In France and Germany, it is often 

 necessary to have fires in the cellars ; and it would be well to 

 have them occasionally in California. Indeed, wine-makers 

 generally have no cellars, but only houses. In Los Angeles 

 County, much of the wine is kept in adobe houses. The sandi- 

 ness of the land, the frequent irrigation, and the proximity 

 of the vines to the places where the wine is stored, would lead 

 to the filling of deep cellars with water ; so the cellars are dug 

 only three or four feet into the ground, and an adobe wall 

 three feet thick, and a thick covering, render the cellars pretty 

 cool. In Sonoma, the Buena Vista Society has a cellar dug 

 like a tunnel a long distance into a hill of volcanic tufa. 



