THE GRAPES OF NEW YORK. 1 7 



the juice of grapes, they will be light, wholesome, and excite an agreeable 

 cheerfulness, without inflaming the blood, or producing the other ill effects 

 of the strong brandied wines, imported from the southern parts of Europe. 

 Since 1793, I have confined my attention chiefly to the multiplication of my 

 vines, to supply the demand for plants, and to furnish an extended vine- 

 yard under my own direction, whenever my fellow citizens possessing 

 pecuniary means, should be inclined to encourage and support the attempt." 



Out of this venture, however, came the Alexander grape, an offspring 

 of a native species, and not, as Legaux held, a foreign variety, which, as we 

 shall see later, was the first variety to be grown on a commercial scale in 

 eastern America. Johnson,' writing of Legaux's work with the grape, says 

 that in iSoi cuttings were sent from the Spring Mill vineyards in quantities 

 of fifteen hundred to Kentucky and Pennsylvania and smaller quantities 

 to Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Maryland, Virginia and Ohio, and 

 indicates that these cuttings in their turn were multiplied so that many 

 diverse experiments with foreign grapes arose from Legaux's efforts. 



Chief of the experiments which Legaux's partial success in vine-growing 

 stimulated was carried on in Kentucky by Tlie Kentucky Vineyard Society 

 of which John James Dufour, a Swiss, was leader.- It was to this Company 

 that Legaux had sent the fifteen hundred cuttings mentioned above as 

 going to Kentucky. Before founding his grape colony, Dufour had made a 

 tour of inspection of all the vineyards that he could hear of in what then 

 constituted the United States. His account of what he saw, given in his 

 book The Vine Dresser's Guide, is the most accurate statement we have cf 

 grape-growing in America at the beginning of the nineteenth century. 



Dufour s account, pages 18-24, runs as follows: " I went to see all the 

 vines growing that I could hear of, even as far as Kaskaskia, on the borders 

 of the Mississippi; because I was told, by an inhabitant of that town, whom I 

 met with at Philadelphia, that the Jesuits had there a very successful vine- 



' Johnson, S. V/., Rural Economy: 156. Xew Brunswick. X. J., 1S06. 



^ John James Dufour, born in the canton of Vaud, Switzerland, in 1763, came to America in 

 1796 to'engage in grape-growing and wine-making. An account of his work is given in the text. In 

 1826 Dufour published the V^ine Dresser's Guide, which became the authority on the culture of this 

 fruit at that time. Dufour must be remembered for this book, for the dissemination of the Cape or 

 Ale.\ander grape, and as one of the pioneer vineyardists and wine-makers of the New World. 

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