IV PREFACE. 



yards with unceasing interest, and are willing to watch their 

 wines with the grestest care that we must expect our choicest 

 products. To help and serve this army of patient toilers, in 

 whose ranks I have labored for forty years, here and in Mis- 

 souri, with hand and brain, is the object and aim of this little 

 book; I can fully sympathize with them, because I had to 

 gather what little knowledge I may have, piecemeal and by 

 hard practical experience in an almost untrodden field, and I 

 wish to save them some of the dear bought experience which 

 I had to pass through. If its pages become a practical guide 

 for them, by which they can plant and cultivate their vine- 

 yards, prune and train their vines, erect their wine cellars 

 when they need them and are able to build them, and make 

 good, drinkable and saleable wine, my chief object has been 

 accomplished. To do this, I intend to be as concise and 

 clear as possible, use no high-flown language, and avoid scien- 

 tific terms as much as possible; talk as the plain, practical 

 farmer to his co-laborers, and confine myself to simple facts, 

 gathered from my own daily practice as well as from the 

 practice and counsels of others who have labored long and 

 successfully in the same cause. None of us are infallible, 

 and the best way to gain knowledge is by exchanging ideas 

 and experience among ourselves, comparing notes with each 

 other. 



And this is especially necessary in each neighborhood,, 

 each valley and its surrounding hillsides in this, the brightest 

 and most bountiful, but also the most diversified and variable 

 State in the Union; where the climatic conditions as well as 

 the soil change as quickly, according to each location as in a 

 kaleidoscope. This makes it all the more necessary, that 

 the vintner select his climate and soil carefully; and again, 

 that he chooses such varieties as are adapted to his soil and 

 climate. Then the climatic conditions will also materially 

 affect his operations in wine making, curing raisins, etc., in 



