24 GRAPE CULTURE AND 



dinner. This place alone uses 2000 gallons of light wine annu- 

 ally; yet our so called first-class hotels, who charge their 

 guests $3 per day, pretend that they cannot afford it. But 

 the remedy is very simple. Let us leave such houses severely 

 alone, and patronize only those who are willing to do the fair 

 thing towards us, or buy wine by the gallon from the producer^ 

 keep it at our homes, and enjoy it with our families. 



I have so far reviewed only the wine interest as the leading 

 and most prominent one. But it is far from being the only 

 branch of grape culture followed. Our raisin industry has 

 also assumed large proportions, and though it lagged and suf- 

 fered under similar disadvantages as the wine industry, being 

 also a new and untried business, with which those who en- 

 tered into it were mostly unacquainted, yet it seems to have 

 passed its worst period of supression in prices. The growers 

 have learned better methods of curing, use more care and 

 skill in packing, select their fruit and grade it better, so that 

 many brands of California raisins already rank with the best 

 imported goods and bring the same price. Our dry falls 

 greatly favor this business, which bids fair to assume gigantic 

 proportions, and to offer a pleasing and wholesome occupa- 

 tion for women and children, certainly more wholesome and 

 pleasant than the work in crowded factories. 



The growing of grapes for table and market is also receiv- 

 ing a new impetus through cheaper Eastern freights and bet- 

 ter methods of packing, quicker transportation, and improved 

 shipping facilities. There seems to me nothing to prevent, 

 that California fresh grapes should be in the market from 

 August to February, and even ] ater. Our earliest locations, 

 at Vacaville and Pleasant Valley can furnish ripe grapes in 

 August, while the Santa Cruz mountains furnished them 

 fresh from open vineyard, without the slightest touch of frost, 

 last winter, in January; they can go through to New York in 

 six days, and at moderate charges for freight, where Eastern 



