308 GRAPE CULTURE AND 







is from this grape the French make their celebrated 

 Muscat Lunel, which sells at $3.00 per bottle. We 

 would hardly obtain such prices here, however, even if we 

 made it better, for it would not be French., nor "far fetched 

 and dear bought!" Yet it deserves a trial, and very fine 

 wines of a similar character have already been produced here. 



Sherries and Ports are generally made by fortifying with al- 

 cohol up to eighteen to twenty-three per cent. Mr. Crabb 

 adds grape syrup to his port, made by boiling down sweet 

 must. Sherries are then kept in a heated room with a tem- 

 perature of 140 to 150 F., for three to four months, a so- 

 called oven; and thus acquire the aged taste and flavor which 

 their admirers fancy. It would not be of any special interest 

 to the reader to enter into a description of the Bodega and 

 Solera system, by which sherries and ports are made and aged 

 in Spain and Portugal, as I do not think that Californians will 

 ever be willing to wait ten years before they can thus ripen 

 and sell their wines, and go into the tedious process of estab- 

 lishing them. I believe, however, that there are many of our 

 grapes which acquire the sherry flavor simply by aging in the 

 cask. I have tasted Mission at Mr. Dresels twenty years old 

 which had it in a marked degree, and which I would prefer 

 to most of the artificially made sherries I have tried. This 

 is especially the case with many of our white wine varieties 

 when they get very ripe. The Sultana, for instance, develops 

 some of it even the second and third season, and it may thus 

 not be difficult to produce a natural sherry, preferable to the 

 artificial, by simply aging the wine of such varieties, which 

 would seem to me to be a more proper and cleaner way than 

 exposing them to the influence of air and mold, by leaving 

 them in casks partly full and with their bungs open, as in 

 Europe. 



Champagne or Sparkling Wine. There are also two meth- 

 ods to produce this, the so-called natural w r ay, by which car- 



