344 r iRAPE CULTURE AND 



The owner has the privilege of fixing the price at which 

 he is willing to sell when the wine is marketable, which will 

 be the lowest limit at which it will be sold by the company to 

 buyers. The advances made to him, and the storage offered, 

 will enable him to carry on his operations, empty his cellar, 

 and receive the benefits accruing from the increased value of 

 the wine. On the other hand, it will enable even the dealer 

 to replenish his stock easier, to better advantage and of more 

 uniform quality than by the present system of making selec- 

 tions all over the State; and especially the Eastern and foreign 

 trade will find it to their advantage to purchase, where they 

 can find large and uniform quantities of well developed and 

 matured wine. These advantages are so striking that they 

 must be apparent to every one, and I hope that this is but 

 the initiatory step to a general system of wine warehouses on 

 our Coast. 



In connection with this, it may not be amiss to say 

 a few words in regard to pure wines, and the so called 

 " Pure wine bill." I believe that the adulteration of wine 

 has never been practiced to a very great extent on this coast, 

 but that the bad repute in which some of our wines were held, 

 arose more from their imperfect and faulty handling, than 

 from real adulterations. That some unscrupulous persons 

 used cherry juice, and even more injurious substances for 

 coloring and smoothing over defects in some of the wines of 

 inferior grade, cannot be doubted; but hardly to the extent 

 which some asserted. For this, the prevailing custom of 

 selling whole cellars of wine, good, bad and indifferent, to the 

 merchant, and compelling him, so to say, to take a lot of 

 trash, if he also wanted the really good wines a cellar con- 

 tained, is in a great measure to blame, as much of this trash 

 was not saleable unless doctored to some extent, and the 

 merchant of course tried to get his money back out of it. 

 Be that as it may, it became necessary and seemed advisable 



