156 GRAPE CULTURE AND WINE-IMAKING. 



"3. In the tliird place, I -will say that if there be a country 

 where real old wines (from 1811 to 1855) are to be found, it is 

 Hungary. This important fact has its reason : first^ from this cir- 

 cumstance, that Hungary, like England, is the land of large es- 

 tates. There are landowners producing yearly from 1000 to 

 20,000 hogsheads of wine. Beautiful and enormous cellars, cut 

 in rocky mountains, widely extend their ramifications, like laby- 

 rinths or catacombs, where the wines are ranged year after year. 

 It is a kind of aristocratic and family glory to have a full and 

 rich cellar. The grandchildren can drink the wine produced by 

 their ancestors, and gratefully remember the past old times. Some 

 of them would not sell their wines, even if they could do it ; but 

 that is not an easy matter in Hungary. Why ? Because, and 

 that is the second reason, the internal consumption with us is very 

 small. In Hungary the ladies never drink any thing but water; 

 the men of the higher classes are temperate from principle and 

 habit ; the lower classes from necessity and custom. Therefore, 

 in proportion to the number of inhabitants, little wine, and scarce- 

 ly any wine brandy, is consumed ; so that, I dare say, Hungary, 

 with France, the richest wine-growing country in the world, is at 

 the same time the most temperate. 



" Is not this fact an argument to show that the light and nat- 

 ural wines are the most efficacious and surest preservatives against 

 the use of fiery, intoxicating brandies ?" 



The above extracts will satisfy the skeptic that where com- 

 merce exists and transportation is easy, there need be no fear of 

 overdoing the business of vine-raising. California possesses the 

 commercial advantages, as well as facility of communication, be- 

 tween producer and merchant. The merchant can send his wine 

 to foreign markets after it is one year old without adding a drop 

 of brandy, as our wine will, as I stated before, bear transportation, 

 and even improve beyond expectation. The time so spent on 

 the sea is not lost, for the wine gets older and better, and will, in 

 consequence, meet a better sale. 



"We give below a table of the wine produced in Europe, the 

 quantity reduced from morgens to acres. Our statistics were ex- 

 tracted from a work by Gustavo Rawald. Also the price and 

 yield per acre of wine calculated in dollars. These calculations 

 were made by ourselves from the figures given in the above work. 



