76 



and wine merchants are petitioning Government to take steps towards help- 

 ing the industry out of its difficulties. The following recent statistical data 

 will serve to show the national importance of vinegrowing. 



Year. 



1905 .. 



1906 .. 



1907 .. 



1908 .. 



In conjunction with the above figures it should be noted that in 1908 

 Spain made 3,528,150galls. of brandies of various types and 8,827, 260galls. 

 of strong spirit from wines. The above figures will serve to show how impor- 

 tant are the interests involved in the crisis through which the industry is 

 said to be passing. It will be noted how low are the yields per acre ; in no 

 single year was a yield of a ton of grapes to the acre attained. 



On the whole it is easy enough to account for the present crisis. It is the 

 old story of over-production under the temporary stimulus of abnormal 

 prices, with corresponding depression on the gradual disappearance of pre- 

 viously available markets. When in the early eighties the old French vine- 

 yards were practically swept away by the phylloxera, the wine-drinking 

 French population had to look elsewhere for wine that was almost as essential 

 to them as bread. In this direction their immediate neighbors, the Italians 

 and Spaniards, benefited temporarily by contributing to the pressing neces- 

 sities of the French. This abnormal state of affairs led to extensive vine- 

 planting in Spain, in the same way as I have shown elsewhere in this report 

 it led to extensive currant-planting in Greece, and for a few years big busi- 

 ness was done by Spain in this line. Indeed, Spanish wines were particu- 

 larly sought after by French winebuyers, mainly, it is said, because their 

 high alcoholic strength, their great body and color, readily allowed of their 

 being increased in volume, once over the border, by the process that the 

 French sometimes irreverently term " baptising/' In the course of time, 

 however, the French vineyards slowly rose again from their ashes, and French 

 growers naturally resented this somewhat unfair competition of the strong, 

 full-bodied Spanish wines which had found so much favor in the eyes of the 

 merchants ; hence a comprehensible French viticultural crisis, followed 

 by new Customs arrangements, which had the effect of practically shutting 

 the door to the common Spanish wines ; and the Spanish vine-growing 

 industry which went up like a rocket came down like a stick. There are a 

 variety of remedies that are being advocated to enable growers to get out 

 of the difficult situation in which they find themselves. Amongst these 

 may be instanced the free distillation of wines, the enforcing of the law which 



