119 



has his own cellar accommodation. In the earlier days of the French occupa^ 

 tion some very expensively-built cellars were erected ; the main object in 

 view in these cases appeared to be to secure cool fermenting chambers, which 

 were frequently built at great expense underground. The opinion, however, 

 has come to prevail, as it has with us, that coolness of cellar premises was no 

 guarantee of low temperature in the fermenting vats, and that plenty of 

 ventilation was one of the chief requisites of a good fermenting cellar. Re- 

 frigerating plants are now looked to as giving perfect control over the tem- 

 perature of vats in fermentation. The cost of these machines is certainly 

 heavy, but not beyond the reach of the large cellars in which Tunisian wines 

 are usually made. 



How do Tunisian wines compare with our own, and are they likeiy to enter 

 into competition with us on the English markets ? Tunisian red wines are 

 stronger, heavier, fuller, more deeply colored than the average wine of the 

 south of Europe. In all these points, however, they are generally inferior 

 to our average type of export wine. It seems to me that they will continue 

 to be so as long as Tunisian growers adhere to the heavy-bearing varieties 

 that are almost exclusively grown there at present. I think, however, that 

 if Shiraz were grown more extensively in Tunisia the type of wine made there 

 would approach our own. I have already stated that the great bulk of the 

 Tunisian wine trade is with France. In this country Tunisian wines, in con- 

 junction with Algerian. wines, are used mainly for blending purposes, in pre- 

 ference to Italian and Spanish wines, against which the French general tariff 

 discriminates rather heavily. Tunisian wines do not appear to have found 

 their way into England ; if, however, these wines were heavier and fuller 

 the low price at which they can be secured in bond might prove an irresistible 

 temptation to London wine merchants. The moral of this is, 1 think, that 

 South Australian exporters should beware of the danger of unduly inflating 

 the price of export wines. 



OLIVE-GROWING. 



Olive-growing has at all times occupied an important position in Tunisian 

 agriculture. Indeed, from the statements of ancient writers and the testi- 

 mony of ruins and remains of ancient olive groves, it would appear that the 

 olive was far more extensively cultivated in the Ron an era than is the case 

 at the present time. When, in the seventh century, the Arabs overran Northern 

 Africa they are said to have found it a well-wooded country, covered with 

 luxuriant olive groves, extending almost to the edges of the great desert. 

 Contemporaneous Arab writers, in their usual hyperbolic style, have stated 

 that at the time of the invasion a traveller might proceed from Tripoli to 

 Tangiers without stepping out of the shade of sheltering trees. Unfortun- 

 ately, these nomadic children of the vast empty spaces of Arabia did not 

 realise the value of their new possessions, and right speedily axes and fiies 

 were set the task of clearing the horizon, that the old familiar home conditions 



