CULTURE OJb- THE GRAPE. 



delphia — and Burlington, New Jersey ; but more with a view 

 to supply the market with grapes, than to make wine. Efforts 

 have been made in the interior of Kentucky, in Tennessee, in 

 western New York, and on the southern shore and islands of 

 Lake Erie, to cultivate the vine for makintj wine, but sufficient 

 time has not yet elapsed for a fair trial. In the Appendix 

 will be found a letter from Mr. A. H. Wagner, on Vine Culture 

 in Canada West. In a hasty sketch like this, it is merely 

 intended to give a glance at the subject, and invite public 

 attention to what must ere long be a source of great national 

 wealth. 



The following extract is taken from a highly interesting 

 address delivered before the Medical Library Association of 

 this city, Jan. 9th, 1852, by Dr. Daniel Drake, *' On the early 

 Physicians, Scenery, and Society of Cincinnati." 



'* Third street, running near the brow of the upper plain, 

 was on as high a level as Fifth street is now. The gravelly 

 slope of that plain stretched from east to west almost to Pearl 

 street. On this slope, between Main and Walnut, a French 

 political exile — M. Mennessiur — planted, in the latter part of 

 the last century, a small vineyard. This was the beginning 

 of that cultivation for which the environs of our city have at 

 length become so distinguished. I suppose this was the first 

 cultivation of the foreign grape in the valley of the Ohio." 



The celebrated traveler Volney, on a visit to the French 

 settlers at Gallipolis, Ohio, in July, 1796, tasted wine made 

 there from a red grape, found on the islands in the Ohio river 

 and planted in a small vineyard. " This wine differed but 

 little in quality from that made from the small black grape 

 found in the woods on shore." The red grape was supposed 

 to be " a foreign variety brought over by the French to Fort 

 Du Quesne ;" but it was doubtless the Red Fox grape, familiar 

 to most of us in the west. Wine has occasionally been made, 

 in different parts of the Union, in years past, from native grapes 

 collected in the forests, but neither the quality of the wine, 



