CHAPTER V 

 THE VINEYARD AND ITS MANAGEMENT 



A VINEYARD is more artificial than other plantations of fruits, 

 since the vine requires greater discipline under cultivation 

 than tree or bush. Yet greater art is required only when the 

 attempt is made to grow the grape to perfection, for the vine 

 bears fruit if left to indulge in riotous growth wheresoever it 

 can strike root. Vineyard management, therefore, may repre- 

 sent the consummate art of three thousand or more years of 

 cultural subserviency; or it may be so primeval in simplicity 

 as to approach neglect. The grape is so wonderfully responsive 

 to good care, however, that no true lover of fruit will profane 

 it with neglect, but will seek, rather, to give it a favorable 

 situation, its choice of soils and such generous care as will insure 

 strong, vigorous, productive vineyards of choicely good fruit. 



Grape-growing is a specialists' business, for the culture of the 

 grape is unlike that of any other fruit. The essentials of vine- 

 yard management, however, are easily learned. Indeed, care 

 of the vine comes almost instinctively ; for the grape has been 

 cultivated since prehistoric times and the races of the world 

 are so familiar with it through sacred literatures, myths, fables, 

 stories and poetry, that its care is prompted by natural impulse. 

 The grape has followed civilized man so closely from place to 

 place through the temperate climates of the world, that rules 

 and methods of culture have been developed for almost every 

 condition under which it will grow, so that every grape-grower 

 may profit by the successes and failures of the generations 



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