SUBSTRATA OF VINEYARDS 



ported this opinion is, that wines which had HO bad taste have 

 acquired it when the vines which produced them have been 

 too highly manured with the filth of streets, night soit,'&c. 

 I will make one observation, which induces thelbelief that it 

 is not always by passing into the sap that this bad taste is 

 produced, but that it is sometimes communicated to the fruit 

 by means of simple emanation. A vine on a trellice fixed in a 

 garden at the angle of a building, extended half of its shoots 

 in a yard ; heaps of manure were placed under this part of 

 the vine, and the grapes became bad, but those on the other 

 part retained their quality. This vine was the chasselas. 



Substrata of vineyards in France. 



The greater part of the vineyards of France are in a soil 

 composed of clay and limestone, sometimes primitive, as 

 those of Langres, Nuits, Chalons, Moselle, Barrois, Haut- 

 Rhin, Haute-Saone, Doubs, Jura, and Haute Marne, and 

 sometimes secondary, as those of Entre-deux-mers at Bor- 

 deaux, and a part of those in the environs of Paris, &c. The 

 greatest part of the vines of the departments of Champagne, 

 which are well known to yield estimable wines, are planted 

 on a chalky soil, where often there is not more than five or 

 six inches of earth, or rather of marl, above the rock, insomuch 

 that in dry seasons the vines suffer greatly, as was the case in 

 1810. Latouche attributed to the chalk the weakness of the 

 Champagne wines, but other authors seem with more justice 

 to attribute it to the deficiency of heat in that climate. 



The nature of the soil next to be noticed is a gravelly clay, 

 such as that of the graves of Bordeaux, the environs of 

 Nismes, Montpellier, and the coast of the Rhone, &c. There 

 are fine wines and very bad wines on the decomposed remains 

 of granite, as those of Cote-Rotie, Hermitage, Romaneche, 

 Chenard, and Beaujeu among the former, and some localities 

 of Upper Burgundy, Vosges, Cevennes, and Limousin among 

 the latter. 



The vines of Anjou grow on soils whose base is slate 



