REPUTATION OP VINEYARDS. 327 



omission of attention in the fabrication of the vines, is often 

 sufficient to cast discredit, perhaps for ever, on the produce of 

 a vineyard. Examples also frequently present themselves, 

 more especially in the vicinity of the large cities of France, 

 where the consumption is immense and the sales' consequently 

 certain ; in which the proprietor of a vineyard sacrifices the 

 consideration of quality to that of quantity in his wines, from 

 which cause it consequently results that his vineyard does not 

 thereafter enjoy that fame which it had acquired under a to- 

 tally different manner of directing it. 



In the period when Italy was in the greatest prosperity, her 

 vineyards were planted with those kinds of vines that had ac- 

 quired the highest celebrity, which were brought from the 

 most famous parts of the earth, and thence she acquired the 

 reputation of producing the finest wines. It is not therefore the 

 eagerness for gain or the negligence of the cultivators to which 

 is to be attributed the present oblivion in regard to the Italian 

 wines of Massica, of Cecuba, and of Falerna, so highly ex- 

 tolled by Horace and his contemporaries. The Romans- also 

 held in great estimation the vineyards of Scio, of Coz, and 

 other renowned places, whose produce gave delight to their 

 banquets ; and in fact, the wines of Greece, the Malvoisie, 

 and Candia, were not unknown to them. Some of the wines 

 then so famed, still retain a partial celebrity, but by far the 

 most of them are no longer known. Nevertheless, France 

 produces wines which have lost no portion of their celebrity 

 during a succession of fifteen centuries ; and how many others 

 exist that are but little known to us, whose merits it is only 

 necessary should be fully understood in order to compete v per- 

 haps advantageously with those of the first rank. It is with 

 the reputation of wines as with that of men, to spring from 

 the obscurity where they had remained unnoticed. It is not 

 always sufficient of itself to possess real merit, but often re- 

 quires the addition of some favourable event or adventitious 

 circumstance not at all times to be met with. Who, in fact, in 

 travelling through the fine wine countries, has not drank in 

 some obscure district, wines of such delicious flavour that their 



