MANUFACTURE OF WINE, AND ROT IN GRAPES. 99 



acknowledged he was not aware of the great importance of 

 having his fruit fully matured, and the great care necessary 

 in separating green, decayed, and rotten grapes, and neatness 

 in manufacture. The only object in buying his wine of 1848, 

 was to distill it into brandy. One great advantage that our 

 native wine will have, is its being the pure juice of the grape. 

 In Europe, total changes are wrought in the wines in the mer- 

 chants' wine-cellars. And we are so much the creatures of 

 habit, that for many years we gave a preference to those wines 

 of Madeira, that had the strong fetid flavor which they de- 

 rived from the old goat-skins in which the must was carried 

 from the mountains, on mules, to the cellars of the wine-mer- 

 chants at Funchal. 



I yesterday had wines offered me for sale, when one of the 

 persons made an observation, that revived recollections of a 

 few years past. The wine of one of the persons was of fair 

 quality, and he offered it to me at little more than half the 

 price fixed by the other. Yet such was the quality of the 

 400 gallons of the latter person, that even a Jerseyman could 

 not try to buy cheaper, and I promptly complied with his 

 terms. Better Catawba wine I have never seen. I inquired 

 if his grapes rotted the past season. He replied not, and that 

 the rot in the vineyards of all his neighbors had been severe. 

 I observed, yours must be a sandy soil, or more porous than 

 your neighbors. He replied, a stiff subsoil of clay, the same 

 as his neighbors. That he could give but one cause for his 

 success. That before the rot began, his time had been so 

 much taken up by his farm, that he neglected to hoe his vine- 

 yard, and it was filled with grass and weeds. Finding his 

 not to rot, while the well-hoed vineyards of his neighbors suf- 

 fered severely by the rot, he left all standing and had a full 

 crop, and left his grapes until fully ripe, and when he did 

 gather them, did it from a fear of injury from frost, and 

 thought the yield as large as it would have been had he 

 gathered his grapes earlier. I recollect, some years since, 



