292 Recreations of a Sportsman 



its bouquet. In time the juice of the grape is 

 stored away and the wine-making process be- 

 gins, a mysterious and secret brew, a story by 

 itself. Why should wine locked up in tuns be- 

 gin to " work " in the spring about the time the 

 sap is supposed to run, and the vine to think 

 about sending out its shoots? 



We give it up promptly and walk out into the 

 air, look over the hundreds of acres that reach 

 away from the vineyard. A few weeks ago the 

 vista was green. Up the long lanes go gangs 

 of Chinamen or Mexicans, no longer with boxes 

 once pickers, now pruners. The vineyard has 

 been robbed, and the few grapes left have turned 

 to raisins on the vine. The leaves have turned 

 yellow, then gray, then dropped, and the great 

 vineyard is a study in black, pink, and grays. 



The pruners begin, sweeping on, now cutting 

 the entire growth down to the trunk. This is 

 raked up into vast piles from which presently 

 rise columns of smoke. You see them, like sig- 

 nals, at Altadena, La Manda, Pasadena, Cucu- 

 monga, Asti, Madeira, Fresno, and all along the 

 Sierras, rising like genii into the soft air, tell- 

 ing that the vintage is over, and so, the memory 

 of the picking goes up in smoke. 



If you love color you have a new effect. The 

 peculiar gray or pink that came from the dead 

 vines has disappeared, and the black stumps 

 stand in mathematical precision in long lines 



