THE GRAPE VINE. 



341 



every large castle and monastery in England 

 had its vineyard. The land on the south side 

 of Windsor Castle, now a pleasant green lawn, 

 running from the town under the castle wall, 

 was a vine^'ard, of which a particular account 

 may be seen in the Archseologia. At this period, 

 wine was made in England in considerable quan- 

 tities; and yet the importation of foreign wines 

 was very large. In the year 1272, London im- 

 ported 3799 tons; Southampton and Portsmouth, 

 3147; and Sandwich, 1900. In the time of Ed- 

 ward III., a trade in Rhenish wine was carried 

 on between Hull and the ports of the Baltic. 

 Tlie vineyards were, probably, continued till the 

 time of the Reformation, when the ecclesiastical 

 gardens were either neglected or destroyed; and 

 about this period, ale, which had been known in 

 England for many centuries, seems to have su- 

 perseded the use of wine as a general beverage. 



This arose from the better cultivation of the 

 country. Under the feudal tenures, when the 

 serfs were often suddenly compelled to follow 

 their lords to battle, husbandry, particularly the 

 growth of grain, was fearfully neglected; and 

 sometimes the most dreadful famines were the 

 result. The prices of wheat occasionally fluc- 

 tuated from ten shillings to twenty pounds per 

 quarter. But when just principles of tenancy 

 were established, so that the occupier of the land 

 could be sure of appropriating to himself a fair 

 proportion of the fruit of his labour, agi'iculture 

 began to flourish. The cultivation of hops was 

 revived or introduced about the end of the fif- 

 teenth century. All these circumstances — the 

 decay of the vineyards, the encouragement to 

 the growth of grain, and the culture of hops, 

 gradually tended to supersede the demand for 

 wine, by offering a beverage to the people which 

 was cheaper, and perhaps as exhilarating. 



We are told,* that on the southern coast of 

 Devonshire, possessing the mildest temperature 

 of the English counties, there are still two or 

 three vineyards, from which wine is commonly 

 made. A vineyard at the castle of Amndel, on 

 the south coast of Sussex, was planted about the 

 early part of the last century, and of the pro- 

 duce there are reported to have been sixty pipes 

 of wine in the cellars of the Duke of Norfolk, 

 in 1763. Tliis wine is said to have resembled 

 Burgundy; but the kind of grape and the mode 

 of culture have not been particularly recorded. 

 Whatever may have been the condition and 

 qualities of the early English gi'apes employed 

 in making wine, we know that they must have 

 been ripened by tlie natural temperature of the 

 climate, as artificial heat was not resorted to for 

 the ripening of grapes till the early part of the 

 last century; and then the heat was applied 

 merely to the other side of the wall on wliich 



* Librai-y of Entertaining Knowledge. 



the vines were trained : nor is it till about the 

 middle of the same century that we have any 

 account of vines being covered with glass. Pro- 

 fessor Martyn is an advocate for the renewal ol 

 grape culture in this country for wine. For that 

 purpose he recommends that the vines should be 

 trained very near the ground, he having found 

 that, by this method of training, the berries 

 were much increased in size, and also ripened 

 earlier. The same method is pursued in the 

 northern part of France, where it is found to be 

 successful. 



The culture of the grape, as an article of hus- 

 bandry, extends over a zone about two thousand 

 miles in breadth, that is, from about the twenty- 

 first to the fiftieth degree of north latitude; and 

 reaching in length from the western shores of 

 Portugal, at least to the centre of Persia, and 

 probably to near the sources of the Oxns and 

 the Indus. Farther north than that, it does not 

 ripen so as to be fit for the making of wine; and 

 farther south, it seems to be as much injured by 

 the excessive heat. The best wines are made 

 about the centre of the zone; the wines towards 

 the north being harsh and austere, and the grapes 

 towards the south being better adapted for dry- 

 ing and preserving as raisins. Tlius, in Spain, 

 while the wine of Xeres, in the Sierra Morena 

 (the real Sherry,) is an excellent wine, and while 

 that of the ridge of Apulxarras, in Granada, is 

 very tolerable, the grapes of the warm shores 

 about Malaga, and in Valentia, are chiefly fit 

 only for raisins. So, also, while the slopes of 

 Etna, and those of the mountains in GTreece, 

 furnish some choice vines, the grapes upon the 

 low shores iu those countries have also to be 

 dried. It should seem, that the grapes are always 

 the higher flavoured and the more vinous, the 

 greater the natural temperature under which 

 they are ripened, but that an extreme heat throws 

 the juice into the acetous fermentation before 

 the vinous one has time to be matured. We 

 have an analogous case in the fermentation of 

 malt liquors in this countrj'^, which cannot be 

 properly performed in the warm months. 



About eight thousand tons of raisins, or dried 

 grapes, are annually imported into England, at a 

 duty of about £160,000. A considerable quan- 

 tity of undried grapes are also imported, prin- 

 cipally from Portugal, in jars, among saw-dust. 

 The value of those so imported is about £10,000. 

 The currants of commerce, which are so exten- 

 sively used in England, and of which about six 

 thousand tons are annually imported into this 

 country, are small dried grapes, principally grown 

 in the Ionian islands. 



Laborde, in his account of Spain, gives the 

 following description of the mode of drying 

 raisins : "In the kingdom of Valencia they make 

 a kind of ley with the ashes of rosemary and 

 vine branches, to which they add a quart of 



