INTRODUCTION. V 



quet that grows upon the taste, and which will 

 make our wines sought after by all connois- 

 seurs. It is safe, then, to say that the products 

 of grape culture will at no distant day have 

 an important commercial value, as respects our 

 foreign trade. They already have a very con- 

 siderable value in our internal trade ; for, not 

 to speak of the vast quantities of grapes that 

 are consumed for the table, it is an indisputable 

 fact that American wines, some of them con- 

 fessedly impure and of inferior quality, are to- 

 day selling in New- York for higher prices than 

 imported wines of better quality. This is an 

 anomaly, however, which must soon necessarily 

 disappear. The purchasers of these inferior 

 wines are not found among those who know what 

 a really pure and good wine is ; and there are 

 unmistakable indications that the public taste is 

 happily being educated up to that point where 

 pure and excellent wines will be the rule, and 

 impure and faulty ones the exception. There 

 we may safely leave the subject. 



Fears are sometimes expressed that grape 

 culture will soon be carried to excess ; that the 

 market will be overstocked, and prices, conse- 

 quently, cease to be remunerative. More than 

 fifteen years ago we heard the same fears ex- 



