800 FRUIT CULTURE IN FOREIGN COUNTRIES. 



sufficient to permit of the operation being completed in one day. The 

 " must " is left to ferment in the vats some eight days, and then de- 

 canted into barrels, which are not bunged until fermentation has stopped, 

 that is, forty or fifty days. 



As the producer generally sells his wine at once to the merchant, he 

 does not submit it to any of the many manipulations that take place in 

 the traders 7 cellars. 



The only practice in force is to sprinkle the top layer of the grapes in 

 the vats with a small quantity of plaster, which, it is claimed, gives to 

 the wine a better color and a slight degree of astringency necessary to 

 its preservation. 



J. S. MARTIN, 



Vice-consul. 



UNITED STATES CONSULATE, 



Marseilles, March 1, 1884. 



CHAMPAGNE. 



REPORT BY CONSUL FR1SBIE, OF RHEIHS. 

 [Republislied from Consular Reports No. 41^.] 



I have the honor to acknowledge the receipt of Department's circular 

 dated December 4, 1883, with interrogatories regarding grape culture, 

 methods of cultivation, etc., in the best conducted vineyards, and the 

 method in practice for raisin culture ; which interrogatories have been 

 prepared and submitted at the request of some of the leading fruit- 

 growers of California. I realize that the subject is one of considerable 

 importance, and shall be glad if I can furnish anything of interest and 

 profit to the great industry centered in the cultivation of the vine in the 

 United States. In the first place, however, I am estopped from giving 

 any information regarding raisin culture from the fact that no grapes 

 are grown in this consular district for that purpose, the climate and 

 soil not being suitable. 



The vineyards here are cultivated and the grapes grown for the ex- 

 clusive purpose of manufacturing champagne sparkling wine,^the best 

 growths always being used for that purpose, the manufacture of table 

 and dessert wines for commercial purposes having entirely ceased in the 

 champagne district. 



Recognizing the importance of the cultivation of the vine and the 

 manufacture of its product to a large class of cultivators in the United 

 States, soon after my arrival at this consulate I began an earnest study 

 of the subject, and in the spring of 1882 I communicated to the Depart- 

 ment, in three separate reports, the results of my investigations, which 

 were soon after published in the monthly consular reports. In those 

 reports I wrote all there was to be written on the subject, in so far as I 



