

i**s-. 



160 



THE ILLIIS^OIS F^HIMEII. 



Catawba Wine. 



Editor Farmer: After the close of 

 our late State Fair at Centralia, I in- 

 tended to write a fcAV lines to you ; 

 sickness, however, interfered and delay- 

 ed it until now ;• yet I hope that what I 

 shall have to say, will not be considered 

 too late, nor too personal or local, to 

 to give it a place in your valuable 

 paper. 



At that fair I was the only exhibitor 

 of Catawba wine; my wine was passed 

 by as unworthy of notice by the com- 

 mittee appointed to pass judgment on 

 articles belonj^ing to that class; and 

 now, wdth the intention to vindicate the 

 quality of my wine, I will state a few 

 facts, which tend to show that the com- 

 mittee did not understand much of a 

 good, pure, still Catawba wine. I shall 

 not rely on my jiidgment, nor on that 

 of other competent persons, "connois- 

 seurs" who are ready and willing to 

 give certificates and make affidavits, if 

 desired. I shall be satisfied to state 

 facts, which are generally known here, 

 and shall at the same time give a short 

 history of my experience in grape cul- 

 ture. 



For the last seven or eight years I 

 have been engaged in the cultivation of 

 the grape, and have devoted to it much 

 care and money. My vineyard is in the 

 eastern part of St. Clair county in the 

 Lookingglass prairie, on the southern 

 declivity of a gentle hill which rises 

 some 80 or 100 feet above the level of 

 the prairie, and Avhose summit is covered 

 with a dense growth of forest trees, and 

 which affords to my grapevines protec- 

 tion against the severe northern winds, 

 which come here sweeping over 40 or 50 

 miles of level prairie, with nothing to 

 break their fury. My ground has all 

 been trenched with the spade two feet 

 deep, and the vines are planted five feet 

 by six and are trained to stakes. I have 

 not been successful as to the quantity of 

 the wine which I raised, but its quality 

 appeared to compensate me for the de- 

 fect in quantity. In the fall of 1855, 

 from one acre of bearing vineyard I ob- 

 tained 200 gallons of wine ; I kept some 

 of it for my own use, and sold the bal- 

 lance to a wine merchant here at ^3,00 

 per gallon. In 1856 I made not more 

 than 60 gallons of wine, which I sold to 

 the same wine merchant at the same 

 price of $3,00 per gallon. Last fall 

 (1857) I had four acres of vineyard in 

 good bearing condition, which yielded 

 between 600 and 700 gallons of wine, 

 which I have sold also to the wine mer- 

 chant here at ^2,50 per gallon. Here 

 it may be proper to state, for those who 

 do not know it, that the Catawba grape 

 has been cultivated for a number of 

 years to a considerable extent in this 

 county of St. Clair, and in the adjoining 



county of Monroe, and that in 1857 in 

 the former county not less than 20,000 

 or 30,000 gallons of wine have been pro- 

 duced, and that in the latter county of 

 Monroe the yield must have been much 

 larger, reaching up to near 100,000 gal- 

 lons. Native wine was therefore plenty 

 last year, and, in compai'ison to former 

 years, cheap ; a good article of pure 

 Catawba wine could be bought by the 

 barrel or cask at $1,00 to §1,50 per 

 gallon ; and the wine merchants, who 

 generally know pretty well what they 

 do, would not have paid me $2,50 per 

 gallon for my wine if they had not con- 

 sidered it a superior article. My wine 

 has one rival only in quality and price : 

 it is the wine raised by Mr. Valentine 

 Huff", in his vineyard near Belleville. Mr. 

 Huff is a practical vinedresser and his 

 vineyard deserves to be pointed out as a 

 model to all who intend to ena;a";e in the 

 cultivation of the grape. Our wines 

 have been rivals at our county fairs for 

 the last three years, carrying away the 

 first premiums alternately, and not a 

 week passes, without their respective 

 merits being made the subject of private 

 investigation, and of animated discus- 

 sion between ourselves and our wines' 

 respective friends ; yet we have not ar- 

 rived at a final conclusion as to which of 

 the two wines is the best, but do not des- 

 pair nor give out, and intend to renew 

 our meetings for that purpose with una- 

 bated zeal at regular intervals. Mr. 

 Huff', however, has the advantage over 

 me, that his vineyard combines quantity 

 with quality: he pressed last year (1857) 

 from the grapes of about five acres of 

 vineyard upwards of 8,000 gallons of the 

 aforesaid wine ! 



I make these statements as a justifi- 

 cation or excuse for sending a sample of 

 my wine to our late State fair for exhi- 

 bition, and taking it (6 bottles) out of the 

 best cask which graced my cellar. The 

 agricultural and other papers published 

 in the State, and the published Report 

 of the Illinois State Agricultural Society 

 have of late said so much on the culti- 

 vation of the grapevine, as promising in 

 a few years to become a new and im- 

 portant branch of agriculture and indus- 

 try, that I supposed it would receive at 

 the fair a due and corresponding atten- 

 tion, and that the committee on wines 

 and fermented liquors had been selected 

 with a view, to encourage and do justice 

 to it. I was sadly disappointed. The 

 awarding committee evidently was not 

 composed of qualified judges of pure 

 new wines, and before they tasted the 

 Catawba wine they had spent their time 

 and spoiled their judgment by devoting 

 three hours to tasting sweetened com- 

 pounds exhibited under divers names as 

 wines. It is true, two gentlemen whom 

 I personally knew to be well qualified to 

 act on such a committee, and originally 



appointed members of it, failed to attend 

 at the fair ; yet their vacant places 

 ought to have been filled by others 

 equally well qualified, and this it appears 

 was not done. It is to be regretted 

 that the winegrowers had not taken 

 more interest in the fair and sent in 

 more samples for exhibition ; a compari- 

 son of different wines would have been a 

 great help to the committee to find out 

 the difference in quality; as it was, it 

 was the more difficult and at the same 

 time the more necessary to do jus- 

 tice to the wine on exhibition and there- 

 by to encourage the cultivation of the 

 grape. If that had been done, we 

 might expect at our next fair fifty or 

 even a hundred different samples of 

 wine on exhibition ; now I doubt whether 

 there will be any. I for one shall not 

 again throw aAvay my pearling wine to 

 such an awarding committee. If at our 

 next fair the evil will be remedied, the 

 object of this, my communication, is at- 

 tained ; if it passes unnoticed, as such 

 communications generally do, nothing 

 will be lost except the space in the Illi- 

 nois Farmer, which might have been 

 filled with something more useful. ^ 



Th. Engelmann. 

 St. Clair County, Oct., 1858. 

 «» 



The Great Object of Education. 



Self-instruction is the one great object 

 of rational education. In mind as well 

 as body we are children at first, only 

 that we may afterwards become men ; 

 dependent upon others, in order that we 

 may learn from them such lessons as 

 may tend eventually to our edification 

 on an independent basis of our own. 

 The knowledge of facts, or what is gen- 

 erally called learning, however much we 

 may possess of it, is useful so far only 

 as we erect its materials into a mental 

 framework ; but useless so long as we 

 suffer it to lie in a heap, inert and with- 

 out form. The instruction of others, 

 compared with self-instruction, is like 

 law compared with faith ; a discipline of 

 preparation, beggarly elements, a school- 

 master to lead us on to a state of greater 

 worthiness, and there give up the charge 

 of us. — Bulwer. 



Sheep Raising. 

 Editor niiiiois Farmer: There is, 

 probably, no better way to bring any 

 subject of agriculture before the public 

 than to give them a few facts and figures 

 of the cost and keeping and also of the 

 profit of the same. And in reply to an 

 editorial in the September number of 

 the Farmer, in which my name was 

 mentioned in regard to wool growing, I 

 will give you an estimate on one thou- 

 sand ewes, Avorth three dollars per 

 head. I am aware that several have en- 

 gaged in the business and made a fall- 

 lure of it, and, of course, have come to 



