10 WINE AND VINEYARDS. 
twelve pounds of grapes selling for half a rupee, or about 
twenty cents. 
The attempt to introduce the vine into Normandy, with a 
view to supply that part of France with wine, has never suc- 
ceeded. Wine was cultivated in England in the middle ages 
by the monastic orders, and wine made from the grapes, but 
of an inferior quality, and was only abandoned when a superior 
article could with facility be imported from the south of Europe. 
_ Artificial heat was not applied to the production of grapes 
until the beginning of the last century, and are continued to 
be so produced for table use in the highest state of perfection 
both in England and in the Northern States. Grapes for the 
dessert are nowhere grown of so fine and delicate a quality as 
in hot-houses of England and the North, and when sold bring 
two or three times as much as those imported from Malaga or 
California. The same may be said of the pineapple, for the 
grape and the pineapple are the only fruit improved in p igh 
cacy and flavour by being cultivated under glass. 
Wine merchants and dealers, in the wine countries of Europe, 
generally announce the wines of certain years to be of superior 
quality, for to wines of particular and favourable years higher 
prices are affixed than to those of ordinary growths. This 
superior quality is attained by reason of a peculiarly favour- 
able season, when, the grape being brought to the highest state 
of perfection, the produce possesses qualities which are not 
attained in average seasons, so that in some particular seasons — 
the same vineyard produces wine worth two or three times its 
usual value, according as the season has been more or less 
propitious. Various circumstances of temperature and weather 
concur to produce this superiority; dry autumns are always 
essential to the production of good wine. The year 1811, as 
the svriter well recollects, was remarkable for the most bril- 
