THE VINE AND CIVILISATION. 63 
falls behind —is it want of care, is it want of selection; are 
the different sorts of grapes kept distinct before being thrown 
into the vats for pressure? Is care taken of selecting the 
finest and ripest grapes, called by the French first crue, and 
picking them from the stems, excluding the unripe or imper- 
fect berries; and are the same precautions taken in the treat- 
ment of the wine as practiced by those great master wine 
producers of the Garonne and the Rhine? That wine has been 
made of satisfactory quality in California a few connoisseurs 
at St. Louis have positive proof in an article of red California 
wine, ten years in bottle, as positively no way inferior to a 
fair quality of Burgundy, both in bouquet and flavour; but 
the exact spot of its production in California is unknown. If 
such wine can be produced once it can be produced again in 
favourable seasons, and a reliable article would always com- 
mand a high price. : 
Mr. Boucicault, the comedian and dramatic writer, was 
recently in San Francisco, and is reported to have remarked, 
holding a glass of claret between his eye and the light: ‘‘In 
furnishing their tables it is, in my opinion, not giving native 
products a fair chance; you have qualities in your wines, in 
your fruits, and even your meats, that are racy of your soil 
and belong to the climate. I am sorry though (sipping his 
claret with the air of a gourmet) that California has had a set 
back in her wine yield this season, just as she was coming to 
the front on merit. But better luck next time. Your grape 
vine is as capricious as a woman, and like a daughter of Eve 
has its changing moods. We must humour it; but I hope 
your vignerons will in this respect rid themselves of the vice 
of imitation I mentioned, and put their products on the market 
on their own merits, just as the wine growers of the Cape 
Colony do. You cannot make port in California as they can 
