196 RESOURCES OF CALIFORNIA. 
For'raisins the Mission grape is unsuited, because 1t is all 
juice and lacks meat. Again, we want various kinds of grapes 
to make different kinds of wine, and to give variety to our 
tables; and we wish also to have early and late grapes, so that 
our wine-making may extend through a long season, and that 
our tables may have grapes upon them from August to Decem- 
ber. The foreign grapes, it has been observed, are stronger to 
resist the frost than the Mission grape. The latter is there- 
fore doomed, if not to destruction, at least to a subordinate 
position. 
About two hundred varieties of grape are cultivated in Cali- 
fornia, including the most noted stocks of Spain, France, Ger- 
many, Hungary, and the Eastern states. Nearly all of them 
thrive, and it can scarcely be said authoritatively that any one 
of them has proved a failure. The Catawba and Isabella do 
well; the latter furnishing our finest table-grape for some 
tastes, while others prefer some of the Muscatels. 
The total number of grape-vines planted in vineyard in the 
state is about nine and a half millions, or ten thousand five 
hundred acres, of which more than one-third are in Los An- 
geles county. One-fifteenth of these may be foreign vines, of 
which one-half are in Sonoma county. There were probably 
two hundred thousand bearing vines in the state in 1848, and 
they still continue productive. Very little was done to increase 
their number until 1856, and then the business of grape-grow- 
ing and making wine for the market was commenced. The 
new vineyards then set out were planted with Mission grapes, 
the only variety of which cuttings in large quantities could be 
obtained. A few foreign vines had been imported in 1853, 
54, and ’55, by nurserymen, but there was little demand for 
them. When it became clear that California would produce 
wine largely, the foreign varieties came into demand. It was 
not until 1859 that the superiority of the foreign grapes as a 
class over the Mission grape was established by trial. 
The advantages of California for the cultivation of the grape 
are the following: 
