2Q4 THE CULTURE OF THE GRAPE. 



ingredients must be used." He is in the habit of adding 

 " a plenty of sugar, or brandy, or both," with these in- 

 gredients. Mr. "Weller makes a fine wine with grapes 

 which are partly unripe ; this is what he says of it : 

 " Made, September seventeenth, thirty-three gallons, 

 composed as follows — of five bushels of "White Scupper- 

 nong grapes, Tialf green ones, two bushels of Purple 

 Scuppernong, two and a half bushels of common or 

 bunch grapes of the woods ; fermented, after mashing 

 (with a machine of two wooden rollers,) two hours ; juice 

 strained through folds of a woolen blanket, as it run 

 from the press ; twenty pounds of common brown sugar 

 then added, and eight gallons of good apple brandy, and 

 turned into a new cask, fumigated with a sulphur match." 

 This wine " sold readily, after being racked off, for two 

 dollars a gallon, under the name of "Weller's Scuppernong 

 Champaigne." He further says of the quality: "My 

 wine, with no other ingredient than sugar, or pure spirit, 

 ever added, circulated in this region, and other parts of 

 our country, is pronounced by the best judges to be 

 more unequivocally pleasant, healthful, and medicinal, 

 than any foreign. Persons in delicate health have found 

 essential benefit from its use ; and, I add, that the wine 

 made with pure spirits, as a medicated medicine, is more 

 generally approved, than that made with sugar." 



Mr. "Weller's plan of planting and training has been, 

 to plant the vines, the Scuppernong, twenty feet apart, 

 and other kinds, ten ; " to lead them up on posts, six or 

 eight feet high, and then sideways, on trellises and scaf- 

 folding, so that, at length, underneath the canopies, no- 

 thing is to be seen, for six or eight feet from the ground, 



