f 
—_ 
On Colonial Wines. | 69 
If we take the yield of Victoria as returned in the above 
table, as the minimum of our produce, and also the returns 
from New South Wales and South Australia, the total 
recorded quantity in gallons for 1866 will be as under :— 
Wictoria .., aes iis .. 195,953 gallons. 
New South Wales ... we Se ermhGSs 1234.55 
South Australia... ae. Beer arse eos meee 
1,204,055 
Suppose the whole produce of the three principal wine 
colonies of Australia to be available for the population of 
Victoria, who shall be imagined to have become suddenly 
enraptured with colonial wine, and must have it as long as 
a drop remained, the quantity ‘above stated as obtained from 
reliable records would supply us with a trifle less than fifteen 
pints—say a dozen bottles each. 
Allowing a very moderate supply to the adult population, 
and omitting tee-totallers and children, I calculate it would 
not suffice for one month! and that we should have to go 
eleven months of the year without one drop obtainable for 
love or money. 
I venture now to draw ie modest conclusion, that for 
_many years to come, we of Victoria are unlikely, with all our 
natural advantages, to supply our own needs. I have been 
repeatedly assured that a single wine store in Great Bourke- 
street, soldin one day more than 500 quart bottles during the 
last summer; and that the Australian Wine Company dis- 
posed of upwards of 15,000 gallons, chiefly in small 
quantities, rarely exceeding quarter casks, during the same 
time ; and at rates seldom exceeding one shilling. per quart 
bottle. 
So far then as the instimct and taste of our people. are 
concerned, nothing can be more hopeful; and so far as the 
prospect of adequately gratifying it goes, nothing looks more 
disheartening ; for the planting of the vine is not progress- 
ing at all in the ratio in which it might be expected. 
Whilst on this topic, perhaps for the last time in my life, 
permit me to add a fervent hope, that the evidences afforded 
by the Exhibition, the results of the jurors soon to be in the 
hands of the public, and these little investigations of mine, 
may influence another important element in vineyard form- 
ing and wine-making, viz., the monetary. The time has 
now surely arrived when this produce will be treated like 
any other, and advances of money made upon it, just as on 
coals or wool. 
