PROCEEDINGS OP TWENTY-SIXTH FRUIT-GROWERS' CONVENTION. 63 



with the cultivation and production of vineyards and wine; but the 

 lines along which I think the production of wine should be followed in 

 California should be entirely free and devoid of sentiment and the 

 policy be dictated entirely by the grosser purposes of commercialism. 

 California, in my opinion, already produces the best wine in the world. 

 As a people we have not that patience which would induce us to build 

 expensive cellars and to there store and age the wines for a long period 

 of years, to be afterwards brought out and sold by our children, or per- 

 haps our grandchildren, for their profit. What we want to produce is 

 a wine that is cheap enough and good enough, so that the humblest 

 laborer can have it on his table in competition with beer, coffee, and 

 milk. 



Wine-Making. — The wine of California is the best wine in the world 

 for the same reason that we produce better results in all other lines of 

 manufacture. We have a climate and soil equal to any for the 

 production of good grapes. The manufacture of wine is a question of 

 intelligence and mechanical handling. The old idea that around the 

 making of wine there was some mysterious juggling not to be under- 

 stood excepting through ages of hereditary knowledge is false. Fermenta- 

 tion is a matter of chemical study. The care and preservation of wines 

 are also matters of intelligent understanding and germ annihilation. 



Our wine is as far superior to the wine made by the old and anti- 

 quated methods of foreign countries as our other products are superior, 

 on account of the better machinery and better facilities which we have. 

 It is only necessary for an observer to go into one of the well-ordered 

 wineries of California with its modern machinery, where nothing scarcely 

 is seen of the grape from the time it enters the crusher until the pomace 

 is carted away, and then to have him go into some winery of Europe^ 

 where wine is yet being tramped by the feet from the grape, where the 

 pomace is handled in tubs, and where the general smell of acetic acid 

 and decaying grape stems permeates the whole place, to understand why 

 this is so. 



Resistant Vines. — The wine-makers of the State, in order to keep up 

 their production, are now planting resistant vines in large acreages. 

 The three principal localities where wine has been produced in Cali- 

 fornia are Sonoma, Napa, and Santa Clara counties. In each of these 

 three counties the phylloxera has made such inroads that it has in 

 many instances destroyed the principal vineyards, and it is only a ques- 

 tion of time, and a short time, when the present vineyards will all have 

 been a thing of the past. In Napa County, where the phylloxera first 

 appeared a number of years ago, the planting of resistant stock has been 

 going on for a number of years, but not attended with very satisfactory 

 results. In many cases where the right kind of resistant stock was 



