264 



Remarks on the prmcipal Rocks 



The paramount influence of the constituents of the 

 soil of a vineyard on the quality of the wine produced is 

 well known. In some of the best wine districts of France it 

 is no tmcommon occurrence to find two adjacent vineyards 

 both planted with the same kinds of vine, similarly cultivated, 

 and where all the operations of the vintage are conducted in 

 precisely the same manner, and yet the wine of one of these 

 vineyards remains totally distinct as regai'ds quality and 

 flavour from the wine of the other ; such variations being 

 entirely due to differences in the soils of the respective vine- 

 yards. It is also known that the application of certain kinds 

 of manure to vines will cause serious deterioration in the 

 quality and flavour of the wine produced in the following 

 season ; and sometimes the pristine quahty and flavour cannot 

 be regained for several vintages. The composition therefore 

 of any rock whose disintegration has formed the soil of any 

 vineyard must obviously exercise a most important influence 

 on the quality of the wine derived from the vineyard. Now 

 according to the best authorities I have been able to refer to, 

 the disintegration of clay slate produces a soil of unusual 

 excellence for vineyards. Thus, Dr. Adams in his remarks on 

 the rocks and soils of the celebrated Constantia Vineyard at 

 the Cape of Good Hope, has observed how well the vines 

 thrive in a soil produced by the decomposition of clay slate 

 and mixed with the fragments of it. 



Humboldt has stated that the vines of the schistose ranges, 

 in the valley of the Rhine, produce most excellent wine ; and 

 I am aware that the best wines of the province of Anjou, in 

 France, are obtained from vines grown on the same formation. 

 Albertus Magnus has also observed that the vine thrives un- 

 commonly well in earth mixed with fragments of slate. 



Some of the clay slates and schists near Melbourne are 

 accompanied by a fertile soil adapted for ordinary agriculture 

 or vine culture ; but more generally the schistose ranges in 

 the basin of the Yarra, eastward of its tributary the Plenty, 

 are not sufficiently accessible to be available for ordinary crops, 

 and are sometimes very barren. But I have occasionally 

 encountered within twenty-five miles of Melbourne, ranges 

 of dark clay slate that have furnished by disintegration, soil 

 now only supporting a dense stringy-bark forest, yet which 

 seems to me to be of the same nature as the soil of the cele- 

 brated vineyards on the dark-coloured schists of the Rhenish 

 Mountains. 



Very few of the vineyards of the counties of Cumberland 

 and Camden, in New South Wales, have been established on 



