304 
STATE AGRICULTUEAL SOCIETY. 
Portugal also produces plenty of excellent and pure wines, 
of which we know little, for hardly a drop is allowed to leave 
the country without being so strongly brandied as to lose its 
character as a wine, and become rather a spiritous liquor. 
Port wine is repeatedly dosed with spirits until it contains as much 
as twenty-four per cent, of alcohol. Fifteen years age is re¬ 
quired before it is fit to drink, not because the wine is slow to 
ripen, but because the spirit needs to remain fifteen years be¬ 
fore the disturbance it causes can subside and the antagonistic 
ingredients of the mixture harmonize. 
Notwithstanding bold and persistent assertions to the con¬ 
trary, it has been satisfactorily proven to your committee that 
the adulteration is made not to preserve the wine, but solely 
to make it sweet and stimulating. 
As America is destined to become a great wine-producing 
country, her people ought to be better acquainted than they 
are with the higher grades of foreign wines ; but they have as 
yet drank so little of these, that their standard of excellence 
remains comparatively low. Now, except in California, none 
of the European vines will grow in America, and we are com¬ 
pelled to search in our forests, and develop in nurseries and 
vineyards the varieties which are in the future to be our reli¬ 
ance for competing with foreign producers, and finally, it is to 
be hoped, emancipating ourselves from them altogether. Of 
course, then, the higher our standard of taste is, that is the 
higher our aim, the better will be our success. Our vine grow¬ 
ers have much more to learn of the character and quality of 
good wines than they have of cultivation and manufacture, for 
really, as to the preparation of the soil, planting, cultivating^ 
pruning and training the vines, gathering, selecting and press¬ 
ing the fruit, fermenting and keeping the wine (white wine, at 
least), our experienced vignerons have but little to learn of 
European rivals. 
Our American vineyards compare very well with those of 
France, and so do our cellars, presses and casks, so that an 
elaborate report on methods would be of but little benefit, and 
might even mislead, for there seems to be no one method in 
