1879 Facts About Champagne and Other Sparkling Wines

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Champagne and Other Sparlcling Wines.

it is said that as early as 1564 wine was made from the native grape in Florida. The first attempts to establish a r egular vineyard date, however, from 1620, and would seem to have been made in Virginia with European vines, the prospects having become sufficiently encouraging in 1630 for the colonists to send for French vine-dressers to tend their plants.. The latter were su?sequently accused of ruining the vines by their bad treat– ment, but most likely this was an error, it having since been made evident that European vines cannot be successfully culti– vated east of the Rocky Mountains, where the pbylloxera vastatrix prevails. It was in vain that William P enn made r epeated attempts to acclimatise Emopean vines in P enn– sylvania, that the Swiss emigrants- vine-growers from the Lake of Geneva-made similar trials, they having expended ten thousand dollars to no purpose. In vain, in Jessamine county, K entuc1.7, Pierre Legaud laboured in the environs of Phila– delphia, and Lakanal, the member of the French Convention, experimented in Tennessee, Ohio, and Alabama ; all their efforts to introduce the Old World vines proved futile. The attempts that were made by Swiss settlers at Vevay, in Indiana, with the indigenous plants were more successful, and after a time they managed to produce some palatable wine from the Schuylkill muscatel. Towards the latter part of the 18th century the Mission Fathers had succeeded in planting vineyards in California. It is known that in 1771 the vine was cultivated there, and the San Gabriel Mission in the county of Los Angeles, some 300 miles S.E. of San Francisco, is said to have possessed the first -vineyard. A prevalent belief is, that the vines were from roots or cuttings obtained from either Sp1tin or Mexico, but it is also ·Conjectured that they wer e some of the wild varieties known to be scattered over the country, while a third theory suggests that as attempts to make wine from the wild grapes would most likely have proved a failure, the Fathers planted the seeds of raisins which had come from Spain. The culture must have progressed Tapidly, if, as stated, there were planted at San Gabriel in a