1879 Facts About Champagne and Other Sparkling Wines

The Sparlcling Wines of the United States.

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single spring no fewer than 40,000 vines. These mission vines were mainly of two sorts, the one yielding a white grape with a inusky flavour, and the other a dark blue fruit. The latter was the favourite, doubtless from its produce bearing some resemblance to the red 'vines of Old Castile. From San Gabriel the planting of the vine extended from mission to missio~ until e~cp. owned its -patch of vineland. At the time of the arrival of the Americans in 1846 the smallest of these was five acres in extent, and others as mahy as thirty acres, and it is calculated the average yield was from 700 to 1,000 gallons of wine per acre. This was owing first to the exceeding richness of the soil, and secondly to its being well irrigated. If the ·cele– brated mission vine grown on one of the sunny slopes overlooking the lovely Montecito valley near Santa -Barbara on the blue Pacific had many fellows in the Fathers' vineyards, the above estimate can hardly be an exaggerated one. The stem of this vine, which is four feet four inches in circumference at the ground, rises eight feet before branching out. The branches, under which the country people are fond of dancing, and which are supported by fifty-two trellises, extend over more than 5,000 square feet. This monster vine produces annually from five to six tons of grapes, and one year it yieldecl no fewer than 7,000 bunches, each from one to four pounds in weigh t. It is irrigated by water from the hot springs, situated a few miles distant, and is believed to be from half to three-quarters of a century old. Viticulture and vinification languished in the United States until attention was called in 1826 to the catawba vine by Major Adlum, of Georgetown, near Washington, who thought that by so doing h e was conferring a greater benefit on his country than if he had liquidated its national debt. This vine, which is derived from the wild Vitis la"brusca, was first. planted on an extensive scale by Nicholas Longworth, justly looked upon as one of the founders of American viticulture, and gradually supplanted all others, remaining for many years the principal plant cultivated along the banks of the Ohio-the so-called