Naboth's vineyard

“ If you have never eaten grapes in a vineyard, perhaps you don't know how fastidious and dainty you become, how you take one grape here, one there, select the finest from a cluster, then toss the remainder into the basket. Deliciously cool and fresh, with a wonderful bloom on them, were they, and, together with the crisp autumn air, the busy bare-headed peasants working in all the vineyards as far as we could see, Untertürkheim lying under the hill, and the little bridge across the narrow Neckar, they filled us with an innocent sort of intoxication. ”

“ With a single mighty impulse the vines took deep hold of the treasure in the storehouse beneath, spending it prodigally for sap to be poured into these waiting goblets of emerald and pearl. All the hoarded strength of leaf and tendril was caught up by the current, and swept blindly onward to its fruitful destiny.
And so the first faint hints of purple came into the tapestry, to spread and deepen and [Pg 310] divide and spread again until, in certain lights, the vineyard lay transfigured in an amethystine glow. ”

“ It is difficult to realise in the Médoc that the best wine in the world is made in places where there is no tall chimney or hideous range of manufactories. All that one sees is a two-storey country-house, with pointed towers at each end, standing in green vineyard slopes, with somewhere in the background a group of inoffensive and often picturesque houses, painted pink, or some other frivolous colour, and not taking up as much room as the stables and yards at big houses in England. It is the extraordinary independence of grapes that gives this simplicity in wine-making. ”

“ The only romantic delight ever known to the good father, was his vineyard—a small one that he had planted himself amongst the myrtles of Château-Neuf, a few kilometres from Avignon.
Every Sunday, after vespers, this decent man went to pay court to the vineyard. As he sat in fine sunshine, his mule close by, his cardinals sprawled out under the vines, he opened a bottle of vintage wine—a fine wine, the colour of rubies, which has been known ever since as Château-Neuf du Pape—which he liked to sip while looking fondly at his vineyard. ”

“ If I should live to keep up my little specimen vineyard ten years longer, perhaps the greater part of the varieties now cultivated will have given place to others. The delicious Brighton requires no more space than a sour, defective variety; while the proprietor starts with the best kinds he can obtain, he will find no restraint beyond his own ignorance or carelessness that will prevent his replacing the Brighton with a variety twice as good when it is developed. Thus vine-planting and grape-tasting stretch away into an alluring and endless vista. ”

“ The vineyard of the late Miss Austin is yet in its prime, the evergreen trees and hedges being as inviting as in days of old. New vineyards which have not yet come into bearing are seen on every side, while in places whole orchards or single rows of trees have yielded to the axe to be replaced by the better-paying raisin-vines. ”

“ It is safe to say that during the summer no weeds should be allowed to grow in the vineyard, and, as long as any of them are left, the soil should, if possible, be cultivated. Every weed acts like a chimney for the moisture in the soil, which it sucks out to the detriment of the vine, while weeds which grow in among the branches of the vines will also seriously interfere with the picking of the grapes. ”

“ To come to the Temple of the Holy Bottle we were to go through a large vineyard, in which were all sorts of vines, as the Falernian, Malvoisian, the Muscadine, those of Taige, Beaune, Mirevaux, Orleans, Picardent, Arbois, Coussi, Anjou, Grave, Corsica, Vierron, Nerac, and others. This vineyard was formerly planted by the good Bacchus, with so great a blessing that it yields leaves, flowers, and fruit all the year round, like the orange trees at Suraine. ”

“ With varieties that do not root so readily, as the Delaware and Norton's Virginia, it will seldom be successful, and should not be practiced. The vineyard may thus be made to pay expenses, and furnish the vines for further plantations the first year. They are taken up and divided in the fall, as directed in the chapter for layers. In the fall, prune the vine to three buds, if strong enough, to one or two if it has only made a weak growth. A fair growth is from four to five feet the first summer. ”

“ She sighed and turned her face away. The colour vanished from her cheeks, the youth from her figure. Pensively, she gazed across the valley to the vineyard, where the black, [Pg 6] knotted vines were blurred against the soil in the fast-gathering twilight. His eyes followed hers.
Rosemary
"I hate them," he said, passionately. "I wish I'd never seen a grape!"
"Were the children bad to-day?" she asked, irrelevantly.
"Of course. Aren't they always bad? What's the use of caging up fifty little imps and making 'em learn the multiplication table when they don't even aspire to the alphabet? ”

“ I visited, among others, the Le Franc vineyard, which dates from 1851, and is the pioneer in making wine-growing a regular industry. Here are about a hundred and seventy-five thousand vines, set out a thousand, perhaps, to the acre. The large, cheerful farm buildings are upon a gentle rise of ground above the area of vines, which is nearly level. An Alsacian foreman showed us through the wine-cellars. A servant-maid bustling about the yard was a thorough French peasant, only lacking the wooden shoes. ”

“ For the curing of the grapes, thirty thousand trays or more are needed, while a separate packing-house and tray-shed are prominent features of the vineyard. The land was all leveled with great care before planting, and every check can be flooded if necessary. The soil is the very richest, being the chocolate-colored loam, which in Fresno is considered the best and strongest soil for Muscat grapes. The location of the vineyard is the old sink of Red Bank creek, in the same district where Forsyth’s and Butler’s vineyards are situated. ”

“ It is pretty and bright, with many things to interest and amuse; but it is in the villages dotted along the south side of the lake that the real life of the people is to be seen.
These villages are surrounded by vineyards. The grapes are gathered in October, when the whole scene is very animated and gay. Every one—men, women, children, even the ox-waggons of the country—is pressed into the service, and the vineyards resound with songs and laughter. From these grapes a red wine is made. It is the ambition of every peasant to own a small vineyard and a boat. ”

“ I must say that all the settlers I had occasion to speak to were raisin-growers, but I should warn any future wine-grower at Mildura, who may chance to read these few notes, to beware of short pruning.
"Most of our vineyard labourers come from the cold parts of Europe, such as Switzerland, where grapes ripen with difficulty under ordinary circumstances, and where the vine does not take any considerable development. There, short pruning has to be resorted to in order to make a drinkable wine. ”

“ Some tolerable wine has been made from the native vines, which do not ripen so early in the season as those transplanted from Europe; and perhaps in some future day, when the planters have acquired greater skill, and made trials of different soils and situations, the vineyard culture may succeed better than it has yet done, and turn to some national account, like other profitable articles of American husbandry. ”

“ We travel constantly eastward; on both sides are raisin vineyards, large and small. The four hundred acres owned by the Fresno Vineyard Company are devoted to wine grapes, and large wineries and cellars built of adobe show the wealth and extensive business of the place. No vacant land anywhere, nothing but vineyards, the only breaks being groves of trees shading the homes, wine cellars or packing-houses of the proprietor. Farther to the north lies in an unbroken row the well-known Eisen vineyard, where the first raisins were made in this district, but where now principally wine is produced ”

“ They injure the bunches rapidly. They must be watched and searched for with lamps, by night, and destroyed. [72] He says the native vines will not do to graft good kinds of grapes on: he has tried it often, without success. Grape vines grafted on the same kinds do well, yet they are a different tree, being dioic, while the vineferous kinds are hermaphrodites. I have found the same wild vines in Switzerland, and the kind called sour grapes makes pretty good wines; but are a smaller bearer than the grape vines. They are in Morerod's vineyard, at Glasgow, Kentucky. ”

“ Barnyard manure can be safely used in a vineyard at the beginning of the rainy season, working it in with the plowing, but not using too much. Wine grapes are sometimes injuriously affected in flavor by the use of such fertilizer, but the growth of the vine itself can be stimulated by the rational use of it. ”

“ Any woman might undertake vine culture and she need have no reaching or climbing, which I heard one lady say was her objection when I suggested fruit growing as an occupation for women. The grape requires well drained land, it must have specially good under drainage. A sandy soil is the best, and it need not be particularly rich so long as it is drained well. The side of a hill with a westerly aspect makes a good vineyard, and on a trellis is the best manner of training the vines. ”

“ A vineyard is busily tilthed and kept, and purged and cleaned of superfluities, and oft visited and overseen of the earth tilthers and keepers of vines, that it be not apaired neither destroyed with beasts, and is closed about with walls and with hedges, and a wait is there set in a high place to keep the vineyard that the fruit be not destroyed. And is left in winter without keeper or waiter, but in harvest time many come and haunt the vineyard. ”

“ The vines planted in these enclosures thrive admirably, and the grapes produced by them are among the best grown in France. The dunes are so far from being an unfavorable soil for the vine, that fresh sea-sand is regularly employed as a fertilizer for it, alternating every other season with ordinary manure. The quantity of sand thus applied every second year, raises the surface of the vineyard about four or five inches. The vines are cut down every year to three or four shoots, and the raising of the soil rapidly covers the old stocks. ”

“ The produce of a particular vineyard, although from the same species of grape, cultivated under precisely similar conditions, will differ materially in flavour and bouquet, not merely in bad and good years, but in vintages of equal excellence. Moreover, these wines need the most skilful cellar treatment during the long years they are maturing. All great wines, it should be remembered, ripen slowly, and cannot be ‘pasturised’ into perfection—that is to say, cannot be rapidly matured by heating them to a certain temperature, as ordinary wines may be. ”

“ I do not know why the workers' shacks around the vineyard should remain idle practically all the time—there must be others in damp cellars in that crowded city who have become diseased, and who could be healed by the pure cold air up among my ancestral pines. ”

“ Eight tons of grapes off one acre have been taken in the Baldwin ranch. There were made there, in 1881, 100,000 gallons of wine and 50,000 of brandy. The vintage begins late in August, and lasts many weeks, some varieties of grapes ripening later than others. The vineyards are thronged with Mexican and Indian pickers. The Indians come in bands, and pitch their tents just outside the vineyard. They are good workers. The wine-cellars and the great 17 crushing-vats tell the vineyards' story more emphatically even than the statistical figures. ”

“ The glass walls and roof protect the vineyard from storm, cold, frost and superfluous rain. A fine wire netting, spread over roof and walls, affords protection from hail. The artificial rain contrivance is a safeguard against drought. The wine-grower in such a vineyard makes his own weather and can mock the dangers of all the incalculable whims and treacheries of indifferent or cruel nature that threaten with ruin the fruit of the wine-grower’s toil and care.”
Mr. Haupt’s expectations were fully realized. The vines thrived splendidly in the even temperature. ”

“ Richard Nash, we formed a Vineyard Society, the object being to prepare and trench a nursery for vines, to procure a collection of the choicest varieties, to preserve their names and identity, and to distribute them gratis to all who engaged to plant them in trenched ground. Some gentlemen reduced the rents of their lands to their tenants in proportion to the extent of their vineyards. ”

“ VIII. There be those who assert that the cost of maintaining a vineyard eats up the profit. What kind of vineyard? I ask. For there are several: in one the vines grow on the ground without props, as in Spain; in another, which is the kind common in Italy, the vines climb and are trained either separately on props or one with another on a trellis, which last is what is called marrying the vine. There are four kinds of trellis in use—made out of poles, of reeds, of ropes and of vines themselves, which are in use respectively in Falerum, in Arpinum, in Brundisium and in Mediolanum. ”

“ The first raisin vineyards were planted on the deepest and richest soil, the soil which would naturally hold out the longest, but the croppings of a raisin vineyard are enormous, and when from eight to ten tons of green grapes have been taken from the soil year after year, it is but natural that the land should become gradually exhausted. In Spain it is considered that even the richest soils require manuring after ten years of constant cropping with Muscats, and the same experience is likely to become ours in California. ”