CHAPTER IIAMERICAN GRAPES

“* * * they led the vineTo wed his elm; * * *.”Milton.

It is the vine which Noah planted after the deluge; the vine of Judah and Israel, and of the promised land. Dionysus of the Greeks, Bacchus of the Romans, found the grape and devoted his life to spreading it; for which he was raised to the rank of a deity—god of vines and vintages. The history of this grape is as old as that of mankind. It has followed civilized man from place to place throughout the world and is one of the chief cultivated plants of temperate climates. This fruit of sacred and profane literature has so impressed itself upon the human mind that when we think or speak of the grape, or vine, it is the Old World species, the vine of antiquity, that presents itself.

The history of the Old World grape goes back to prehistoric times. Seeds of the grape are found in the remains of the Swiss lake dwellings of the Bronze Period and entombed with the mummies of Egypt. Its printed history is as old as that of man and is interwritten with it. According to the botanists, the probable habitat ofVitis viniferais the region about the Caspian Sea.[1]From here it was carried eastward into Asia and westward into Europe and Africa. It is probable that the Phoenicians, the earliest navigators, tradesmen and colonizers on the Mediterranean, carried it to the countries bordering on this sea. Grape culture was developed in thisregion a thousand years before Christ, for Hesiod, who wrote at this time, gave directions for the care of the vine which need to be changed but little for present practice in Europe. Pliny, writing a thousand years after, quotes Hesiod as an authority on vine culture. Vergil and Pliny, during Christ’s time, gave specific directions for the care of the vine. Vergil describes fifteen varieties while Pliny gives even fuller descriptions of ninety-one varieties and distinguishes fifty kinds of wine.

The authentic written history of the grape and of its culture really begins with Vergil. Many other writers, Greeks and Romans, had discussed the vine, but none so fully nor so well as Vergil in his Georgics, of which the parts having to do with the vine may still be read with profit by the grape-grower; as, for example, the following[2]in which he tells how to cultivate and train:—

“Be mindful, when thou hast entomb’d the shoot,With store of earth around to feed the root;With iron teeth of rakes and prongs, to moveThe crusted earth, and loosen it above.Then exercise thy sturdy steers to plowBetween thy vines, and teach the feeble rowTo mount on reeds, and wands, and, upward led,On ashen poles to raise their forky head,On these new crutches let them learn to walk,’Till, swerving upwards with a stronger stalk,They brave the winds, and, clinging to their guide,On tops of elms at length triumphant ride.”[3]

His directions for pruning are equally fitting for present practice:—

“But in their tender nonage, while they spreadTheir springing leaves, and lift their infant head,And upward while they shoot in open air,Indulge their childhood, and the nurslings spare;Nor exercise thy rage on new-born life;But let thy hand supply the pruning knife,And crop luxuriant stragglers, nor be lothTo strip the branches of their leafy growth.But when the rooted vines with steady holdCan clasp their elms, then, husbandman, be boldTo lop the disobedient boughs, that strayedBeyond their ranks; let crooked steel invadeThe lawless troops, which discipline disclaim,And their surperfluous growth with rigor tame.”

The history of the development of the vine from Vergil’s time through the early centuries of the Christian Era and of the Middle Ages to our own day, is largely the history of agriculture in the southern European countries; for the vine during this period has been the chief cultivated plant of the Greek and Latin nations. This history should furnish most instructive lessons in grape-growing and in grape-breeding.

But interesting and profitable as a detailed account of the development of the Old World grape would be, the brief outline in the few preceding paragraphs must suffice for this work. The reader who desires further information may find it in the agricultural literature in many languages and dating back two thousand years.

What are the characters of the European grape and how does it differ from the native grapes of America? The Old World grape is grown for wine; the American grapes for the table. The differences in the fruit of the vines of the two continents are largely the differences necessary for the two distinct purposes for which they are grown. The varieties ofVitis viniferahave a higher sugar and solid content than do those of the American species. Because of this richness in sugar they not only make better wine but keep much longer and can be made into raisins. The American grapes do not keep well and do not make good raisins. Taken as a whole the European varieties are better flavored, possessing a more delicate and a richer vinous flavor, a more agreeable aroma, and they lack the acidity and somewhat obnoxious foxy odor and taste of many American varieties. It is true that there is a disagreeable astringency in some Vinifera grapes and that many varieties are without character of flavor, yet, all and all, the species produces by far the better flavored fruit. On the other hand,American table grapes are more refreshing; one does not tire of them so quickly as they do not cloy the appetite as do the richer grapes; and the unfermented juice makes a much more pleasant drink. The characteristic flavor and aroma of the varieties ofVitis labrusca, our most commonly cultivated native species, are often described by the terms “foxy”[4]or “musky.” If not too pronounced this foxiness is often very agreeable though, as with the flavor in many exotic fruits, the liking for it must often be acquired, and of course may never be acquired; yet the universal condemnation of this taste by the French and some other Europeans is sheer prejudice. The bunches and berries of the European grape are larger, more attractive in appearance, and are borne in greater quantity, vine for vine or acre for acre. The pulp and skin of the berries ofVitis viniferaare less objectionable than those of any native species and the pulp separates more easily from the seeds. The berries do not shell from the stem nearly so quickly, hence the bunches ship better.

In comparing the vines, those of the Old World grape are more compact in habit, make a shorter and stouter annual growth, therefore require less pruning and training. The roots are fleshier, and more fibrous. The species, taken as a whole, is adapted to far more kinds of soil, and to much greater differences in environment, and is more easily propagated from cuttings, than most of the species of American grapes. The cultivated forms of the wild vines of this country have few points of superiority over theirrelative from the eastern hemisphere, but these few are such as to make them now and probably ever the only grapes possible to cultivate in America in the commercial vineyards east of the Rocky Mountains. Indeed, but for the fortunate discovery that the vine ofVitis viniferacould be grown on the roots of any one of several species of the American grapes, the vineyards of the Old World grape would have been almost wholly destroyed within the last half century because of one of its weaknesses. This destructive agent is the phylloxera,[5]a tiny plant louse working on the leaf and root of the grape, which in a few years wholly destroys the European vine but does comparatively little harm to most of the American vines. Three other pests are much more harmful in the Old World vineyards than to the vines of the New World; these are black-rot (Guignardia bidwellii(Ell.) V. & R.), downy mildew (Plasmopara viticola(B. & C.) Berl. & De Toni), and powdery mildew (Uncinula necator(Schw.) Burr.).

The susceptibility of the Old World grape to these parasites debars it from cultivation in eastern America and so effectually that there is but little hope of any pure-bred variety of it ever being grown in this region. American viticulture must, therefore, depend upon the native species for its varieties, though it may be hoped that by combining the good qualitiesof the foreign grape with those of one or several of the species of this country, or by combining and rearranging the best characters of the native species, we may in time secure varieties equal in all respects to those of the Old World. The comparative resistance of the American species to the phylloxera, the mildews, and black-rot has been due to natural selection in the contest that has been waged for untold ages between host and parasite. The fact that the native species have been able to survive and thrive is a guarantee of the permanence of the resistance thus acquired.

We have said that the Old World grape is debarred from cultivation in eastern America. It is worth while considering how thorough the attempts to grow it in this region have been and to give a more exact account of the failures and their causes, for there are yet those who are attempting its culture with the hope that we may sometime grow some offshoot ofVitis viniferain the region under consideration.

It is probable that the first European grapes planted in what is now American soil, were grown by the Spanishpadresat the old missions in New Mexico, Arizona and California. Early accounts of some of these missions speak of grapes which must have been planted before settlements were made in eastern America. We need take no further account of these vineyards except to say that in this region the European grape has always been grown successfully, and that under the skilled hands of the mission fathers, ever notable vineyardists and wine-makers, these early plantings must have succeeded.

The English were the first to plant the Old World grape in the territory in which this species fails because of the attacks of native parasites. Lord Delaware seems to have been the original promoter of grape-growing in the New World. In 1616 he wrote to the London Company urging the culture of the grape as a possible source of revenue for the new colony.[6]His letter seems to have been convincing, for it is on record that the Company in 1619 sent a number of French vine-dressers and a collection of the bestvarieties of the grapes of France to Virginia. The Colonial Assembly showed quite as much solicitude in encouraging the cultivation of the vine as did the Company in London. The year of the importation of vines and vine-dressers, 1619, the Assembly passed an act compelling every householder to plant ten cuttings and to protect them from injury and stated that the landowners were expected to acquire the art of dressing a vineyard, either through instruction or by observation. The Company, to increase the interest in vine-growing, showed marked favors to all who undertook it with zealousness; promises of servants, the most valuable gifts that could be made to the colonists, were frequent. Under the impulse thus given vineyards were planted containing as many as ten thousand vines.[7]

In spite of a rich soil, congenial climate, and skilled vine-dressers, nothing of importance came from the venture, some of the historians of the time attributing the failure to the massacre of 1622; others to poor management of the vines; and still others to disagreements between the English and their French vine-dressers, who, it was claimed, concealed their knowledge because they worked as slaves. It is probable that the latter explanation was fanciful but the former must have been real for we are told that the farms and outlying settlements were abandoned after the great massacre. But the colony could hardly have recovered from the ravages of the Indians before efforts to force the colonists to grow grapes were again made; for in 1623 the Assembly passed a law that for every four men in the colony a garden should be laid off a part of which was to be planted to vines.[8]

In 1639 the Assembly again tried to encourage vine-growing by legislative enactment, this time with an act giving a premium to successful grape-growers.[9]Later, about 1660, a premium of ten thousand pounds of tobacco was offered in Virginia for each “two tunne of wine” from grapes raised in the colony. Shortly after, some wine was exported to England butwhether made from wild plants or cultivated ones does not appear. In spite of the encouragement of legislative acts, grape-growing did not flourish in Virginia.[10]The fact that tobacco was a paying crop and more easily grown than the grape may have had something to do with the failure to grow the latter. Or it may have been that the cheapness of Madeira, “a noble strong drink,” as one of the Colonial historians puts it, had a depressing influence on the industry. But still more likely, the foreign plants did not thrive.

Encouragement of the home production of wine did not cease in Virginia for at least one hundred and fifty years; for in 1769 an enactment of the Assembly was passed to encourage wine-making in favor of one Andrew Estave, a Frenchman. As a result of the act of this time, land was purchased, buildings erected, and slaves and workmen with a complete outfit for wine-making were furnished Estave. The act provided that if he made within six years ten hogsheads of merchantable wine—land, houses, slaves, the whole plant was to be given to him. It is stated that this unusual subsidy is made “as a reward for so useful an improvement.” Estave succeeded in making the wine but it was poor stuff and he had difficulty in getting the authorities to turn over the property which was to be his reward. This was finally done by an act of the Assembly, however, the failure to make good wine being attributed by all parties to the “unfitness of the land.”

An attempt was made to cultivate the European grape in Virginia early in the eighteenth century on an extensive scale. Soon after taking office as governor in 1710, Alexander Spotswood brought over a colony ofGermans from the Rhine and settled them in Spottsylvania County on the Rapidan river. The site of their village on this river is now marked by a ford, Germania Ford, a name which is a record of the settlement. That they grew grapes and made wine is certain, for the Governor’s “red and white Rapidan, made by his Spottsylvania Germans” is several times mentioned in the published journals and letters of the time. But the venture did not make a deep nor lasting impress on the agriculture of the colony.[11]

Several early attempts were made in the Carolinas and Georgia to grow the Vinifera grape. It was thought, in particular, that the French Huguenots who settled in these states in large numbers toward the close of the seventeenth century would succeed in grape-growing but even these skilled vine-growers failed. Their failures are recorded by Alexander Hewitt in 1779 as follows: “European grapes have been transplanted, and several attempts made to raise wine; but so overshaded are the vines planted in the woods, and so foggy is the season of the year when they ripen, that they seldom come to maturity, but as excellent grapes have been raised in gardens where they are exposed to the sun, we are apt to believe that proper methods have not been taken for encouraging that branch of agriculture, considering its great importance in a national view.” In Georgia, Abraham De Lyon, encouraged by the authorities of the colony, imported vines from Portugal and planted them at Savannah early in the eighteenth century but his attempt, though carried out on a small scale in a garden, soon failed.

In Maryland, if the records are correct, a greater degree of success was attained than in the states to the south. Lord Charles Baltimore, son of the grantee of the territory, in 1662 planted three hundred acres of land in St. Mary’s to vines. It is certain that he made and sold wine in considerable quantities and the old chroniclers report that it was as good as the best Burgundy. Efforts to grow the European grape in Maryland continued until as late as 1828 when theMaryland Society for Promoting the Culture of the Vinewas incorporated by the State Legislature.[12]The object of the Society was to “carry on experiments in the cultivation of both the European and native grapes and to collect and disseminate allpossible information upon this interesting subject.” The organization was in existence for several years and through its exertions practically all of the native sorts were tried in or about Baltimore as well as many seedlings. Besides the achievements of the Society as a body, their Secretary reports in 1831 that, through the individual efforts of its members, there were then under cultivation near the city of Baltimore several vineyards of from three to ten acres each and a great number of smaller ones. This was several years after the introduction of the Catawba and Isabella for which grape-growers in other parts of the United States had largely given up the Vinifera sorts. Seemingly in every part of the Union the grape of the Old World was tried, not once only, but time and again before its culture could be given up.

The Swedes made some attempts at an early day to grow grapes on the Delaware. Queen Christina instructed John Printz, governor of New Sweden, to encourage the “culture of the vine” and to give the industry his personal attention. Later when New Sweden had become a part of Pennsylvania, William Penn encouraged vine-growing by importing cuttings of French and Spanish vines; and several experimental vineyards were set out in the neighborhood of Philadelphia, but all efforts to establish bearing plantations came to naught. Penn’s interest in grape-growing seems to have been greatly stimulated by wine made by a friend of his from native grapes which grew about Germantown.

There are no detailed accounts of grape-growing by the Dutch of New York but the following taken from the writings of Jasper Dankers and Peter Sluyter, two Hollanders who visited New York in 1679, soon after the English took possession of New Netherland, indicates that there had been attempts to cultivate grapes.[13]“I went along the shore to Coney Island, which is separated from Long Island only by a creek, and around the point, and came inside not far from a village calledGravesant, and again home. We discovered on the roads several kinds of grapes still on the vines, calledspeck(pork) grapes, which are not always good, and these were not; although they were sweet in the mouth at first, they made it disagreeable and stinking. The small blue grapes are better, and theirvines grow in good form. Although they have several times attempted to plant vineyards, and have not immediately succeeded, they, nevertheless, have not abandoned the hope of doing so by and by, for there is always some encouragement, although they have not, as yet, discovered the cause of the failure.” The “speck” grape was without questionVitis labruscaand the small blue grape was probablyVitis riparia.

Thirty years before the visit of Dankers and Sluyter the people of New Netherland addressed a remonstrance to the home government regarding certain abuses in the colony. This document[14]is headed with a chapter on the productions of New Netherland in which the wild grapes are mentioned and their cultivation is suggested. “Almost the whole country, as well the forest as the maize lands and flats, is full of vines, but principally—as if they had been planted there—around and along the banks of the brooks, streams and rivers which course and flow in abundance very conveniently and agreeably all through the land. The grapes are of many varieties; some white, some blue, some very fleshy and fit only to make raisins of; some again are juicy, some very large, others on the contrary small; their juice is pleasant and some of it white, like French or Rhenish Wine; that of others, again, a very deep red, like Tent; some even paler; the vines run far up the trees and are shaded by their leaves, so that the grapes are slow in ripening and a little sour, but were cultivation and knowledge applied here, doubtless as fine Wines would then be made as in any other wine growing countries.”

Nicolls, the first English governor of New York, greatly desired to grow the vine for wine-making. In 1664 he granted Paul Richards a monopoly of the industry for the colony stipulating that he could make and sell wines free of impost and gave him the right to tax any person planting vines in the colony five shillings per acre.[15]Richards lived in thecity of New York but his vineyard, as indicated in the grant, was located on Long Island. It may be assumed that this was the first attempt to grow grapes commercially in the State of New York. It would seem that the governor by granting a monopoly of the grape and wine industry took the surest means of killing the infant industry. The Earl of Bellomont, a later governor of the Colony, wrote to London with assurances of a great future of viticulture in the Colony.[16]For over a century after, there were spasmodic efforts to grow the Old World grape in and about New York City, and at the beginning of the Revolutionary War there were a few small vineyards and some wine-making on Manhattan Island.

There were many attempts to grow foreign grapes in New England. John Winthrop, governor of Massachusetts Bay Colony, had planted a vineyard in one of the islands, known as “Governor’s Garden,” in Boston Harbor before 1630. Vine-planters were sent to this colony in 1629.[17]There were plantations at the mouth of the Piscataqua in Maine as early or before Winthrop’s plantings were made. In granting a charter to Rhode Island in 1663, Charles II sought to encourage viticulture in that State by offering liberal inducements to colonists who would grow grapes and make wine.[18]But if grapes were grown, or wine made from the foreign grape, no great degree of success was attained. Wine was made in plenty from the wild grapes in all of the New England colonies so that it was not because of Puritanical prejudices against wine that the grapes were not grown. The glowing terms in which travelers returning to England spoke of the native grapes and of the wine from them undoubtedly stimulated those founding the colonies to make every effort to introduce the cultivated grape even though the cold, bleak climate and thin soils of this northern region were inhospitable to a plant which thrives best in the sunny southern portions of Europe.

In only one of the states east of the Rockies is grape-growing recorded to have gained even a foothold before the introduction of varieties of native grapes. In this instance there is much doubt as to whether the varieties grown were pure-bredVitis vinifera. Louisiana, while owned by France, grew grapes and made wine in such quantities, and the wine was of such high quality, so several of the old chroniclers say, that the French government forbade grape-growing in the colony. Since the wine-making was in the hands of the Jesuits who had learned the art in Europe, and since there were no cultivated varieties of native grapes at that time of which there is record, the presumption among the early writers was that these vineyards were of European grapes. Louisiana, however, was a vast and undefined region and it is not known where these oft-mentioned vineyards were located. It is probable in the light of what we now know that these Louisiana Jesuits made wine from native grapes either wild or cultivated.

The time covered so far is the two hundred years in which America was being colonized. We have seen that all of our European forefathers brought with them a love of the vine, or more correctly, a love of wine, andthat throughout the period many experiments were made in all parts of the eastern United States to grow varieties ofVitis vinifera. The experiments were on a large scale and in the hands of expert vine-growers, as well trained as their fellow colonists in South Africa, New Zealand, Australia and South America, countries where the colonists grew the Old World grapes as easily and as well as they are grown in the most favored parts of Europe. It is certain that the failures recorded for these two hundred years were not due to lack of effort on the part of the settlers. We now pass to more recent efforts, even more thoroughly carried out, to grow the grape of the Old World in this part of the New World. The discussion of these later attempts cannot be full. The reader can readily turn to the horticultural literature of the century just closed and find much fuller records of them than space permits in this work.

One of the first and most notable of the vineyards in the eighteenth century was that of Colonel Robert Bolling of Buckingham County, Virginia. An account of his undertaking written by one of the Bolling family some years later reads as follows: “It is now but little known that this gentleman had early turned his attention to the cultivation of the vine, and had actually succeeded in procuring and planting a small vineyard of four acres, of European grapes, at Chellow, the seat of his residence: that he had so far accomplished his object as to have the satisfaction of seeing his vines in a most flourishing condition, and arrived at an age when they were just beginning to bear; promising all the success that the most sanguine imagination could desire, when, unfortunately for his family, and perhaps for his country, he departed this life while in the Convention in Richmond, in July, 1775. Thus all his fond anticipations of being enabled, in a short time, to afford to his countrymen a practical demonstration of the facility and certainty with which grapes might be raised, and wine made, in Virginia, were suddenly frustrated; all his hopes and prospects blasted; and owing to the general want of information, in the management of vines, among us at that time; and the confusion produced by the war of the revolution, which immediately followed, this promising and flourishing little vineyard was totally neglected and finally perished.”[19]

At the time of Bolling’s death he was preparing to send to press a book on grape-growing entitledA Sketch of Vine Culture. The book was never printed but the manuscript was copied several times and parts of it were printed contemporaneously in theVirginia Gazette, and subsequently in theBolling Memoirsand in theAmerican Farmer.[20]Bolling’s book was largely a compilation from European sources but it contained the experiences and observations of the author in cultivating European grapes in America and though not printed, was sufficiently distributed through manuscript copies and through the papers and books mentioned above, to give its author the honor of being the first American writer on grapes.

In an essay on the cultivation of the vine published in the first volume of theTransactions of the American Philosophical Society[21]printed in Philadelphia in 1771, a Mr. Edward Antill of Shrewsbury, New Jersey, gives explicit directions for grape-growing and wine-making.[22]Antill describes only foreign varieties and leads the reader to infer, though he does not say so, that he has grown many varieties of these grapes successfully. But neither his essay, nor his efforts at grape-growing, seemed to have stimulated a grape industry worthy of note. This essay of Antill’s is the second American treatise on the cultivation of the grape and was for many years the chief authority on grape-growing in America. It is greatly to be regretted that a treatise which was to be quoted for fifty years could not have been more meritorious. The eighty quarto pages written by Antill give little real or trustworthy information. It is a rambling discussion of European grapes, wine-making, the temperance question, patriotism, “wellfare of country,” and “good of mankind”. He quotes Columella, gives methods of curing grapes for raisins, and winds up with a discussion of figs. Yet a hundred years ago it was the chief work on grape-growing.

A Frenchman, Peter Legaux, founded a company in 1793 for the cultivation of grapes at Spring Mill near Philadelphia. In 1800 he publishedan account of his venture.[23]A vineyard of European grapes was set out and the prospects seemed favorable for the success of the undertaking. But the grapes began to fail, dissensions arose among the stock-holders, the vineyards were neglected and the company failed. Legaux speaks of his experience in grape-growing as follows:[24]“But if the native grapes of America are not the most eligible for vineyards, others are now within the reach of its inhabitants. Some years since I procured from France three hundred plants from the three kinds of grapes in the highest estimation, of which are made Burgundy, Champagne and Bordeaux wines. These three hundred plants have in ten years produced 100,000 plants; which, were the culture encouraged, would in ten years more, produce upwards of thirty millions of plants; or enough to stock more than 8000 acres, at 3600 plants to the acre, set about three feet and a half apart. I have also about 3000 plants raised from a single plant procured a few years since from the Cape of Good Hope, of the kind which produces the excellent Constantia wines. The gentlemen who at different times have done me the honour to taste these wines can bear testimony to their good quality. Although made in the hottest season, (about the middle of August) yet they were perfectly preserved without the addition of a drop of brandy or any other spirit. And in this will consist one excellency of the wines here recommended to the notice of my fellow citizens; that being made wholly ofthe juice of grapes, they will be light, wholesome, and excite an agreeable cheerfulness, without inflaming the blood, or producing the other ill effects of the strong brandied wines, imported from the southern parts of Europe. Since 1793, I have confined my attention chiefly to the multiplication of my vines, to supply the demand for plants, and to furnish an extended vineyard under my own direction, whenever my fellow citizens possessing pecuniary means, should be inclined to encourage and support the attempt.”

Out of this venture, however, came the Alexander grape, an offspring of a native species, and not, as Legaux held, a foreign variety, which, as we shall see later, was the first variety to be grown on a commercial scale in eastern America. Johnson,[25]writing of Legaux’s work with the grape, says that in 1801 cuttings were sent from the Spring Mill vineyards in quantities of fifteen hundred to Kentucky and Pennsylvania and smaller quantities to Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Maryland, Virginia and Ohio, and indicates that these cuttings in their turn were multiplied so that many diverse experiments with foreign grapes arose from Legaux’s efforts.

Chief of the experiments which Legaux’s partial success in vine-growing stimulated was carried on in Kentucky byThe Kentucky Vineyard Societyof which John James Dufour, a Swiss, was leader.[26]It was to this Company that Legaux had sent the fifteen hundred cuttings mentioned above as going to Kentucky. Before founding his grape colony, Dufour had made a tour of inspection of all the vineyards that he could hear of in what then constituted the United States. His account of what he saw, given in his bookThe Vine Dresser’s Guide, is the most accurate statement we have of grape-growing in America at the beginning of the nineteenth century.

Dufour’s account, pages 18-24, runs as follows: “I went to see all the vines growing that I could hear of, even as far as Kaskaskia, on the borders of the Mississippi; because I was told, by an inhabitant of that town, whom I met with at Philadelphia, that the Jesuits had there a very successful vineyard,when that country belonged to the French, and were afterwards ordered by the French government to destroy it, for fear the culture of the grapes should spread in America and hurt the wine trade of France. As I had seen but discouraging plantations of vines on that side of the Alleghany, and as the object of my journey to America, was purposely to learn what could be done in that line of business; I was desirous to see if the west would afford more encouragement. I resolved therefore on a visit to see if any remains of the Jesuits’ vines were still in being, and what sort of grapes they were; supposing very naturally, that if they had succeeded as well as tradition reported, some of them might possibly be found in some of the gardens there. But I found only the spot where that vineyard had been planted, in a well selected place, on the side of a hill to the north east of the town, under a cliff. No good grapes, however were found either there, or in any of the gardens of the country. * * * In my journeying down the Ohio, I found at Marietta a Frenchman, who was making several barrels of wine every year, out of grapes that were growing wild, and abundantly, on the heads of the Islands of the Ohio River, known by the name of Sand grapes, because they grow best on the gravels; a few plants of which are now growing in one of our vineyards, given by the Harmonites under the name of red juice. * * * The various attempts at vineyards that I heard of, which I went to see, at Monticello, President Jefferson’s place; which, in 1799, I perceived had been abandoned, or left without any care for three or four years before, which proved evidently, that it had not been profitable: At Spring Mill, on the Schuylkill, near Philadelphia, planted by Mr.Legaux, a French gentleman, and afterwards supported by a wealthy Society formed by subscription, at that City, for the express purpose of trying to extend the culture of the grape. I saw that vineyard in 1796, 1799 and 1806. On the estate of Mr.Caroll, of Carollton, below Baltimore, in Maryland; whither I went on purpose from Philadelphia in 1796, there was a small vineyard kept by a French vinedresser, and where they had tried a few sorts of the indigenous grapes. At the Southern Liberties of Philadelphia, I saw in 1806, a plantation of a large assortment of the best species of French grapes; which a French vinedresser had brought over the Atlantic. They were at their 2d or 3d years: they had not been attacked by the sickness: their nurse wasyet full of hope.—In 1796, I saw also, near the Susquehannah river, not far from Middletown, a vineyard that had been planted by a German; but who having died sometime before, the vineyard had been wholly neglected. I was told, it had produced some wine; but it had suffered so much delapidation, that I could not recognize the species of grapes.”

With full knowledge of the failures of the past in growing grapes, and after his disheartening visits to a score or more of worthless vineyards planted with the grapes of his native country, Dufour embarked in theKentucky Vineyard Societyenterprise and gave the Old World grapes a thorough trial on an extensive scale, with an abundance of capital, and, to care for the vines, as skilled labor as could be obtained in the vineyards of Europe. As was the case with all past undertakings of the kind so this one proved a failure. In the words of Dufour “a sickness took hold of all our vines except a few stocks of Cape and Madeira grapes.” The promoters became disheartened and the vineyard after being cultivated for several years was abandoned.

Members of the colony, thinking that a more favorable location might be found elsewhere in the valley of the Ohio, settled at Vevay, Indiana, in 1802. Dufour and several of his relatives were granted the privilege of purchasing lands with extended credit by an act of Congress May 1st, 1802. They purchased 2500 acres at the location of the new colony in Indiana and began anew the culture of the vine. For a time there was an element of prosperity in the enterprise but the vines became diseased and died, only one sort, the Cape or Alexander, gave returns for the care bestowed and by 1835 the Vevay vineyards ceased to exist. Could Dufour have foreseen the value of the native grapes for cultivation and devoted the capital and energy spent on European sorts to the best wild plants from the woods, grape culture in America would have been put forward half a century.

Other experiments with Old World grapes were tried in 1803 by the Harmonists, a religious-socialistic community founded in Germany, but which finally settled in America. After temporary sojourns in other settlements, the Harmonists founded a permanent colony in Pennsylvania near Pittsburg. Here they planted ten acres of European grapes and grew them with but temporary success, if any, for Dufour in 1826 visited thecolony and says: “None of the imported grapes do well there except the Black Juice, of which I saw but one plant; it is too small a bearer to be worth nursing.”[27]Again there was disaster to an extensive experiment in the hands of skilled men. Besides having tried grape culture in Pennsylvania, the Harmonists made plantations at New Harmony, Indiana, where they settled for a time; but exact accounts of this experiment are wanting.

One other of the many organized attempts to grow the foreign grapes needs mention. When the Napoleonic wars were over a number of Bonaparte’s exiled officers came to America. They were impoverished, and in order to help them, as well as to insure their becoming permanent settlers in the United States, the exiles were organized by American sympathizers into a society for the cultivation of the vine and the olive. The society was organized in the early fall of 1816 in Philadelphia and the remainder of the year was spent in prospecting for a suitable location for the venture. The colony finally decided to settle on the Tombigbee river in Alabama and petitioned Congress for a grant of land in that region. In the end the refugees obtained a grant from Congress of four contiguous townships, each six miles square[28]for the culture of the vine and the olive.

In 1817, an installment of one hundred and fifty French settlers left Philadelphia taking with them an assortment of grape and olive plants. December 12, 1821, Charles Villars, one of the company, reported to the American government[29]that there were then in the colony eighty-one actual planters, 327 persons all told, with 1100 acres in full cultivation, including 10,000 vines and that the company had spent about $160,000 in the venture. Villars tells in full of the ups and downs of the Society. It was apparent from the start that the olive could not be grown. The history of the vineyards on the Tombigbee, as he tells it, is but a record of misfortune. All efforts to cultivate the foreign vines resulted only in failure. The few vines that the vintners made grow yielded a scant crop of miserable quality which could not be made into wine because of ripening in the heat of summer. The land was not adapted to growing grapes. The Society, meeting failure at every turn, finally disbanded and the colonists were scattered. For ahalf century after, there were records in the southern agricultural literature of the attempts of stragglers or descendants of this colony to grow European grapes in the South. Yet these grapes are not now cultivated in this region, which seemingly has the climate and the soil of France.

The history of these French settlers on the Tombigbee is a most pathetic one.[30]Many of the leaders had been officers of high rank in Napoleon’s armies unaccustomed to field work and the hardships of a new country. Here, in a rough and hardly explored country, part of which was overflowed half of the year, visited by all the sicknesses inherent to such a location, they passed several years in their attempts to grow European grapes. Failure was predestined because of natural obstacles which by this time were apparent, and was foreshadowed by so many previous unsuccessful attempts that it would seem that this culminating tragedy in growing European grapes could have been prevented. The certain failure of the attempt makes all the more pathetic the story of the Vine and Olive Colony on the Tombigbee.[31]

In closing the record of the Old World grape in America a few of the later individual attempts to grow this grape must be recounted.

Three generations of Princes experimented with European grapes at the famous Linnæan Botanic Garden, Flushing, Long Island. Wm. R. Prince[32]author ofA Treatise on the Vine, devoted his life to promoting the culture of the grape in America. He tried all of the European sorts obtainable, “reared” as he tells us, “from plants importeddirectfrom the most celebrated collections in France, Germany, Italy, the Crimea, Madeira, etc.; and above two hundred varieties are the identical kinds which were cultivated at the Royal Garden of the Luxembourg at Paris, an establishment formed by royal patronage for the purpose of concentrating all the most valuable fruits of France, and testing their respective merits.”[33]After nearly a half century of experimentation he gave up the culture of foreign grapes and largely devoted the last years of his life to growing and disseminating native varieties, exercising, probably, a greater influence on the culture of American grapes than any other of the many men who have helped improve the grapes of this country.

Nicholas Longworth,[34]of Cincinnati, Ohio, experimented with the European grapes for thirty years. His experience is best told in his own words written in 1846: “I have tried the foreign grapes extensively for wine at great expense for many years, and have abandoned them as unfit for our climate. In the acclimation of plants I do not believe. The white,Sweetwater grape is not more hardy with me than it was thirty years since, and does not bear as well. I have tried them in all soils and with all exposures.

“I obtained 5,000 plants from Madeira, 10,000 from France; and one-half of them, consisting of twenty varieties of the most celebrated wine grapes from the mountains of Jura, in the extreme northern[35]part of France, where the vine region ends; I also obtained them from the vicinity of Paris, Bordeaux, and from Germany. I went to the expense of trenching one hundred feet square on a side hill, placing a layer of stone and gravel at the bottom, with a drain to carry off the water, and to put in a compost of rich soil and sand three feet deep, and planted on it a great variety of foreign wine grapes. All failed; and not a single plant is left in my vineyards. I would advise the cultivation of native grapes alone, and the raising of new varieties from their seed.”[36]

The French Revolution drove a wealthy and educated Frenchman, M. Parmentier, to New York at the beginning of the nineteenth century. He planted about his place in Brooklyn a large garden in which there were many grapes. This garden afterward became a commercial nursery from which was distributed a considerable number of European grapes. Mr. Robert Underhill at Croton Point on the Hudson was induced to plant a vineyard of these but they soon went the way of all their kind, leaving Mr. Underhill only a consuming desire to plant grapes. This desire bore fruit, as we shall see. When the reign of terror had ceased, Parmentier returned to France from whence he sent many grapes to friends in America.He left a lasting impress on the horticulture and viticulture of America, through his experimental efforts with plants and his contribution to American horticultural literature. The Underhills (the father had been joined by his sons R. T. and W. A. Underhill) planted a vineyard of Catawbas and Isabellas in 1827. These vineyards grew until they covered seventy-five acres, the product of which was marketed in the metropolis and nearby cities. The grapes from this vineyard often sold for twenty-five cents a pound and supplied the whole market of the region. The grape industry of the Hudson River Valley began with Parmentier and the Underhills.

Another Frenchman, Alphonse Loubat, planted a vineyard of forty acres at Utrecht, Long Island, containing about 150,000 plants of foreign varieties. Here, we are told, “he strove against mildew and sun-scald for several years, but had to yield at last, as the elements were too much for human exertions to overcome.”[37]Loubat attempted to protect his grapes from mildew by covering them with paper bags and was probably the originator of the practice of bagging grapes.

Not infrequently one may still find some varieties of the Old World grape grown out of doors with a fair degree of success in favored locations but always by the amateur and never in a commercial vineyard. These few pages rehearsing repeated failures without a single success, serve to show the uselessness of attempting to grow foreign grapes in eastern America. Their culture has been tried by thousands on a small scale and by many individuals with experience, knowledge and capital on a large scale. With all, the results have been the same; a year or two of promise, then disease, dead vines and an abandoned vineyard.

The causes for these failures have been indicated. As Dufour says, “a sickness takes hold of the vines.” Phylloxera, mildew, rot—native parasites to which native grapes are comparatively immune—“take hold” of the foreign sorts and they die.

It is probable, too, that our climate, at the North at least, is not well suited to the production of the Old World grape. As a species, the Vinifera grapes thrive best in climates equable in both temperature and humidity.The climate of eastern America is not equable; it alternates between hot and cold, wet and dry. The range in both temperature and humidity is far greater than in the grape-growing regions of Europe, California, South Africa or Australia. The fleshy roots ofVitis viniferaare more tender to cold than are those of the species of northern United States and this would prevent its culture becoming very general in many regions where native grapes can be grown.

It is only in the regions west of the Rocky Mountains, and more particularly in California, that the varieties of Vinifera are successfully grown in America. The great viticultural interests of the far West are founded upon the success of this one species. The native grapes can be grown but they cannot compete in California withVitis viniferafor any purpose. Nevertheless American species are indispensable in this western region for stocks upon which to graft the Vinifera varieties, and it is probable that the time is not far distant when all California vines will be upon American roots. Within the boundaries of latitude in which Vinifera varieties are grown west of the Rocky Mountains the grape shows wonderful adaptability; it is found at all elevations permitting fruit culture; it grows on practically all soils; it thrives under irrigation or under dry farming; it is given various kinds of treatment, including total neglect, and still thrives; the number of varieties grown for wine, raisin and table grapes runs into hundreds. The truly wonderful success met with in the cultivation of this species west of the great continental divide makes all the more remarkable the fact that in no place east of the divide will varieties of it thrive.

We now pass to a consideration of the American grapes, their characters, the early notices of them, their rise, their success, and their future—a more pleasing task than to record disaster after disaster in growing the grape of the Old World.

The grape is preeminently a North American plant. The genus Vitis is a large one, from thirty to fifty species being distinguished for the world; more than half of these are found on this continent. But few other plants in America, or in the world, inhabit such varied and such extended areas. In North America wild grapes abound on the warm, dry soils of New Brunswick and New England, about the Great Lakes in Canada and in the United States, and on the fertile river banks and in the valleys, rich woodlands and thickets of the eastern and southern States. They thrive in the dry woods, sandy sea-plains, and reef-keys of the Carolinas, Georgia and Florida where the vines of the Scuppernong often run more than a hundred feet over trees and shrubs, rioting in natural luxuriance. They flourish in the mountains and limestone hills of the Virginias, Tennessee and Kentucky. They are not so common in the West, yet found in almost all parts of Missouri and Arkansas, and from North Dakota through Kansas to southern Texas. Some wild grape is found in each of the Rocky Mountain States on plain or mountain, or in river chasm or dry canon. Several species are found in New Mexico, Arizona and California, where if they did not furnish the Spanishpadresof Santa Fe and San Diego with fruit for wine, they suggested to them the planting of the first successful vineyards in the United States.

How did the grape spread from the Carolinas to California and from subtropical Mexico to the barren plains of Central Canada? Why divide into its manifold forms in the distribution? These questions are of practical import to the grape-grower and breeder who seeks to improve this fruit. The knowledge of the distribution and evolution of plants obtained in the last half century is so complete that these questions present few difficulties to the naturalist of today. In answering them no one would now hold that the numerous species and their sub-divisions were created separately for the regions in which they grow. All would take the ground that the different wild forms come from one ancestral species. We can waive the question as to what the original species was and as to where it first grew.

It is certain that grapes have not been distributed over North Americaby the hand of man. Probably they have been growing in the regions where they are now found since before the migration of the first savages. The agents of distribution have been natural ones, such as animals, birds, and lake and river currents. These have widened the area of a species to limits imposed by the hostile action of other plants and of animals and by geographical and physical conditions. As a species has encroached upon a new region, climate, soil, all of the conditions of environment, and the contest with other living things, have gradually modified its characters until in time it became so changed that it constituted a new species.

This descent from an original species with plants changed by environment has given us, in America, types of the wild grape as widely diverse as the regions they inhabit. The species found in the forests have developed long slender trunks and branches in their struggle to attain sunlight and air. At least two species are dwarf and shrubby, or infrequently climbing, two to six feet high, growing in dry sands, on rocky hills and mountains where roots must cling to rocks and penetrate into interstices. Still another form runs on the ground and over low bushes and is nearly evergreen, but in the herbarium can hardly be distinguished from a grape whose habit of growth is strikingly different. Some are long-lived, growing and bearing fruit for two or more centuries, while others reach no greater age than the ordinary shrub. Some have enormous stems, a foot or more in diameter, gnarled and picturesque and supporting a great canopy of branch and foliage,[38]while others are slender in stem and graceful, almost delicate, in character of vine. Not less remarkable than the differences in structure is the adaptability of the genus and some of the species to varied climatic conditions. Several of the wild grapes develop full size and display natural luxuriance and fruit-bearing qualities only in the Middle States, but maybe found on dry, gravelly, wind-swept hills far to the north or in some hot and humid atmosphere of the South, as if to show indifference to wet or dry, heat or cold.

On the other hand there are many strong points of resemblance between the score or more of species. The organs and characters that do not bear the strain of changed environment, nor suffer in the perpetual warfare of nature, are much the same in all of the species of Vitis. Thus the structure of flowers, fruits and seeds is practically identical; all have naked-tipped tendrils; leaves and leaf-buds are very similar; and the various species usually hybridize freely. They are alike in the unlikeness of individual plants in any of the species; that is, all of the individuals of the genus are most variable and seeds taken from the same vine may produce plants quite unlike one another and quite unlike the parent.

These few facts regarding the evolution and distribution of American grapes lead to two important conclusions:

First, the species are so distributed throughout the United States, and individuals of the species grow in such abundance and luxuriance, as to suggest that we shall be able to improve and domesticate some one or more of them for all of the agricultural regions of the country. For it is proved that nearly all of the wild grapes have horticultural possibilities; and experience with many plants teaches that the boundaries of areas inhabited by the wild species of a given region coincide with those suited to the production of the domesticated plant in that region. It is not possible to tell where the grape-growing regions of the future are to be located; for species and individuals of this fruit are so common that no one can say where the grape is most at home in America.

Second, grapes are so variable and plastic in nature that, were it not known from experience, it could be assumed that they would yield readily to improvement. Besides being variable they hybridize freely and thus the plant-breeder can obtain desirable starting points. There are indications that some of the characters of grapes, at least, follow Mendel’s Law, and when once these have been determined, and the more important unit characters segregated and defined, it ought to be possible to combine and rearrange the characters of this fruit with some system and surely with more certainty than in the past.

This brief introduction leads us to the consideration of American grapes as cultivated plants. We have seen that it is an absolute impossibility to grow the Old World grape in eastern America. The fruit-growers in this great region are forced to plant the native grapes if any. It required two hundred years to establish this fact and it is less than a hundred years since grape-growers have generally acknowledged it as a fact. What was known of American grapes during the two hundred years wasted in attempting to grow the foreign Vinifera? And what has been accomplished in a century in ameliorating the native grapes?

The earliest European visitors to the Atlantic seaboard delighted in the wild grapes which they found everywhere and which reminded them of the Old World vineyards. Had they never seen such a fruit, the wild grapes could not long have escaped their attention; for the Indians knew and used them as they did potatoes, corn, and tobacco. In the narratives of the early voyages the grape is often in the lists of the resources and treasures of the new-found continent. Unfortunately it was not considered of great intrinsic value but only suggested to the explorers that the grape of the old home might be grown in the new home. Could a part of the exaggerated esteem given by the early European travelers and home-seekers to sassafras, ginseng and other such plants, have been bestowed upon the wild grapes which over-run the country, viticulture would have taken rank with the tobacco, lumber and the fish industries of the early settlers.

In the history of Vinland, or more properly Wineland, we find thefirst record of American grapes.[39]Biarni Heriulfsson, a Norseman, while making a voyage from Iceland to Greenland, 986 A. D., was driven by a storm to the coast of New England but did not touch land. Leif the Lucky, son of Eric the Red, about 1000 A. D., visited the country discovered by Biarni. One of Leif’s men, Tyrker, a German who “was born where there is no lack of either grapes or vines,” discovered grapes, whereupon Leif named the country “Wineland.” Other Norsemen in at least two expeditions visited Wineland, supposed to be a part of Rhode Island or Massachusetts, and for centuries after, the land discovered by Leif the Lucky was known in Icelandic literature as “Wineland the Good.” The first European to touch the New World christened it after its grapes.

The next record we have of American grapes comes from an Englishman, one Captain John Hawkins, who visited the Spanish settlements in Florida in 1565.[40]In his account of the colony he speaks of the wild grapes, comparing them, as did all the early explorers, with those of Europe. He indicates further that the Spaniards had discovered the value of the wild grape for domestic purposes and says that they had made twenty hogsheads of wine in a single season. It is almost certain that this grape wasVitis rotundifolia, best represented by the Scuppernong, which is commonly found on the Atlantic sea-coast from Maryland to Florida.

The first English colonists, like the Norsemen, declared the new-found world to be a natural vineyard. Amadas and Barlowe, sent out by Raleigh in 1584, described the land[41]“so full of grapes as the very beating and surge of the sea overflowed them, of which we found such plenty, as well there as in all places else, both on the sand and on the green soil, on the hills as onthe plains, as well as on every little shrub as also climbing towards the top of high cedars, that I think in all the world the like abundance is not to be found.”

Ralph Lane, in a subsequent expedition of Raleigh’s, in a letter to Hakluyt, pronounced the grapes of Virginia to be larger than those of France, Spain or Italy.[42]

The region described by Amadas and Barlowe is that of the two great sounds, Albemarle and Pamlico, on the coast of North Carolina and more specifically Roanoke Island. It was to this place that Raleigh sent his expeditions, with one of which Amadas and Barlowe were connected, and established the earliest colony of Englishmen in the New World. The first home of Europeans in America was in Vinland, named for its grapes. The first home of Englishmen was on Roanoke Island, “so full of grapes that the very sea overflowed them.”

A few years later, Thomas Hariot, in a description of Virginia which must have done much to decide the English as to the advisability of establishing colonies in America, gave a detailed account of the merchantable commodities the new countries afforded. Among these he mentions grapes which he describes as being of two kinds that the soil yields naturally and abundantly, of which one was small and sour and of the bigness of the European grape while the other was of greater size and more sweet and luscious. Hariot concludes his description with the statement that “when they are planted and husbanded as they ought, a principal commodity of wine may be raised.”[43]

Of the later accounts given of grapes in Virginia and the Carolinas by the colonizers and adventurers of the seventeenth century there are so many that it is impossible to present all and difficult to sort out those most apt. A few more may be given:

Captain John Smith, soldier, colonizer and Virginian planter, writing in 1606 describes two sorts of wild grapes. He says:[44]“Of vines great abundance in many parts that climbe the toppes of highest trees in someplaces, but these beare but few grapes. Except by the rivers and savage habitations, where they are not overshadowed from the sunne, they are covered with fruit, though never pruined nor manured. Of those hedge grapes we made neere twentie gallons of wine, which was like our French Brittish wine, but certainely they would prove good were they well manured. There is another sort of grape neere as great as a Cherry, this they [Indians] callMessamins, they be fatte, and the juyce thicke. Neither doth the taste so well please when they are made in wine.”

It is worthy of remark that the first English colonist in the New World noticed that the vines in the vicinity of the Indian habitations and along the edges of creeks, rivers and swamps, where not overshadowed from the sun, were covered with fruit. The statement of this fact, coupled with the one following, “but certainely they would prove good were they well manured,” indicates that the possibility of successful cultivation of the wild grapes was considered at this early time. In fact, as we have seen, Lord Delaware at once sought to test the virtues of the native grapes by bringing over a number of French vine-dressers, who not only planted cuttings imported from Europe but proceeded at once to transplant the vine of the country.[45]A few years later, according to Bruce, Sir Thomas Dale “established a vineyard at Henrico not long after the foundation of that settlement, covering an area of three acres, in which he planted the vines of the native grape for the purpose of testing their adaptability to the production of wines that could be substituted for those of France and Spain.”[46]

Francis Maguel, who visited Virginia in 1609, stated that the wine made in the colony reminded him of the Alicante which he had drunk in Spain.[47]

The first Secretary of the Colony, William Strachey, was somewhat fulsome in his praise of the new found fruit. Writing[48]in 1610, he says that the vines burden every bush, climb to the top of the highest trees and are always full of clusters of grapes though never pruned or manured. He declares that the grapes are as good as those to be found between Paris and Amiens and that the wine made by the settlers from the wild grapeswas equal to French or British wine, “being strong and headdy.” In closing his description he states that by art and industry skillful vignerons could bring viticulture unto such perfection as will enable the colony to export wine to the mother country.

An anonymous writer in 1649, who sets out to give a “full and true relation of the present state of the plantations, their health, peace and plenty,” etc., etc., thought that the colony needed only some one to set an example to the ordinary settlers to induce them to grow grapes. This writer says: “Vines in abundance and variety, do grow naturally over all the land, but by the birds and beasts, most devoured before they come to perfection and ripenesse; but this testifies and declares, That the Ground, and the Climate is most proper, and the Commodity of Wine is not a contemptible Merchandize; but some men of worth and estate must give in these things example to the inferior inhabitants and ordinary sort of men, to shew them the gain and Commodity by it, which they will not believe but by experience before their faces:”[49]

A hundred years later, according to Beverly, the grape was scarcely cultivated, the masses of the people being content with the fruit of the wild vines which grew everywhere in the forest. So far as is known there were in Beverly’s time, 1722, no named varieties and there had been no efforts to improve the wild grapes in any way. There are no indications from the early writings to show that the Virginian settlers even knew how to propagate grapes. The reason for this neglect is largely to be sought for in the last sentence in the subjoined footnote from Beverly.[50]This neglectwas in spite of the fact that from the first the settlers had noted that when the vines were open to the sun the crop was improved.

In the northern colonies, as in Virginia, about the first object to attract the attention of the early settlers was the wild grape. The grape, possibly more than any other natural product of the soil, is mentioned in the preliminary surveys of the Atlantic Coast as offering reasonable ground for the expectation that American soils would furnish all of the supplies necessary for the sustenance and comfort of settlers. A few statements from the early explorers and visitors in the Middle and New England States will serve to show how plentiful wild grapes were in these regions and the estimation in which they were held.

In Delaware, Beauchamp Plantagenet, describing a “Uvedale under Websneck,” in his account of New Albion, says that it contains “four sorts of excellent great vines running on mulberry and sassafras trees; there are four sorts of grapes, the first is the Thoulouse Muscat, sweet scented, the second the great fox and thick grape, after five months reaped being boiled and salted, and well fined, it is a strong red Xeres; the third a light Claret, the fourth a white grape creeps on the land, maketh a pure gold color white wine; Tenis Pale, the Frenchman, of these four made eight sorts of excellent wine, and of the Muscat acute boiled that the second draught will fox[51]a reasonable pate four months old: and here may be gathered and made two hundred ton in the vintage month, and replanted will mend.”

In New England the seventeenth century notices of the wild grape are even more numerous than similar records to the south but they are briefer and the northern observer did not recognize the possibilities of their domestic use and of bringing them under cultivation. This seeming neglect of the Puritans was not because the northern wild grapes are inferior to those of Virginia and the Carolinas, but more likely because of the social and industrial conditions of the colonists. The richer planters in the South had time for wine-making, the only purpose for which grapes were then grown, and for growing the grapes. The New Englanders had to struggle for the necessities of life.

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