Good Grape Wine Company

July 4 2006

The American Vine-Dresser’s Guide

The American Vine-Dresser’s Guide, 1826, by John James Dufour pg 26 -28

In this passage Dufour speaks in a loping narrative style about the Cape grape and his exploration of various grape varieties and their success—drawing a parrallel to varietals he has experience with in his native Switzerland and in the Bordeaux region.

… toodelicate to make strong and durable wine,the same case happens in cider countries. Among the apples, it is wellknown, that in Nor­mandy thebest cider is made with ill flavored apples:and here the Hughes’ crab, which makes thebest cider, cannot be eaten.

TheCape grape is, besides, not a very productive sort, yieldingonly from 100 to 250 gallons per acre; while the best are cultivatedin the Canton de Vaud,in Switzerland, produces from 500to 2800 gallonsper acre in one year, and ten pounds of grapes makes a large gallon of clear wine, and is, at the same time, one of the best tablegrapes. As to strength, it will depend on the climate, and on the sort of soilwhich produces it. It would be a good deal better and stronger if raisedon the pine hills about Fort Stoddert, in the Alabama states,or the sand hills of East Florida. Hereit gives from one-eighth to one-sixth in brandy by the distillation. The strong­estwine known in the South of France, gives one third; and the weakest one, in the north of Europe, about the twelfth or fifteenth. The good cider in the State of NewJersey one tenth however, there is a great difference between the wine of one year to that of another, although produced from the same vines: An early and warm summer will make wine two-fold stronger thana late and cold one.

If only the enemies of American wine had said that theCape grapes are wild or indigenous, Iwould make no observation here on it: but it is the opinion of oneof my particular friends, whom I hold in the highest estimation, of whom I claimhis indul­gence if I differ inopinion, and doubt of the as­sertion, until I see it in itsoriginal state: for if it existed in the United States,particularly in the State ofPennsylvania, where they said it is to befound wild now, I ought to have met with it in my travelsthrough so many of the States of the Union, undertaken and performedwith the only purpose to studyall that had, or that may have, any relation to the cultivation of the grapes in the UnitedStates.

How could it be, then, that the best of the wild orindigenous grapes, if this isone of them, shouldhave alone esca­pedmy sight? Beside all theindigenous grapes I have metwith, are what Botanists are class­ing in the dioicia family, or male and female on differentplants, like hemp, hops, persimmons, one species of the laurel andseveral other plants—while allthe cultivated sort that I am acquainted with are hermaphrodites, or with the faculty, if fecundation initself, the male andfemale organsbeing together in the same blossom, like theapple tree, the peach being of the Laten­dria monogenia class ofSinuous.

I made that discovery first atFrankfort in Kentucky, in the garden of a gentleman, who had procured some vines of the sand grapes, from the Islands of theOhio; but happening that he had got only male plants his vines neverbore, but large bran­ches of blossoms Ipruned and dressed those vines once myself, with no better success that raisedsuspicion in my breast, of what itwas, awl at the next succeeding blooming time, I plainly saw all the indigenousgrapes that have fallen since under myinspection were of the diociae family. The famous botanist, Michaux, in a Latin flora of South Carolina, tells it also positively,and since, I have found that same plant,which is a different one from the vinifer­ousvines in different parts of Europe, particu­larly in the vicinity of the river Rhone, beforeits entering the lake ofGeneva; and is the hedges of a farm in the neighborhood of Bordeaux, calledLaguira, belonging in 1806 to Mr. Galay the Swiss Consul at Bordeaux. It is in favor of my readers, who may havethe chance and wish to ascertain that fact by themselves,that I have been so particular.

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