From the INTRODUCTION.
To encourage and aid the many who are commencing the cultivation of the vine, and the making of pure wine from grapes and other kinds of fruit, is the chief motive in publishing these pages. The writings of many who have contributed essentially to advance this useful branch of horticulture, have been freely consulted and compiled, and it is believed that judicious selections from practical writers and successful cultivators, will be more acceptable, than a lengthy detail of abstract opinions alone. From my! own experience in grape culture and wine-making, though limited, and from the decided opinions of those well informed, it is evident that our nation need never import another gallon of foreign wine, or any kind of spirituous liquors — that the vine is a native of our own soil and climate, (which cannot be said of it in Europe,) and that wine has within a few years been made here, which has of the same age, excelled some of the best wines of the old world. In truth an article far better and more medicinal for people of our climate, can be made from our native Blackberry than most which is imported at high cost; and could our native wines supersede those now mostly used, those vile compounds called pure Port, Malaga, Champagne, &c., and chiefly compounded of whiskey, cider, sugar of lead, logwood, green corm, etc., would take their final exit from our land, and also would take away in their flight their usual concomitants, impaired health, and vitiated appetite for spirituous liquors. It is not supposed that the great leading interest in this latitude in America, will be the cultivation of vast vineyards for wine, yet every person who owns a house and six feet in width around it, can in a very few years with trifling labor and expense, raise grapes sufficient to supply abundantly an ordinary family with fruit, from September until February, or March, besides wine for medicinal uses. Those who prefer not to extract the wine, can readily dispose of all their surplus grapes, if of good variety, in our markets at a fair profit.
So little foreign wine is sold in our country in its pure state, that a friend of the author, the late Judge Woodruff, who visited the wine countries of the east, remarked, that the only certain way to obtain it unadulterated, was to press out the juice and make the wine yourself, bung it tight, and then get astride the cask and ride it all the way home. It is stated that more wine is annually sold in New York for the pure article, than passes through the custom-house in ten years, although we import six or seven million gallons yearly, and at a cost to the consumer, probably of eight or ten million dollars.
