s at Tain; but a great cold, some years ago, killed
them, and they have not been replanted. I am told at Montelimart, that
an almond tree yields about three livres profit a year. Supposing them
three toises apart, there will be one hundred to the arpent, which
gives three hundred livres a year, besides the corn growing on the same
ground. A league below Vienne, on the opposite side of the river, is
Cote Rotie. It is a string of broken hills, extending a league on the
river, from the village of Ampuis to the town of Condrieu. The soil
is white, tinged a little, sometimes, with yellow, sometimes with red,
stony, poor, and laid up in terraces. Those parts of the hills only,
which look to the sun at mid-day, or the earlier hours of the afternoon,
produce wines of the first quality. Seven hundred vines, three feet
apart, yield a _feuillette_, which is about two and a half _pieces_,
to the arpent. The best red wine is produced at the upper end, in the
neighborhood of Ampuis; the best white, next to Condrieu. They sell of
the first quality and last vintage, at one hundred and fifty livres the
_piece_, equal to twelve sous the bottle. Transportation to Paris is
sixty livres, and the bottle four sous; so it may be delivered at Paris
in bottles, at twenty sous. When old, it costs ten or eleven louis the
_piece_. There is a quality which keeps well, bears transportation, and
cannot be drunk under four years. Another must be drunk at a year old.
They are equal in flavor and price.

The wine called Hermitage, is made on the hills impending over the
village of Tain; on one of which is the hermitage which gives name to
the hills for about two miles, and to the wine made on them. There are
but three of those hills which produce wine of the first quality, and
of these, the middle regions only. They are about three hundred feet
perpendicular height, three quarters of a mile in length, and have a
southern aspect. The soil is scarcely tinged red, consists of small
rotten stone, and is, where the best wine is made, without any
perceptible mixture of earth. It is in sloping terraces. They use a
little dung. An _homme de vignes_, which consists of seven hundred
plants, three feet apart, yields generally about three quarters of a
_piece_, which is nearly four _pieces_ to the arpent. When new, the
piece is sold at about two hundred and twenty-five livres; when old, at
three hundred. It cannot be drunk under four years, and improves fastest
in a