nations have done every thing to improve
wine-making, Italy follows the same careless way she has done for
centuries. Far more attention was bestowed on the grape, too, in ancient
times than now; and we read that vineyards were so much cultivated, to
the neglect of agriculture, that, under Domitian, an edict forbade the
planting of any new vineyards in Italy.

One brilliant morning, in October, Caper, who was then living in a town
perched atop of a conical mountain, descended five or six miles on foot,
and passed a day in a vineyard, in order to see the vintage. The vines
were trained on trees or on sticks of cane, and the peasant-girls and
women were busy picking the great bunches of white or purple grapes,
which were thrown into copper _conche_ or jars; these _conche_, when
filled, were carried on the head to a central spot where they were
emptied on fern leaves, placed on the ground to receive them. And from
these piles, the wooden barrels of the mules returning from the town
were filled with the grapes which were carried up there to be pressed.

The grape-crop had been so affected by the _malattia_ or blight, that
the yield being small, the fruit to an extent was not pressed in the
vineyards, and the juice only brought up to the town in goat-skins as
usual; but the fruit itself was carried up, by those having the proper
places, and was pressed in tubs in the _cantine_ or rooms on the
ground-floor, where the wine is kept. Across the huge saddles of the
mules, they swung a couple of truncated cone-shaped barrels, and filled
them with grapes; these were tumbled into tubs, ranged in the _cantina_,
good, bad and indifferent fruit all together; and when enough were
poured in, in jumped the _pistatore d'uve_ or grape-presser, with bare
legs and feet, and began pressing and stamping, until the juice ran out
in a tolerable stream. This juice was then poured into a headless
hogshead, and when more than half-full, they piled on the grapeskins and
stones and stems that had undergone the pressure, until the hogshead was
full to the top. A weight was then placed over all. In twenty days,
fermentation having taken place, they drew from the hogshead the new
wine, which was afterward clarified with whites of eggs.

In this rough-and-ready way, the common wine is made. Without selection,
all grapes, ripe, unripe, and rotten, sweet and sour, are mashed up
together, hurriedly and imperfectly pressed, and the wine is sent to
market, t