fter
another is tried with one kind of grape after another. This is a
failure; that is better; a third best. So, bit by bit, they grope about
for their Clos Vougeot and Lafitte. Those lodes and pockets of earth,
more precious than the precious ores, that yield inimitable fragrance
and soft fire; those virtuous Bonanzas, where the soil has sublimated
under sun and stars to something finer, and the wine is bottled poetry:
these still lie undiscovered; chaparral conceals, thicket embowers them;
the miner chips the rock and wanders farther, and the grizzly muses
undisturbed. But there they bide their hour, awaiting their Columbus;
and nature nurses and prepares them. The smack of Californian earth
shall linger on the palate of your grandson.

Meanwhile the wine is merely a good wine; the best that I have
tasted--better than a Beaujolais, and not unlike. But the trade is poor;
it lives from hand to mouth, putting its all into experiments, and
forced to sell its vintages. To find one properly matured, and bearing
its own name, is to be fortune's favourite.

Bearing its own name, I say, and dwell upon the inuendo.

"You want to know why Californian wine is not drunk in the States?" a
San Francisco wine merchant said to me, after he had shown me through
his premises. "Well, here's the reason."

And opening a large cupboard, fitted with many little drawers, he
proceeded to shower me all over with a great variety of gorgeously
tinted labels, blue, red, or yellow, stamped with crown or coronet, and
hailing from such a profusion of _clos_ and _chateaux_, that a single
department could scarce have furnished forth the names. But it was
strange that all looked unfamiliar.

"Chateau X----?" said I. "I never heard of that."

"I dare say not," said he. "I had been reading one of X----'s novels."

They were all castles in Spain! But that sure enough is the reason why
California wine is not drunk in the States.

Napa Valley has been long a seat of the wine-growing industry. It did
not here begin, as it does too often, in the low valley lands along the
river, but took at once to the rough foot-hills, where alone it can
expect to prosper. A basking inclination, and stones, to be a reservoir
of the day's heat, seem necessary to the soil for wine; the grossness of
the earth must be evaporated, its marrow daily melted and refined for
ages; until at length these clods that break below our footing, and to
the eye appear but common earth,