ine-merchants nearly as low, even as things are.

If the innkeepers and steam-boat stewards, of America, would buy and
sell low-priced Burgundy wines, that, as the French call it, _carry
water well_, as well as some other wines that might be named, the custom
of drinking this innocent and useful beverage at table would become
general, attention would then be paid to the vine, and in twenty years
we should be consumers of the products of our own vineyards.

The idea that our winters are too severe can hardly be just. There may
be mountainous districts where such is the fact, but, in a country that
extends from the 27th to the 47th degrees of latitude, it is scarcely
possible to suppose the vine cannot flourish. I have told you that wine
is made on the Elbe, and it is made in more than half the Swiss cantons.
Proper exposures and proper soil are necessary for good wines, anywhere,
but nothing is easier than to have both. In America, I fear, we have
hitherto sought land that was too rich; or rather, land that is wanting
in the proper and peculiar richness that is congenial to the vine. All
the great vineyards I have seen, and all of which I can obtain authentic
accounts, are on thin gravelly soils; frequently, as is the case in the
Rheingau, on decomposed granite, quartz, and sienite. Slate mixed with
quartz on a clayish bottom, and with basalt, is esteemed a good soil, as
is also marl and gravel. The Germans use rich manures, but I do not
think this is the case in France.

The grape that makes good wine is rarely fit to eat. Much care is had to
reject the defective fruit, when a delicate wine is expected, just as we
cull apples to make fine cider. A really good vineyard is a fortune at
once, and a tolerable one is as good a disposition as can be made of
land. All the fine wines of Hockheim are said to be the produce of only
eight or ten acres. There is certainly more land than this, in the vine,
south of the village, but the rest is not esteemed to be Hockheimer.

Time is indispensable to fine wines, and time is a thing that an
American lives too fast to spare. The grapes become better by time,
although periodically renewed, and the wine improves in the same way. I
have told you in these letters, that I passed a vineyard on the lake of
Zurich of which there are records to show it has borne the vine five
hundred years. Five centuries since, if historians are to be believed,
the winters on this lake must have been as seve