The wines produced in the United States are, by no means, so well appreciated as they should be. There are many reasons for this, some of which follow.

In the first place, the virgin soils of the country do not produce, by any means, a wine of such bouquet and excellent quality as are produced by lands which have been long in cultivation.

In the second place, the wines of a country are the joint product of the skill of the viticulturist and the natural environment of the country. In the environment are included the rainfall - amount and distribution - the amount and distribution of the sunshine, the temperatures of all seasons of the year, the natural ferments which convert the sugar of the grape into wine, the character of the cellars employed in the ripening of the wine, and the skill and care exercised in the vintage and in the wine cellars. It would naturally follow from this that in a country where wine making is 2,000 years old, you would find a skill and excellence in manipulation and a practical knowledge of wine making which could not possibly exist in a new country. Further than this, if the wine makers of an old country should be transplanted to a new country, they would find an entirely new environment, and while their care and skill might be the same, the wine which they would make might be vastly different from that which they made in their old homes.

Another cause to which may be ascribed the lack of appreciation of American wines is the general attitude of the wine drinker to the wine. The people of the United States are not wine drinkers, and hence wine is consumed chiefly by a certain class of the community having exceptional advantages of money and locality, and representing only a small part of the population. The people who would naturally drink American wines are those who are accustomed to drinking foreign wines, and hence a general idea has existed among them that American wines are inferior in quality.

Another reason which may be assigned for the lack of appreciation of American wines is the extent of the adulteration and debasement to which they have been subjected. In many parts of our country it is a settled conviction among the grape growers that wine cannot be made from the juice of the grape without certain additions, chiefly of sugar. When once the wine grower begins to add sugar or water to his grape juice, the temptation to increase the volume of the product is so great that he does not know exactly where to stop. The result is that in many localities American wines are only partly made from the juice of the grape, while sometimes as much as a third, or even half, of their alcoholic content comes from a totally foreign substance. It must be admitted that every dilution of the natural flavors and aromas of the grape juice by an artificial substance, such as the fermented product of dilute sugar solutions, can only result in a lowering of the quality of the wine. There is no valid excuse for adding sugar to grape juice, since in other countries wines are often made which contain only 6 or 7 percent of alcohol, representing a quantity of sugar equally as low as that ever reached by American grapes suitable for wine making even in the poorest seasons.

A final reason why American wines are not appreciated is that a large quantity of imitation wines has been made in this country and sold under the names of the genuine. Investigations have shown that it is the custom in some localities to take the pomace, after the expression of the grape must, or of the finished wine, and treat it with additional quantities of sugar and water, allow it to undergo a secondary fermentation, and sell it separately as wine, or mix it with the original product. When, in addition to this, it is considered that not only sugar, but other substances, namely, dextrose, saccharin, artificial coloring matters, tannin, etc., are added, it is easily seen that the wine is hardly any longer even an imitation, but mostly an artificial product.

In spite of all these unfavorable conditions, with which the American wine maker producing a pure article has to contend, and the American consumer who would like to drink American wines has to bear, it cannot be denied that there are very large quantities of wine made in the United States of the pure juice of the grape and possessing high qualities which would naturally commend it both to the ordinary consumer and to the connoisseur.

Mr. Percy T. Morgan, former President of the American Wine Association, stated in an address at the St. Louis Exposition, in 1904, that according to tradition, as is well known, almost five centuries before the discovery of the American Continent Scandinavian navigators visited this country and by reason of finding great numbers of native vines growing therein called it

"Vinland." In the early history of our country accounts are given of the manufacture of wine in Florida and North Carolina, where the vines were extremely luxuriant. In North Carolina, as is well known, is found the original Scuppernong grape, which is now grown to a wide spreading tree of great proportions. Wines were made, also, by the early French settlers in Louisiana, and in 1630 skilled vineyardists from France settled in Virginia. One of the earliest accounts of manufacture of wine to this country is as follows: