The Cultivation of American Grapes.— After experience had shown that European varieties of grapes would not thrive, practical horticulturists began to turn their attention to the native vines found growing wild, or par tially cultivated. They saw that success lay in that direction. But the trouble was to obtain a native grape of superior quality for the table and for wine.
In 1819 Maj. John Adlum noticed a vine growing in a garden at Georgetown, D. C. The grape struck him as having many excellent qual ities. He first supposed it to be a European variety, but the grape was really a native of North Carolina, where it was discovered in 1802, and it took its name from the Catawba River. Major Adlum was enthusiastic in his estimate of the value of the Catawba grape. In a letter, written shortly before his death to the Hon. Nicholas Longworth of Cincinnati, Ohio, he says: °I have done my country a greater benefit in introducing this grape than I would have done if I had paid the national debt." There is no doubt that the Catawba grape has played an important part in the grape and wine industry of the United States. This was largely due to the heroic efforts of Nicholas Longworth, who is called °the father of Ameri can grape culture.o He spent 40 years or more of his life and $200,000 in establishing vineyards in the Ohio Valley, and his wine cellars at Cin cinnati, Ohio. His persistent effort to make the industry a success is a fine example of American energy and enterprise. Longworth obtained thousands of vines from Bordeaux and Burgundy, from the Rhine district of Ger many, from Madeira (6,000 vines), and from the Jura (7,000 vines) in hopes of finding grapes which would thrive in his Ohio vine yards. He also tried native grapes, but most of these were given up for the Catawba, which he first received from Major Adlum in 1825.
Not only as a pioneer, but as a leader in grape and wine growing, Longworth exercised great influence on the industry. Many able and practical men in Cincinnati became interested in grape culture and, in 1848, the Cincinnati Hor ticultural Society estimated that within 20 miles of the city more than 1,200 acres were planted in vineyards. During the next three or four years, some six or eight wine cellars were es tablished at Cincinnati. Longworth had two. At his cellars dry and sweet wines were made, and °sparkling Catawba"— the latter produced by fermentation in the bottle after the method of French champagne. It was after a visit to
Mr. Longworth that the poet Longfellow wrote his celebrated poem on 'Catawba Wine.' In 1858, Erskine made a report to the Brit ish government on the extent and condition of viticulture in the United States. He gave the vineyard area of the several States, as follows: 3,000 acres in Ohio; 1,000 in Indiana; 500 in Kentucky; 500 each in Missouri and Illinois; 300 in South Carolina; 200 in North Carolina; 100 in Georgia—a total of 5,600 acres of vine yard in the United States. Even at this time grape culture in the Ohio Valley was on the de cline. The vines there were being steadily destroyed by mildew and rot. By 1865, these vineyards, which had promised so much pleasure and profit, and on which so much labor and money had been expended, were disappearing, and a few years later the grape and wine in dustry of the Ohio Valley became a thing of the past.
At that time the methods of successfully treating the two principal fungus diseases of the native vine — mildew and black rot — were not known to our viticulturists. Later on the discovery was made that black rot may be kept almost under control by a preparation of sul phate of copper, called the Bo r dea ux mixture" — the cheapest and best fungicide ever intro duced. As black rot prevailed from an early date in all the vineyards east of the Rocky Mountains, it was only after an efficient remedy was found thatgrape culture could become commercially profitable in the various Eastern States. In California, on the other hand, the vineyards were rather free from fungus dis eases, but there, as in France, the phylloxera began its ravages about 1875, and has been the worst scourge of the vineyards on the Pacific Coast since then.
The Growth of Grape Culture in the East ern About 1865 the grape-growing industry became rooted in the Hudson River Valley, the lake regions of central and western New York and in northern Ohio, and on the islands in Lake Erie. New York, Michigan Ohio and Missouri are the leading States in the order named. New York's annual produc tion is about 112,000 tons; but in all the other Eastern and Southern States grape growing exists on so small a scale as hardly to be termed an industry. Production exists rather because a large number of small farmers like to grow a few for local use.