AMERICAN WINES. About the middle of the sixteenth century wine was made in Florida from wild grapes, and unsuccessful attempts were made by the early settlers of Virginia to establish wine-making, as a permanent industry. In 1664 a man named Richards received per mission from the first English Governor of New York to sell native wines Without tax. and Regan the extensive cultivation of grapes in that colony. During the latter part of the seventeenth cen tury the manufacture of wine was begun in New Jersey and Delaware. and it was attempted, but without success. by William Penn in Penn sylvania. From the beginning of the industry in the United States the best grapes have been imported from wine-producing countries, but at tempts to acclimate them have been largely un suceessful except in the States lying west of the Rocky Mountains. (See GnArE.) There are five distinct wine-producing regions in the United States: (1) The Pacific district, including the territory lying west the Rocky Mountains, New Mexico, Arizona, and a portion of the Rio Grande Valley ill Texas; (2) New York; (3) Ohio and Virginia; (4) Missouri; and (5) the Southern States from North Caro lina to Texas. These divisions are of the most general nature, and each would be subdivided into many districts if its wines were carefully and comprehensively studied. For instance, the
soil and climatic conditions of California yield wines of widely varying characteristics. They are made almost exclusively from the European flower wine, etc.; loosely, unfermented fruit juice used as a beverage. Wine manufacture antedates history. Sketches on Egyptian monu ments indicate that it was practiced several , years before our era; biblical records abound in references to wines and vitte?ards; history credits the dissemination of the vine throughout the Mediterranean region to the Photnicians, and, to judge by the writings of Ilerodotus, Aristophaties, Democritus, Cato, Varro, Vergil, Columella, and Pliny, wine-making in their days had reached a high degree of perfection among the i\lediterranean nations. Pdany of the an cient wines, particularly of Western Asia. Greeee, and Italy, owed their popularity to spices, the addition of whirl', except iu the Mediterranean region and in the East, has been commercially abandoned. This practice and the present eont thercial demand for natural wines is partly ac countable for the lower rating of formerly fa mous wines of the countries