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Letter to Nicholas Longworth on the Grape Vine. March 19, 1829 Nicholas Longworth (1783–1863) was the first winemaker to build a national clientele and secure a fortune from the sale of his vintages. Born in New Jersey, he had lived in South Carolina from ages eighteen to twenty-one, moved to Cincinnati in 1804, and read law for half a year with Judge Jacob Burnet before setting himself up as a lawyer and land agent. Recognizing the unique potential of the city, Longworth invested heavily in real estate. By 1819 his holdings produced sufficient income for him to retire from the bar permanently, and by 1829 they were so great as to make him the wealthiest man in Ohio. His passion was horticulture, which he practiced with an amateur’s zeal, expending much time and money on experiments cultivating strawberries and grapes. He attempted unsuccessfully to grow and make wine from Vitis vinifera grapes, falling victim to the inevitable problems with fungus, disease, and insect depredation that had bedeviled every previous importer of French vines. He found success with the Catawba grape, supplied to him by John Adlum. With immense monetary resources at his disposal, he encouraged the variety’s cultivation by anyone who would plant it within a fifty-mile radius of his city, promising to buy all the juice pressed from the harvest. The German immigrants who settled Hamilton County responded enthusiastically. Longworth’s vintages of the 1820s suffered from the liabilities that troubled Adlum’s wine—brandy and too much sugar. Herbemont’s advice led to the elimination of the brandy and the tempering of the use of sugar. This letter, apparently the second or third in their correspondence, follows upon Herbemont’s package of vine cuttings. He discusses the virtues of the grapes he dispatched—the Herbemont, Bland’s Madeira, and Isabella. He indicates that he has not cultivated Adlum’s Catawba, the grape upon which Longworth would stake his fortune. Herbemont’s enthusiastic endorsement of grafting as a means of promoting quick vine growth would be adopted by Longworth and spread as doctrine among the Ohio grape cultivators. Herbemont’s insistence on the importance of soil, apparently refuting a claim by Longworth that it did not matter, asserts an enduring truth of wine making. The degree to which Longworth absorbed Herbemont’s methods of can be witnessed in Longworth’s own communications to the agricultural press that commenced in the 1830s. The single most significant thought in Herbemont’s letter was contained in his published letters 150 criticism of John Adlum’s attempts with his wines to ape the names and styles of reputable French and Portuguese vintages. He asks, “Why not be satisfied with any good wine, sui generis, which the country, soil and climate permit to make, and which, though different, may be of equal value, or perhaps superior to the imported ones?” Published in Southern Agriculturist 2, no. 12 (December 1829), 550–55. On the Grape Vine; communicated by n. herbemont, Esq. Columbia, S.C. March 19, 1829. To the Editor of the Southern Agriculturist. Dear Sir,—The following is a copy of a letter to a gentleman in Cincinnati, Ohio, in answer to some queries.—They are such as may be interesting to many of your subscribers. If you think so, you may insert it whenever it is convenient. I am glad to see that your opinion is, that Sugar is hereafter to be one of the most important staples of our State. I doubt, however, its ever being the case in the middle and upper parts of the State, and I wish this idea may not induce you to think the less of Wine and of all belonging to it, as I fear it is the case with our Agricultural Societies.1 The misfortune is, that the vine is several years after planting without returning any profit, and we do not seem at all disposed to do any thing for posterity, as it has never done any thing for us. If we ever cultivate the vine extensively, we must have corks, and we have thousands of acres fit to produce the Cork Tree,2 and scarcely anything else. But who will get and plant them? Our Societies cannot do it; their funds are much too small to do all things that are useful ,3 and our government thinks it ought not to do any thing for the good of the country!!! This doctrine may do very well, and probably...

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