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An Essay on the Culture of the Grape Vine, and Making of Wine; Suited for the United States, and More Particularly for the Southern States. January–July 1828 Composed during the autumn of 1827, Herbemont’s summary treatment of vine culture and wine making drew upon eighteen years of experiment in cultivating wine and table grapes in the southern hill country of the United States. These experiments had concentrated his attention on six varieties of grape—all of them natives or native-French hybrids: Herbemont ’s Madeira, Lenoir, Red Muscat (Bland’s Madeira), Isabella, Arena, and Muscadine. In 1828 he grew thirty-six varieties of Vitis vinifera grapes at Palmyra, yet none of these proved sufficiently productive or resistant to black rot, phylloxera, and Pierce’s disease to warrant wine production. His palate judged the wine from Isabella and Muscadine grapes inferior to that produced from the Madeira, Lenoir, Red Muscat, and Arena. He made white wine from the Madeira and red from the three latter varieties. In both the cultivation of the grapes and the fermentation of the wine, he was conscious of the extent to which his experience showed that the optimum methods for success deviated from the instructions of European authorities. For Herbemont the most scientific European practice had been encapsulated in Nouveau cours complet d’agriculture théorique et pratique, contenant la grande et la petite culture , l’économie rurale et domestique, la médecine vétérinaire, etc., ou Dictionnaire raisonné et universel d’Agriculture (Paris: P. Deterville, 1809). This encyclopedic treatise composed by the members of the Section d’Agriculture de l’Institut de France included a treatment of grape culture by Louis-Augustin Guillaume Bosc d’Antic, who had served as a diplomat in the United States, knew personally of the botany of South Carolina, and had been instrumental in Herbemont’s receiving grape cuttings from the national gardens in Paris in the autumn of 1820. Of American commentators on grape culture, only John James Dufour (whom Herbemont had befriended in Pennsylvania in the late 1790s) was regarded as reliable and quoted as authoritative on matters of training vines in trees, pressing grapes, and cellaring wine. Herbemont departed from Dufour’s advice on many features of his method. Certain distinctive features of Herbemont’s practice in trenching, pruning, and trellising Treatises 40 found systematic exposition here. The most historically important feature of his practice that did not appear—his grafting scions on native rootstocks—he detailed in certain “observations ” in the Southern Agriculturist that he promised readers at the end of the essay. Unlike Herbemont’s later treatise “Wine Making,” his “Essay on the Culture of the Grape Vine” was not published independently in booklet form. Indeed, the restricted availability of the essay in the pages of the Southern Agriculturist was held out to the agricultural public as a reason to subscribe to the periodical. The essay appeared serially in Southern Agriculturist 1, no. 1–7 (January–July, 1828), 7–17, 49–57, 99–106, 145–51, 193–203, 241–49, 289–98. “And Noah began to be an husbandman, and he planted a vineyard.” genesis c.ix. v.20 If it were necessary, at this period of the existence of man, to prove the utility and great importance of the cultivation of the vine, its antiquity would, perhaps, be sufficient for this purpose. It is mentioned in the Bible, this most ancient record of the transactions of man on this earth, and we believe it is the first article of culture specifically noticed after the deluge: “And Noah began to be an husbandman, and he planted a Vineyard.” It is subsequently and frequently mentioned throughout the Sacred Writings, sometimes exhibiting the great goodness of God, at other times as being the very type of fruitfulness, of abundance, and of the best temporal gift to man by his Creator. That we are apt to abuse every thing given us for a blessing , is but too true, and the celebrated patriarch, here above cited, is a very notable instance of this, as he was the first to avail himself of the benefit, and to convert it to his shame. It is, however, no reason, that we must not use a good thing because it is sometimes abused, and it is very doubtful whether there is not more criminality in neglecting to avail ourselves of the benefits lavished upon us by a bountiful Providence, than to use them, even at the risk of doing so...

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