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Table Grapes. October 26, 1830 Nineteenth-century America was smitten by fruit. Gardeners and pomologists strove to find the most flavorful new varieties and perfect their cultivation. Nicholas Herbemont participated in this quest, cultivating apples, plums, mulberries, and strawberries besides his multitude of grapes. While Herbemont generally dismissed the notion of a hard and fast distinction between wine grapes and table grapes, he recognized that for an increasingly sizeable portion of the agricultural readership—the evangelical temperance crowd— the cultivation of grapes for wine making seemed Satan’s business. Only the cultivation of grapes for consumption as fruit was innocent. Herbemont willingly acceded to Gideon B. Smith’s request to prepare a discussion of grapes as fruit for the American Farmer. Historically , the truth that Herbemont posits early in the letter, that no consequential difference between grape or table grapes exists, proved essential to the renovation of the American wine industry after the repeal of Prohibition. Throughout the 1920s cultivators survived by selling varieties planted for wine making as table grapes. Published in American Farmer 12, no. 35 (November 12, 1830): 276–77. Columbia, S.C. Oct. 26, 1830 mr. smith. Sir,—I have sometime since promised, rather indiscreetly, to furnish for your most valuable agricultural journal, an article on the culture of the grape, principally for the table, for private gardens and also for those who furnish the markets with this most elegant fruit. Having been requested to do so, I did not know how to refuse, although I was certain that there are many persons much more able to do justice to such a subject that I am; I must, however, redeem my promise, calculating on your and your readers’ indulgence for the many unavoidable imperfections of the article; for I am not a gardener, and I must rest my hopes of indulgence on my wish to do all in my power to promote so important a culture. It is difficult and perhaps unnecessary to distinguish accurately between table and wine grapes. Many persons suppose that it is with grapes as it is generally with apples, and that, as the best cider-apples are not fit to eat, the grapes used for wine are not palatable. It is not so. All the grapes that I have seen that make good wine, published letters 196 are more or less good for the table, and some are even eminent for both uses. It is true that some of the most esteemed table grapes are very indifferent for wine, such as the family of the “Chasselas,”1 and others which make only a flat and weak wine, and although they are exceedingly pleasant and sweet to the taste, they contain but little saccharine matter. It requires, therefore, an experienced palate to enable one to pronounce certainly on the quality of a grape for wine by its taste alone. But if some of the best table grapes are not suitable to make good wine, there are but few of the best wine grapes which are not also a very pleasant and delicious fruit. Their qualities for this, are, however, very various, and are adapted also to different purposes; some being only suitable for immediate use, while others can be easily kept a long time, not only on the vine, but also after they have been gathered. It might be useful to make a full enumeration of them with the particular properties of each; but besides my inability to do so, it would render this article much too long. I shall therefore merely say, that those grapes which have a thin juice may be looked upon as unsuitable to be kept long, and that those whose pulp or flesh is firm and cracking, may be kept more or less long as they possess more or less of these qualities. These last are also the most fit for raisins. The grape may be termed the fruit par excellence; for besides its various and most delicious flavors, it has deservedly the reputation of being most wholesome, and, when it is perfectly ripe, it is said to restore invalids to a healthy state, and to obviate the disorders of the stomach in dyspeptic persons. Its beauty is also of the first order, and many plants, which are cultivated with no other object than this quality, are very inferior in this respect to the grape. A plant, therefore, so eminently possessed of all these desirable qualities deserves the utmost care in its cultivation. The principles of its...

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