The Vineyard And Its Management

A vineyard is more artificial than other plantations of fruits, since

the vine requires greater discipline under cultivation than tree or

bush. Yet greater art is required only when the attempt is made to

grow the grape to perfection, for the vine bears fruit if left to

indulge in riotous growth wheresoever it can strike root. Vineyard

management, therefore, may represent the consummate art of three

thousand or more ye rs of cultural subserviency; or it may be so

primeval in simplicity as to approach neglect. The grape is so

wonderfully responsive to good care, however, that no true lover of

fruit will profane it with neglect, but will seek, rather, to give it

a favorable situation, its choice of soils and such generous care as

will insure strong, vigorous, productive vineyards of choicely good

fruit.



Grape-growing is a specialists' business, for the culture of the grape

is unlike that of any other fruit. The essentials of vineyard

management, however, are easily learned. Indeed, care of the vine

comes almost instinctively; for the grape has been cultivated since

prehistoric times and the races of the world are so familiar with it

through sacred literatures, myths, fables, stories and poetry, that

its care is prompted by natural impulse. The grape has followed

civilized man so closely from place to place through the temperate

climates of the world, that rules and methods of culture have been

developed for almost every condition under which it will grow, so that

every grape-grower may profit by the successes and failures of the

generations that preceded him. Grape-growing is not, however, an art

wholly governed by rules of the past to be carried on by common

laborers who use hands only, but is one in which its followers may

make use of science and may put thought, skill and taste into their

work.