Page:A Treatise on the Culture of the Vine and, and the Art of Making Wine.pdf/62

22 and from the sensibility of the vine, are peculiarly so to it. The injury is still more severe, when, as frequently happens, they are followed by hoar frosts, its extent being in proportion to the degree of moisture congealed, and to the quickness of its evaporation. When such occur, during the critical season of the vines flowering, they generally prove fatal to the hopes of the year, but their effects are to be dreaded by the fruit at all seasons.

Although heat is necessary to ripen the grape, and to furnish it with sugar, it would be an error to imagine that heat alone is capable of producing these desirable properties. It can be but considered, as the agent, in elaborating the juices with which the earth is supposed to be impregnated in sufficient quantity. There must be heat, no doubt, but that heat must not spend itself on a parched soil, in which case, it would scorch rather than vivify

The good condition of the vine, and the perfection of its fruit, are the effects of a just proportion;—of a perfect equilibrium between the water which furnishes aliment to the plant, and the heat which alone gives to it the power of elaborating that aliment, and extracting from it those principles which constitute the excellence of wines.