Page:Australia, from Port Macquarie to Moreton Bay.djvu/208

 of ground. An eminent French authority has given a statistical account of the average quantity of wine furnished by various vineyards throughout France, and the expenses attendant on its production. I have taken from his account those two vineyards which are most widely different in the comparative quantity of wine yielded by them, viz. Grève, and St. Emilien:—

The comparative expenses attending the production of the wine—was,

Which would be at the rate of £5. 5s. for St. Emilien, and £4. 10s. for Grève to the English acre.

It is, however, worthy of remark, that the smaller the quantity of wine that is obtained from a vineyard, the better will be the wine, and vice versâ; thus the choicer vineyards of France yield a much smaller quantity of wine than the ordinary ones; the best Medoc wines, for instance, only averaging six barriques to each arpent of ground, whilst some inferior vineyards yield thirty barriques to the arpent. Mr. Busby states that the vintage through-out France yields, one year with another, two hundred and forty-seven gallons to the acre. This quantity is, however, very much below that yielded in those central and western districts of France,