Page:The Boy Travellers in Australasia.djvu/370

346 where the business is only a little older than it is with us. All the colonies are giving much attention to grape-growing; the yield is very large; but in the last few years the vines have suffered considerably from phylloxera, though fortunately all parts of the colonies have not been affected by it.

"We make so much wine, and it is so cheap and good," the gentleman continued, "that it ought to be the drink of the people, just as in France, Spain, Italy, and the other countries of Southern Europe. Very little wine is used by the laboring classes; some do not drink at all, others drink occasionally, and others daily and hourly if they have the opportunity, but nearly all prefer spirits to wine. What makes the matter worse is that the spirits are very bad in quality, and their consumption leads to much wretchedness and degradation, just as in Europe and America. Some of the working people drink beer, as in England, and in all the cities and large towns there are extensive breweries that do a good business.

"Competent and conscientious judges say that the ordinary Australian wines are better than the same grades sold in Paris and other French cities. They are the pure juice of the grape, the juice being so abundant and cheap that it does not pay to adulterate it. In Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide, and Brisbane a man can buy for threepence a glass of as fine an ordinary wine as was ever made; it is nutritious and wholesome, but unfortunately the great majority of the laboring classes prefer to swallow the vile decoctions that are sold under the names of spirits. Our capabilities in wine-making are absolutely unlimited; we are shipping some of our products to Europe, where they take the place of the ordinary wines of France and Spain, and quite possibly you get many casks of them in New York and other American cities, where they are sold as Bordeaux wines."