2-913-851 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

The City of Bordeaux, 1854. Wine-growing in France. '...in these parts it is within the reach of all purses; the meanest labourer, in fact, can take it at all his meals, and it is from it that he derives great part of his strength....Vines attain their full growth at the age of five years. Many produce the most excellent grapes at this early period, and some have been known to bring forth good fruit even at the age of 150 or 200 years...A person travelling in a wine country for the first time might be surprised if he were told that the hard gravelly soil of Medoc is more valuable than many of the most loamy arable lands; and still more surprised if told that the hardest parts of it were the most precious of all...The gravel acts at once as a sieve to carry away the water from the sinewy roots of the plant, and as an oven to retain the heat of the sun's rays'. From "Illustrated London News", 1854.