and to look at it, you would say, that can
never be the fruit which established Jean
Raisin's glorious fame. A basket of Pineaus
in Covent Garden market would be scorned
and scoffed at as good for nothing by every
passing greenhouse gardener.
Notwithstanding which, the Pineau occupies the
place of honour in France, on the sunniest
slopes and the most sheltered hills. The wine
made of the Pineau is the wine that is exported
to supply the tables of nobles and princes.
The Pineau represents the aristocracy.

The next, in importance and consideration,
and perhaps the first in usefulness, is the
Gamais (perhaps named after the village
Gamay, near Beaune), a black grape, with
larger and better-looking bunches and berries
than those of the Pineau. It is excellent to
eat; and an inexperienced taster would be at
a loss to guess that its wine should turn out
inferior in quality. It is the main stock of
the vineyards of the plain and the valley,—
the Pineau above, and the Gamais below.
The Gamais is the only kind which, after
being frozen in spring, will reproduce fruit;
even then, it will bear an abundant crop.
And the low bottoms between a line of hills
are much more liable to frost than the hills
themselves. The kindly Gamais gives wine
for the multitude. Its humbler pretensions
cause it to stop at home. When it does travel
abroad, it is mostly in partnership or
combined association with its grander relative, or
else decorated with heraldic bearings to
which it has no right. Were it not for the
good-natured Gamais, the farmer and the
vinedresser would often have no wine at all
to drink. And I hereby certify that a bottle
of wine from a Gamais vineyard is a much
more cheering beverage than water from the
pump.  In short, the Gamais represents the
people.  In thirteen hundred and ninety-five
Philip the Bold, Duke of Burgundy, made
an ordonnance, forbidding to plant the
Gamais or to manure the vineyards.
Exclusiveness, then, found its way into
wine-bibbing.  His highness wanted nectar for his
court, not drink for his subjects.
Notwithstanding which prohibition, the Gamais
flourishes, in eighteen hundred and fifty-four,
in greater abundance than ever it did, and
the vineyards receive a dressing of manure
as often as their owners can spare it them.

Vineyards are seldom or never exclusively
planted with one, or even two, or three, kinds
of grapes. The Pineau or the Gamais may
predominate, as the case may be; but
amongst them are scattered single plants or
small groups of other less-esteemed varieties.
This is done purposely, in order that the
farmer, as he says, may have some fruit and
wine that he can consume himself, after the
best has gone to his customers. One does
not see why, except for French thrift, he
could not reserve a share of the best, as the
vines producing it do not occupy an inch
more ground. But so it is. Of these
permitted intruders, the most frequent is the
Pineau blanc, a golden-white grape, to which
an entire hill is sometimes devoted; the
Troyen, a merry-looking round black grape,
which ripens so suddenly during the week
preceding the vintage that the vintagers say
it will not begin to change colour till it hears
the tubs of preparation rolling about. The
Troyen meritoriously adapts itself to the
flat places and little bits of table-land that
lie on the upper parts of the hills, where the
Pineau would not do so well. It also bears
a stiffer and more clayey soil; but not only
is the Troyen inferior to the Gamais, but it is
difficult to keep it hanging on the stem. The
grapes fall to the ground if they are not
gathered as soon as ripe. The wine it gives,
though pleasant enough the first year or two,
soon turns flat and loses its goodness. But
the quantity it produces is a point of
considerable importance, which is likely to
increase rather than diminish under the
present circumstances of Jean Raisin's affairs.
Besides these, the Trousseaux, or
Bourguignon, black and better for wine than
eating, is tolerated; the Teinturier is useful
to colour the wine, and for not much else;
the Meunier, or Miller, is a black grape,
whose leaves are covered with cottony down.
The best white wines, champagne included,
are made of a little sweet grape called the
Beaunoir, which is extensively cultivated in
its place. There are also pink grapes, such
as the Chasselas rouge, the Raisin de Nuits (if
it is not the same), and the Arbanne rouge,
which are merely allowed standing-room, in
order that their fruit may appear at table.

Jean Raisin has enemies. Of course he has.
He is much too conspicuous a personage to be
allowed to go through the world quietly. I do
not here allude to Whole Hogs, but to Jack
Frost, and Daddy Longlegs and company.
The latter adversaries are the least formidable,
the worst of them being the rhynchites
of the birch tree, a pretty shining insect, with
a head terminating in a sharp snout. In the
middle of June, the female rhynchites roll up
the leaves of the vines into cigars: not to
smoke them, but as cradles for their young.
La lune rousse, that horrid red moon which
shines in spring, is believed to effect Jean
Raisin's health in the same way as the evil
eye would. The warm spring day, which
tempts the leaf-buds to open too soon, and
then betrays them to hoar-frost or the biting
east wind, is also a bitter enemy. The same
of a sun-stroke after a mist. These,
combined with cold rains in early summer, which
wash the pollen out of the anthers, together
bring about the misfortune called coulure, or
the abortion and dropping off of the blossom.
Atmospheric variations sometimes thus
destroy, in a few days, the entire hopes of the
vinegrower. Now and then, a single day has
seen the pistil fertilized, and the harvest
destroyed, by a burning sunstroke. So liable
to injury are the delicate and sweetscented