Visitors to Cincinnati feel it, of course, to be a patriotic duty to make inquiries respecting the native wine; and to facilitate the performance of this duty, the landlord of the Burnet House publishes in his daily bill of fare twelve varieties of American wine, from three States, Ohio, Missouri, and California. The cheapest is the Ohio Catawba, one dollar a bottle; the dearest is Missouri champagne, at three dollars and a half. The wine culture, it appears, is somewhat out of favor at present among the farmers of Ohio. A German family, many-handed, patient, and economical, occupying a small vineyard and paying no wages, finds the business profitable; but an American, who lives freely, and depends upon hired assistance, is likely to fail. A vineyard requires incessant and skilful labor. The costly preparation of the soil, the endless prunings and hoeings, the great and watchful care required in picking, sorting, and pressing the grapes, in making and preserving the wine, the many perils to which the crop is exposed at every moment of its growth and ripening, and the three years of waiting before the vines begin to bear, all conspire to discourage and defeat the ordinary cultivator. The "rot" is a very severe trial to human patience. The vines look thrifty, the grapes are large and abundant, and all goes well, until the time when the grapes, being fully grown, are about to change color. Then a sudden blight occurs, and two thirds of the whole crop of grapes, the result of the year's labor, wither and spoil. The cause, probably, is the exhaustion of some elements in the soil needful to the supreme effort of Nature to perfect her work. Nevertheless, the patient Germans succeed in the business, and sell their wine to good advantage to the large dealers and bottlers.
The Longworth wine-cellar, one of the established lions of the city, cheers the thirsty soul of man. There we had the pleasure of seeing, by a candle's flickering light, two hundred thousand bottles of wine, and of walking along subterranean streets lined with huge tuns, each of them large enough to house a married Diogenes, or to drown a dozen Dukes of Clarence, and some of them containing five thousand gallons of the still unvexed Catawba. It was there that we made acquaintance with the "Golden Wedding" champagne, the boast of the late proprietor,--an acquaintance which we trust will ripen into an enduring friendship. If there is any better wine than this attainable in the present state of existence, it ought, in consideration of human weakness, to be all poured into the briny deep. It is a very honest cellar, this. Except a little rock candy to aid fermentation, no foreign ingredient is employed, and the whole process of making and bottling the wine is conducted with the utmost care. Nicholas Longworth was neither an enlightened nor a public-spirited man; but, like most of his race, he was scrupulously honest. Indeed, we may truly say, that there is in Cincinnati a general spirit of fidelity. Work is generally done well there, promises are kept, and representations accord with the facts.