In Grave they set the plants in quincunx, i.e. in equilateral triangles
of three and a half pieds every side; and they stick a pole of six or
eight feet high to every vine, separately. The vine-stock is sometimes
three or four feet high. They find these two methods equal in culture,
duration, quantity, and quality. The former, however, admits the
alternative of tending by hand or with the plough. The grafting of the
vine, though a critical operation, is practised with success. When the
graft has taken, they bend it into the earth, and let it take root above
the scar. They begin to yield an indifferent wine at three years old,
but not a good one till twenty-five years, nor after eighty, when they
begin to yield less, and worse, and must be renewed. They give three or
four workings in the year, each worth seventy or seventy-five livres the
journal, which is of eight hundred and forty square ioises, and contains
about three thousand plants. They dung a little in Medoc and Grave,
because of the poverty of the soil; but very little; as more would
affect the wine. The _journal_ yields, _communions annis_, about three
_pieces_ (of two hundred and forty, or two hundred and fifty bottles
each).
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