a San Francisco wine merchant said to me, after he had shown me
through his premises. "Well, here's the reason."

And opening a large cupboard, fitted with many little drawers, he
proceeded to shower me all over with a great variety of gorgeously
tinted labels, blue, red, or yellow, stamped with crown or coronet,
and hailing from such a profusion of clos and chateaux, that a
single department could scarce have furnished forth the names. But
it was strange that all looked unfamiliar.

"Chateau X-?" said I. "I never heard of that."

"I dare say not," said he. "I had been reading one of X-'s
novels."

They were all castles in Spain! But that sure enough is the reason
why California wine is not drunk in the States.

Napa valley has been long a seat of the wine-growing industry. It
did not here begin, as it does too often, in the low valley lands
along the river, but took at once to the rough foot-hills, where
alone it can expect to prosper. A basking inclination, and stones,
to be a reservoir of the day's heat, seem necessary to the soil for
wine; the grossness of the earth must be evaporated, its marrow
daily melted and refined for ages; until at length these clods that
break below our footing, and to the eye appear but common earth,
are truly and to the perceiving mind, a masterpiece of nature. The
dust of Richebourg, which the wind carries away, what an apotheosis
of the dust! Not man himself can seem a stranger child of that
brown, friable powder, than the blood and sun in that old flask