viticulture in France. Even the department
of the Gironde alone offers so many varieties
of vine-culture, and of qualities of wine,
that it may be stated, without error, that
this single department contains more diversities
of practice than all the rest of France
put together. A word, therefore, on the
Médoc system is all that space allows us here.

The tongue of land on which the Médoc is
situated is of visible dimensions even on the
map of France. On the map of the department
its importance is manifest from its
actual area, its neighbourhood to Bordeaux,
the crowding of the names of villages and
chateaux, and its remarkable boundaries
which are the Atlantic ocean, the sandy
desert of the Landes, and the broad expanse
of that grand union of rivers, the Gironde,
which may be anglicised as The Whirl of
Waters. From Pauillac, about half-way between
Bordeaux and the open sea, an electric
telegraph announces the arrival of vessels.
In England, we have one or two spots which
resemble this broad tongue of level land on a
miniature, or, I might say, a microscopic
scale; for instance, the South Denes near
Great Yarmouth. Plant that peninsula with
Lilliputian forests of pines; streak it irregularly
with thread-like roads; scatter towns of dolls'
houses amidst expansive vineyards of not too
tall moss, and you have a model of the
Médoc, as far as relative proportions are concerned,
after the fashion of Uncle Toby's
fortifications on his bowling-green. The soil
of the vineyards is remarkable. At the best
it is a light, scalding, heathy loam, whose
natural vegetation consists of plants that are
regarded as the representatives of barrenness.
There is no lack (on uncultivated spots)
of heath, furze, and shabby pines, intermingled
with all sorts of stunted, thorny, crabbed
shrubs. It is composed of a large amount of
pebbles, amidst which quartz predominates.
The pebbles of the Médoc (an omnium-gatherum
contribution from the Pyrenees in
olden time), besides yielding good wine, make
pretty buttons and brooches, which are not
despised either by male or female connoisseurs.
They are another proof that the vine
delights in, and is most grateful for, a diet
consisting of the fragments of rocks, instead
of the gross and fulsome nourishment with
which so many English gardeners will surfeit
it. It also confirms Liebig's theory of the
important influence which mineral elements
have on vegetation. Strong, well-keeping
wine is here produced from mere beds of
sand and gravel. The composition of the
claret soil differs widely from that of the best
Burgundian vineyards—agreeing with it
mainly in its apparent poverty to the eye of
English horticulturists. That it is not everywhere
really poor, is evident from the thrifty
crops of peas, beans, artichokes, and strawberries,
that are raised in many vineyards
(in the low grounds and offskirts of the
Médoc principally), between the rows of
vines, at an early period of the year, before
they have attained their full luxuriance.
Standard figs, too, are here and there to be
seen stretching their arms to an extent
that would be difficult if they were ill-fed
and had no radical support to their constitutional
vigour. The frequent heaps of vegetable
mould and rotting leaves, collected as
vine-manure under the name of terreau,
attest how the soil is supplied with humus.
You see frequent stacks of vine-prunings
labelled "vigne à vendre," to be sold for fuel;
their ashes enter into the compost heap, and
help to restore the exhausted plants. The
presence or the absence of these applications,
in combination with the slowly-decomposing
particles of rock, account for what has been
called the capriciousness of the vine, because
it will prove unproductive within a few yards
of the finest vineyards. Just so, a man
might die of starvation, if chained within a
few yards of a well-supplied table which he
could not reach. "We should not accuse him
of caprice and uncertainty. Add to this,
that the Médoc is a plain, instead of a hill-side
sloping to the south, like the vineyards of
the Rhine, the Loire, and the Côte d'Or, and
it is evident that with a good climate and
careful culture, you may do anything you
please with the vine.

The vines of the Médoc are planted in
straight parallel rows, just broad enough to
allow them to be horse-hoed (if it is not a
bull to say so), by the same beautiful breed
of bullocks as are used as beasts of draught
in Bordeaux itself. In fact, it was on this
very spot that Jethro Tull caught his famous
idea of horse-hoe cultivation. Each vine-stem
rises perpendicularly a few inches,
and is then made to send off a single
horizontal branch to the right and one
to the left, which is supported by a horizontal
wooden bar, called a carasson. Being
kept so close to the ground, the grapes feel
the influence of the reflected heat by day,
and of the warmth given out by the heated
earth during the lengthening nights of
autumn. The lowly vineyards, thus managed,
leave the landscape singularly clear. A sea
of verdure spreads from beneath your feet in
all directions, studded with the various châteaux
which give their names to respective
clarets, and with clumps of stately trees,
between which shine the waters of the Garonne
(whence Médoc, medio aquæ, in the
midst of water), backed by the hills on its
opposite coast, as the shore of an oceanic
estuary may be called. Before the soil of the
vineyards is ox-hoed and the vines have put
forth their leaves, many of the native weeds
of the soil are familiar in the shape of garden
plants in England, the marigold (here a
single-flowered dwarf), the chive, and the
grape-hyacinth. The English word "drainage"
is naturalised in the Médoc, as well as
the practice and the clay tiles and tubes by
which it is effected.