Note 10 — Chapter I · THE OLD WORLD GRAPE

Roger Beverly, writing a century later, describes the early grape-growing in Virginia as follows: “The Year before the Massacre, Anno 1622, which destroyed so many good projects for Virginia; some French vignerons were sent thither to make an experiment of their vines. These people were so in love with the country, that the character they then gave of it in their letters to the company in England, was very much to its advantage, namely: ‘That it far excelled their own country of Languedoc, The vines growing in great abundance and variety all over the land; that some of the grapes were of that unusual bigness, that they did not believe them to be grapes, until by opening them they had seen their kernels; that they had planted the cuttings of their vines at Michaelmas, and had grapes from those very cuttings, the spring following. Adding in the conclusion, that they had not heard of the like in any other country.’ Neither was this out of the way, for I have made the same experiment, both of their natural vine, and of the plants sent thither from England.” Beverly’s Virginia, Second Edition: 107. 1722.