CHAPTER XIV
CALIFORNIA FARMS AND VINEYARDS
What temperament is to a man, that climate is to a country. The climate of California is one of the most delightful in the world.
California possesses the wealth of two zones. The ocean current gives it a temperate climate and the mountain ranges intercepting and reflecting the sun’s rays give California a climate distinctly her own.
Fine fruit farms surround San Francisco for fifty miles. Irrigation, combined with a genial climate, produces the delicious fruit for which California is justly famed. In the vineyards the vines are pruned low, from two to four feet high. The Leland Stanford vineyard is one of the finest on the coast, the low pruned vines with their dark green leaves and rich purple fruit making a fine contrast to the red brown soil.
California produces more wine to the acre than any other country in the world. The best American wines come from Sonoma county, the Asti of America, where a thousand foothills are planted in choice wine grapes, and where nature supplies all the moisture necessary to perfectly ripen the fruit.
The vines are planted eight feet apart, intersected by wide avenues, down which the wagons pass in gathering up the boxes into which the pickers have tossed the ripe grapes—only well ripened grapes make good wine. Many of these roadways are lined on either side with olives, palms and other semi-tropical plants.
The pickers are mostly Swiss and Italian, men of practical experience in their own countries. They work in groups and keep up a running fire of jest and fun; ever and anon a happy heart breaks out in native song.
Pitchers of rude crockery are scattered about filled with wine for the workers.
From San Diego to Dutch Harbor wine flows freely, but yet there is no drunkenness to speak of.