Page:A Treatise on the Culture of the Vine and, and the Art of Making Wine.pdf/77

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you may expect the same changes on those new individuals you would introduce; you will experience, in this respect, what has been the experience of a thousand others before you. Among numerous examples, the following is cited in preference, because the place whence the proprietor drew his plants of choice, is at no great distance from that, where he judged proper to replant them; and this is a circumstance worthy of attention.

In 1774, the Count de Fontenoy, a proprietor in Lorraine, happy in being born with a taste for useful projects, and with wealth to make costly experiments, formed the design of establishing a vineyard of Champagne, on his land of Champigneul; several observers, uselessly, represented to him, that the soil not being that of Champagne, he would only obtain the wine of Lorraine. The plants were obtained from the hill of Rheims and planted on a slope, with a most happy exposure; no care, no expence was spared, either in the plantation, or culture, of this young vineyard: and the first fruits, in fact, seemed to give some promise of success. They had a different taste from those of the neighbouring vineyards, but after seven or eight years, this particular taste disappeared, and twenty years