The Silverado Squatters | Page 7

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 behind the faggots.
A Californian vineyard, one of man's outposts in the wilderness, has
features of its own. There is nothing here to remind you of the Rhine or
Rhone, of the low cote d'or, or the infamous and scabby deserts of
Champagne; but all is green, solitary, covert. We visited two of them,
Mr. Schram's and Mr. M'Eckron's, sharing the same glen.
Some way down the valley below Calistoga, we turned sharply to the
south and plunged into the thick of the wood. A rude trail rapidly
mounting; a little stream tinkling by on the one hand, big enough
perhaps after the rains, but already yielding up its life; overhead and on

all sides a bower of green and tangled thicket, still fragrant and still
flower-bespangled by the early season, where thimble-berry played the
part of our English hawthorn, and the buck-eyes were putting forth
their twisted horns of blossom: through all this, we struggled toughly
upwards, canted to and fro by the roughness of the trail, and continually
switched across the face by sprays of leaf or blossom. The last is no
great inconvenience at home; but here in California it is a matter of
some moment. For in all woods and by every wayside there prospers an
abominable shrub or weed, called poison-oak, whose very
neighbourhood is venomous to some, and whose actual touch is
avoided by the most impervious.
The two houses, with their vineyards, stood each in a green niche of its
own in this steep and narrow forest dell. Though they were so near,
there was already a good difference in level; and Mr. M'Eckron's head
must be a long way under the feet of Mr. Schram. No more had been
cleared than was necessary for cultivation; close around each oasis ran
the tangled wood; the glen enfolds them; there they lie basking in sun
and silence, concealed from all but the clouds and the mountain birds.
Mr. M'Eckron's is a bachelor establishment; a little bit of a wooden
house, a small cellar hard by in the hillside, and a patch of vines
planted and tended single-handed by himself. He had but recently
began; his vines were young, his business young also; but I thought he
had the look of the man who succeeds. He hailed from Greenock: he
remembered his father putting him inside Mons Meg, and that touched
me home; and we exchanged a word or two of Scotch, which pleased
me more than you would fancy.
Mr. Schram's, on the other hand, is the oldest vineyard in the valley,
eighteen years old, I think; yet he began a penniless barber, and even
after he had broken ground up here with his black malvoisies,
continued for long to tramp the valley with his razor. Now, his place is
the picture of prosperity: stuffed birds in the verandah, cellars far dug
into the hillside, and resting on pillars like a bandit's cave:- all trimness,
varnish, flowers, and sunshine, among the tangled wildwood. Stout,
smiling Mrs. Schram, who has been to Europe and apparently all about
the States for pleasure, entertained Fanny in the verandah, while I was
tasting wines in the cellar. To Mr. Schram this was a solemn office; his
serious gusto warmed my heart; prosperity had not yet wholly banished

a certain neophite and girlish trepidation, and he followed every sip and
read my face with proud anxiety. I tasted all. I tasted every variety and
shade of Schramberger, red and white Schramberger, Burgundy
Schramberger, Schramberger Hock, Schramberger Golden Chasselas,
the latter with a notable bouquet, and I fear to think how many more.
Much of it goes