Word: vine
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Thomas Jefferson, who knew well the wines of France and Italy, dreamed of growing great vintages in Virginia To no avail. European vines, planted by Italian workers at his estate near Charlottesville, soon succumbed to insects and disease. For almost two centuries it was considered impossible to raise in the East South or Midwest-anywhere save California-any vine but the American Vitis labmsca, whose fermented grapes have an acid, musky, "foxy" flavor...
...Jefferson's old acreage Vitis vinifera, the noble vine of Europe is being grown. These vines and French-American hybrids, crossbreeds developed for more changeable climes, are also being cultivated in at least 27 other states and yielding serious table wines They are not, and never will be, Lafites or Corons but they are at least comparable to the local wines of France, and at best may prove in time to be far superior...
Small wonder that most of the Châteaux Peoria enterprises are tiny by California standards and much of their wine is sold locally, often on their own premises. Few have more than 100 acres in vines. (On the other hand, Burgundy's La Romanée-Conti vineyard, one of the world's most justly famed, encompasses barely 4½ acres.) Some of their owners, and professional oenologists, point out that the soil and microclimate in, say, parts of Massachusetts and Michigan are in many ways closer to the great winegrowing regions of Europe than are overheated...
Even more compelling, though, are the stories of those who have not yet shared the game fully--those who only dream. Some, like the Berkshire Brewers, a Double-A minor league club which, like all minor league clubs, is slowly withering on the vine of small-town America, might one day see the dream come true--but for now they play to what the Pope calls a private audience, with not enough fans in the two-bit stadium seats to fill a quorum at a PTA meeting. Others, like the 18 members of former Dodger Wally Moon's superb Arkansas...
...doesn't hit the second guy in the face." Another sure sign that his quarry is a criminal and not a hunter, according to Garrison, is whether the person has entered the high grass: "No one but someone on the run would go into that deep grass and vine...