There is a similarity between the Cape and the Madeira grape. Both are cultivated very much in the same manner, but the grand point of difference between the two is the time of gathering the grapes. In Madeira they are not gathered till so ripe that many begin to fall, and many are withered from over ripeness; these are of course rejected. By this means a smaller amount of wine is obtained from a vineyard than would have been produced had the grapes been gathered earlier: but the quality of the wine is improved beyond conception. Every grape is full, ripe, and luscious, and the wine partakes of its quality. Nothing can prove more clearly the necessity of the grape being fully, and rather _over_ ripe, than the difference of the wine produced on the north side of the Island of Madeira, where this perfection of the grape can scarcely be attained, and that grown on the south side: the latter is Nectar; the former Cape; or little better. Now at _the_ Cape the object of the farmer is always to get the greatest _quantity_ of wine from his vineyard; and consequently he gathers his grapes when they are barely ripe, and none have fallen or withered; whereby he fills his storehouses with wine full of acidity and of that vile twang which all who have tasted shudder to recal. Some of the wine-growers in the colony have lately pursued a different plan, and with vast success. This has been chiefly among the English colonists; for a Dutch boor at the Cape is a very intractable animal, and not easily induced to swerve from old systems, be they ever so bad. Probably, the principal reason why the colony produced from the very first such bad wines, was its having been colonised by Dutchmen, who could have had no experience at home in wine-growing. Who knows what might have been the case had a colony from the plains of Champagne or Bordeaux first settled there? Apropos of this, I may mention that a fellow passenger of mine was a Frenchman from Champagne. At the Cape he entered into partnership with a young Englishman (also a fellow passenger), and agreed to take a wine farm. The Englishman was to supply capital—the Frenchman knowledge. Monsieur had determined to make “Cape Champagne;” and remarkably well he succeeded. Often at public and even at private dinners, when swallowing something dignified with the name of that right-royal wine, have I sighed to think how far more palatable would be a bottle of Monsieur L——’s vintage. It perhaps requires a greater outlay of capital to be a successful wine-grower than almost anything else in the colony. There are, in addition to the purchase of land and vines, the expenses of storehouses, casks, and, above all, that most difficult commodity to attain—labour. So great is the want of the latter, and so uncertain the supply of even that which is attainable, that he is a bold man who ventures on wine-farming at the Cape.