The consequences of this culpable neglect may readily be imagined. Purchasers diminished in number year by year, the wines lost their value, and the unfortunate proprietors with large stocks on hand were reduced to great poverty. All sorts of expedients were adopted under the pressure of the calamity; the wines were turned into vinegar, but again the speculation failed for want of a market. We heartily desire that our reasonable remonstrances in favour of Soudak may reach the imperial government, so that effectual measures may be taken to revive the great natural wealth of that magnificent valley. We do not know the intentions of the present finance minister, but it is to be hoped that he will not partake the narrow views of his predecessor. Count Cancrini was a fanatic partisan of the consumption of foreign wines, and at the same time the declared enemy of the home growth, which he regarded as most injurious to the customs' revenue of the empire.
In the present state of things it is not easy to predict the future fortunes of the Crimean wine production. For our own part, we are thoroughly convinced that France has no sort of competition to fear on the part of those regions. Whether the cultivation of the vine be concentrated in the valleys or on the hill sides, we do not think that the vintage can ever rival ours. It has been very justly remarked that wherever the vine and the olive grow together, the wines cannot have that delicacy and that bouquet which belong only to our temperate climates. We believe, however, that if the wines of the Archipelago were subjected to higher duties, if the means of transport were rendered more facile, and increased cultivation were given to the more open hill sides that extend towards the east of the Tauric chain, the Crimea would soon be enabled to supply the demand of the whole empire for the commoner sorts of wine, and the result would, perhaps, be extremely advantageous in diminishing the mischievous use of ardent spirits. Such a change as this would evidently be not at all prejudicial to French commerce, which sends only wines of the first quality to the south of Russia.
According to a report printed in the Russian journals of 1834, and cited by M. Dubois, the 7,100,000 vine plants, contained in that year on the old and new plantations, were distributed as follows:--
South-west coast of the Crimea 1,600,000 Soudak and south-east coast 2,000,000 Valley of the Katch 2,000,000 " the Alma 500,000 " the Belek 500,000 German colonies 500,000
The wine yielded by the vintage of 1832, was 32,307 hectolitres, of which 1694 were the produce of the south-west coast, 6050 that of Soudak, and 7865 that of the valley of the Katch.
The plantations have augmented considerably since that time; we cannot venture, however, to accept as authentic, the following statistics of the annual production of the Crimea, given us by landowners in 1840:--
Valley of Soudak 80,000 vedros 9,760 hectolitres Southern coast 120,000 " 14,640 " Northern valleys 750,000 " 91,500 "
We have not much to say of the other branches of agriculture; they are all in the most deplorable state. The magnificent forests, yielding such quantities of timber, that formerly clothed the mountains, are rapidly disappearing. Camel breeding, formerly very productive to the Tatars of the plain, has given place to lank flocks of merinos. The most fertile valleys are in the same state of desolation in which they were left by the great calamities at the close of the last century, and the peninsula now produces scarcely corn enough for its own consumption. Horticulture alone has made any real progress. Some foreigners practise it with profit in the northern valleys, which for many years past have enjoyed the privilege of supplying all the fruit used at the tables of Moscow and St. Petersburg.