What is to a man, that climate is to a country. The climate of California is one of the most in the world.  
California possesses the wealth of two zones. The ocean current gives it a climate and the mountain ranges and reflecting the sun’s rays give California a climate distinctly her own.
 
Fine fruit farms surround San Francisco for fifty miles. Irrigation, combined with a climate, produces the delicious fruit for which California is justly famed. In the vineyards the vines are low, from two to four feet high. The Leland Stanford vineyard is one of the finest on the coast, the low pruned vines with their dark green leaves and rich purple fruit making a fine contrast to the red brown soil.
 
California produces more wine to the acre than any other country in the world. The best[188] American wines come from Sonoma county, the Asti of America, where a thousand foothills are planted in choice wine grapes, and where nature supplies all the moisture necessary to the fruit.
 
The vines are planted eight feet apart, intersected by wide avenues, down which the pass in up the boxes into which the pickers have tossed the ripe grapes—only well grapes make good wine. Many of these roadways are lined on either side with olives, palms and other semi-tropical plants.
 
The pickers are mostly Swiss and Italian, men of practical experience in their own countries. They work in groups and keep up a running fire of jest and fun; ever and anon a happy heart breaks out in native song.
 
of rude crockery are about filled with wine for the workers.
 
From San Diego to Dutch Harbor wine flows freely, but yet there is no drunkenness to speak of.
 
The interest in a vineyard centers in the winery and the wine cellars. The grapes are first picked from the stems, then thrown into the great crushers, the juice flowing away through flumes to the . Asti[189] boasts the largest wine-tank in the world. ............