ESSEX AS A WINE-PRODUCING COUNTY. 47
There can be little doubt, however, that viniculture, as a
regular industry, had begun to decline, not only in Essex, but
throughout the whole south of England, soon after the time when
more or less regular commercial intercourse was opened up with
the chief wine-producing countries of South-Western Europe.
This may be said to have taken place about the beginning or
middle of the fourteenth century. It is known that a voyage to
England was one of the six annual trading voyages sent out under
the auspices of the Senate of Venice at this period, and that wine,
spices, and drugs were among the commodities sent to this
country to be exchanged for cloths, hides, and tin. The
"Flanders Voyage" (as it was called), during which England
was visited, was regarded as the most important of these six
annual voyages and was made regularly, in each ordinary year,
from 1317 to 1533. On the list of those who commanded each
year appear some of the noblest names in Venetian history.39
Owing to the great commercial enterprise of the merchant-
seamen of Venice, it may be doubted whether the inhabitants of
wine-producing countries much nearer England, such as France
and Spain, commenced to supply us regularly with wine in
any large quantities at an earlier date than the Venetians. On
this point, however, it is impossible to do much more than hazard
a few surmises.
Be the cause of the discontinuance of wine-making in Essex
what it may, it is certain that viticulture, as distinguished from
viniculture (the culture of the vine, that is, for the sake of grapes
themselves, rather than for the sake of the wine the grapes will
yield), is still possible, in the open air, in Essex. There is
scarcely an old farmhouse throughout the county which has not
a vine trained against some outer wall, either of the house itself
or of an adjacent out-building, while the same may be said of
many labourers' cottages in rural parts of the county. In any
ordinary year, these vines ripen their grapes fairly well and they
are quite palatable, especially, of course, in such hot summers as
those of 1887 and 1898. Still, now and then there comes a
summer in which the grapes fail to ripen altogether or only do so
very imperfectly. A case in point was the summer of 1879—one
of the most wet and sunless of the present century—when, as I
find recorded in my journal, it was most noticeable that "out-
39 Much additional information as to the importance, both to England and Venice, of
this annual "Flanders Voyage" is to be found in Mr. Rawdon Brown's preface to the
Calendar of State Papers and Manuscripts (Venetian) relating to English Affairs, vol. i, 1202-
1509 (London, 8° , 1864).