ripen. I had furthermore arrived at the conclusion that the best
Valtelline can only be tasted in cellars of the Engadine or Davos,
where this vintage matures slowly in the mountain air, and takes a
flavour unknown at lower levels. In a word, it had amused my leisure
to make or think myself a connoisseur. My literary taste was tickled
by the praise bestowed in the Augustan age on Rhætic grapes by Virgil:

Et quo te carmine dicam,
Rhætica? nec cellis ideo contende Falernis.

I piqued myself on thinking that could the poet but have drank
one bottle at Samaden--where Stilicho, by the way, in his famous
recruiting expedition may perhaps have drank it--he would have been
less chary in his panegyric. For the point of inferiority on which he
seems to insist, namely, that Valtelline wine does not keep well
in cellar, is only proper to this vintage in Italian climate. Such
meditations led my fancy on the path of history. Is there truth,
then, in the dim tradition that this mountain land was colonised
by Etruscans? Is _Ras_ the root of Rhætia? The Etruscans were
accomplished wine-growers, we know. It was their Montepulciano which
drew the Gauls to Rome, if Livy can be trusted. Perhaps they first
planted the vine in Valtelline. Perhaps its superior culture in that
district may be due to ancient use surviving in a secluded Alpine
valley. One thing is certain, that the peasants of Sondrio and Tirano
understand viticulture better than the Italians of Lombardy.

Then my thoughts ran on to the period of modern history, when the
Grisons seized the Valtelline in lieu of war-pay from the Dukes of
Milan. For some three centuries they held it as a subject province.
From the Rathhaus at Davos or Chur they sent their nobles--Von