In these deep, cool tunnels the company has stored in great vats no less than two hundred thousand gallons of wine. Bottle after bottle was opened for our party and so cheaply was it held that the glasses were freely washed with the wine as the different kinds were tasted--port, sherries, clarets and white wines.
The claret has good body, and if you add a little water to it, as the French treat _vin ordinaire_, it makes a very good drink for a thirsty soul at the dinner table.
California Angelica has been a popular wine for twenty odd years: the Angelica produced in Santa Cruz is sweet, smooth, oily and delicious.
A brand of Sauterne so pleased my palate that I ordered twenty gallons to be shipped to New York. But I’ll let you into the secret of this seemingly extravagant order; the price is only one dollar per gallon--and not Jones, but I, paid the freight. In ordering this wine I was guided first, by my own taste--it has delicious flavor; secondly, I felt assured that it was absolutely pure. The grapes are here, on the spot, ship loads of them, in the season, and there’s no incentive for adulteration.
The well-kept roads and fine drives about Santa Cruz are not its least attractive feature. One of them you can take from the shore, driving over a bridge of the San Lorenzo river, passing Phelan Park and the twin lakes, on the borders of which are the summer home and settlement of the Christian Church. You keep the mountains in view all the way, and a turn here or there shows you the city, the bay, or the ocean.
The three-mile cliff drive takes you immediately above the rock-bound shore of the Pacific, where you see giant crags upon which the everlasting waves have had their effect. Some of the rocks stand off from the shore twenty and fifty feet, and through these the powerful waves have worked great holes, through which the waters rush with a tumultuous roar, dashing their spray far above. These “natural bridges” would be considered a rare sight if they were the only feature of this scene, and would attract people from a distance, but where there is so much to admire and astonish, they are only one among the many marvels that here make an embarrassment of pictorial riches.