(CNNMoney) - Can wine become a national habit? Several people, not altogether disinterestedly, have set out to make it one. But even in the world's greatest grape-growing country, there are many obstacles. Fine sleet beat a painful tattoo against the windows of the Manhattan apartment in which Mr. Paul Garrett sat nursing a fever and talking about utopia. A utopia of vineyards stretching southward to the Gulf and northward to the Lakes and across the debt-ridden farm belt down to where California pokes a long fingernail into the tropics. Outside, the holiday traffic rumbled through East Seventy-ninth Street, making jagged discords in the shrill music of the sleet upon the windowpanes; inside the only sounds were Mr. Garrett's hoarse voice and the soft burr of a sliver of jewel scraping against the wax cylinder that was Mr. Carrett's only audience.