a Ea an at = Oo aa nl iy 4 ; {hey A my ! ‘ iia (re ‘ i ? \ ‘a Wh } ie he wih THREE SEASONS G020 IN HUROPEAN VINEYARDS: TREATING OF VINE-CULTURE; VINE DISEASE AND ITS CURE; WINE-MAKING AND WINES, RED AND WHITE; WINE-DRINKING, AS AFFECTING HEALTH AND MORALS. By WILLIAM JOFLAGG. NEW YORK: HARPER & BROTHERS, PUBLISHERS, FRANKLIN SQUARE. 18609. Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1869, by HARPER & BROTHERS, In the Clerk’s Office of the District Court of the United States for the Southern District of New York. PREFACE. I THINK my work will be found in some degree interesting to the general reader, if he have cu- riosity, which Hume defines as “the love of learn- ing.” I think, too, it may prove instructive to the general drinker as well, inasmuch as it relates to his daily beverages, and their effects on his health and happi- ness. j But my chief aim has been to convey information, both practical and theoretical, bearing on the impor- tant matter of wine-growing in America. Inasmuch as such information has of necessity got interwoven and somewhat entangled throughout the whole tex- ture of the narrative, and might consequently be dif- ficult to refer to, I have added an index, which will help the reader to search out what he may need to find, under the several heads of “planting,” “train- ing,” “pruning,” ete. To the same end, I would here indicate, in ad- vance, a few of the more important matters which iv PREFACE. will be found mentioned here and there, and not al- ways just where they ought. These are: 1. Long pruning, which, as commonly practiced in America, I deem to have been an efficient cause for the decay of our vines. 2. Drainage, the want of which, especially in the Ohio Valley, I feel quite certain has been equally injurious. 3. The advantage of growing wine on plains rath- er than on hills, except where the quality obtained from hill-grown vines is such as will compensate for their larger cost and smaller yield. 4, Training in low souche, and without stakes, as probably better adapted to our warm summers than the expensive methods imitated from countries where peaches can only be ripened on trees flattened and fastened to the south sides of high walls. 5. Red wine, as preferable to white, for the future beverage of Americans. 6. The sulphur-cure, as entirely efficacious against the disease of the vine in all its many forms, if only well applied. CONTENTS. CHAPTER I. Bordeaux, the City of Wine.—Rosa Bonheur’s Horses. —Bewildering PINSHEUESSONS FI -V INC-CHITUTC scersacsiescdoeces conceceschecers sends Page 9 CHAPTER II. A French Vineyard.—Crazy Vines, with no means of Support.—Slan- ders against French Wine.—Defenseless Fields...........0+++0+ +0 15 CHAPTER III. Aquitaine.—Fanciful Theories.—How French People drink Wine, take Brandy, and use Water.—Sterne’s Diligence and the simple Nuns.—Evening Scenes in the Kitchen.—Brandy Merchants.— Soil.—Cultivation.—Whisky is not Brandy..........cceccsseeeeeees 24 CHAPTER IV. Médoc.— Vintage Feast.— Vintage Dance.—‘‘ A discretion.”— Frenchmen kind to their Beasts. —Soil.—Plowing.—Training.—La Tour.—Making Wine.—Stemming Grapes.—Crushing with Feet. —Fermenting.—Filling up.—Drawing off.—A Glass of the best Red Wine in the World.— Pichon-Longueville. — Lafitte and its Pebbles.—Léoville.—Cos d’Estournel.—Pomys.—Six Classes of Wine and a Bourgeois Sup€ricure.............ccscosssceccssesenceeees 34 CHAPTER V. ‘Phe Sauterne District.—Soil.—Culture.—Severe Leaf-pruning.— Three Vintages.—Head, Middle and Tail Wines.—Frenchmen eat RIMMEL Yast cisilastiad(temns/sinls slospeetiaaine's os leew sibis osissieisi asinieGido ss swineisee 68 vi CoNTENTS. CHAPTER VI. Languedoc.—Pursuing Knowledge by the slow Train.—Third-class Passengers. —Good Skeletons of the Peasantry.—Beziers.—Wine and Brandy making.—Low Souche Training ...............+. Page 71 CHAPTER VII. Burgundy and the Cote d’or.—First taste and last.—Disorderly Vines. —Layering.— Wages. — Wine-making.—Plaster of Paris.— Opposing Systems as to Stemming Grapes.—Crushing with Feet— and worse.—Good Men and good Wine.—Quantity and Quality. —Long Pruning ruinous.—Soils of the Cote d’or.—Mode of Plant- ing.—Layering.—Vine-disease.—Red Wine.—What it has done for the French and what it will do for US............¢.sesssssseseees 78 CHAPTER VIII. Epernay.—Catacombs of Bottles.—Sparkling Wine.—How com- pounded, doctored and dosed.—Americans should learn for them- Belves How tO MAKE A. 02... cesccsocnserevascatas sano dese sane emeaetae 106 CHAPTER IX. The Great Exhibition.—Foreign Drinkers and American Drinks.— Falsification of Wines. —False Wines and true, and the Drunkard’s Thirst.—Distribution of Prizes.—Pasteur and his discovery.—Eu- PEDIC ao reesleceeciovcsissent suasies sok svucesee cee cobs descr teldce sekae Mea eee ane 118 CHAPTER X. Rheims.—Chalk, Mutton, and Champagne.—Thick-set Vines.—St. Thierry.—Charlemagne and the Nuns.—A serene Home and its resident Proprietor.—Layering again.—Three Cures for the Vine- disease.—Old Vines and new.—High Vines and low.—Soil.—Cul- TUVATIOW csi eis cca ees vehsinsssaaaieaidesincs tea adlalac scanion se aee aan Rama 148 CHAPTER XI. The Rhine.—The Sour Wine Country.—The Rhinegau.—Johannis- berg.— Soil. — Cultivation. —Wine-making.— More Monks.—A Tasting Party.—The Bride of the Cellar...............-se+sesssses 162 CoNnTENTS. vii CHAPTER XII. Swiss Vineyards.—Sandstone, Basalt, and Manure, and inferior AIG SePane saver e race reese a attined dona nels da gbiceincouec nasesseeect Page 180 CHAPTER XIII. Durkheim.—Sweet Pills. —Good Vine-culture.—Vices of modern WW OOM ee ecteses cate acess ected sels ce vationcaveweedsacecuedseeeese stees 183 CHAPTER XIV. Vienna, Beer, and Tokay.—A metaphysical Drink.—How Sweet To- kay is made.—Frosty Mornings and Days of Sunshine.—Barbari- MUSLOVEL OU Males ce iessns ances detdectecCneectsi'ceveedeMedevessscssessess 189 CHAPTER XV. Italy.—Peculiarities of Italian Vine-training.—Sorrento.—Capri.— Ischia. —Rome.—Tuscany.—The Riviera Road.—Italian Energy SarelM LONI Ulnar aves Pitost raat welds evicececis( otiedeisasiciepisssleneapingaiontie sche 196 CHAPTER XVI. The great Wine Country of the South of France.—Formation and Soil. —Temperature.—Rains.—Winds.—The Oidium.—Ruin im- pending.—The Sulphur-cure.—H. Marés’s Manual.............. 203 CHAPTER XVII. Montpellier and Marés.—Cette.—Muscat of Frontignan.—Visit to a Vineyard in low Souche.—Visit to another of 250 Acres.—Frost.— The Foster-brother.— American Vines in Languedoc.—Wine- MAKING. .)5.05046 Ree ee nce riseee sciede wen nas are cee easeaceasnwetesesess 284 CHAPTER XVIII. Would low Souche Vines do well in America ?—Our Climate warm enough.—Present Modes too expensive.—A glut of Wine to be FSAKEOLAMOVMOPEULONcesseccasescieapeasenreshysseosscanescieareasessenses 301 vili CoNTENTS. CHAPTER XIX. How they plant Vines in Souche.—Good Reasons for five-feet Spac- ing.—Cuttings.—Pruning and Training.— Bringing old Souches ANGORSDAPE) vanes stsecssice seas eseneressesocesiceonsseciseussaaatan spaces Page 309 CHAPTER XX. How to grow Wine cheaply.— What to do with it.—Probable Ef LOCES: ic csceac de che nses tate tena dete melsenn searntementntaae® hentai tee aeae 319 THREE SEASONS EUROPEAN VINEYARDS. LLIN Oras eke A. BORDEAUX. [ WRITE this book because I have something to say, and not because I have to say something. It is of small importance how I tell what I know, but I know what I have to tell is important. Prob- ably no other American has made near so thorough a pilgrimage among the vineyards of Europe as I have, and certainly not among those of France. When I began my explorations I had barely enough knowledge of wine-growing to know what it was I needed to learn, which was better, perhaps, than to know so much as to feel above the need of learning 10 EUROPEAN VINEYARDS. any more. It was only gradually and slowly, as I continued my investigations, that I became aware how much was to be gleaned from the experience of other and older countries to enlighten the inex- perience of our own, and of the importance of the observations 1 was making, or, rather, the things LI observed. On the 20th of September, 1866, I arrived in beau- tiful and rich Bordeaux, the capital of wine — the centre, not of one great wine district merely, but of many, and all of them of ancient and universal ce- lebrity. Adjoining it on the northwest is Médoc, where stand famous Chateaux Margaux, La Tour, and Lafitte. Farther away, to the north, is the de- partment of Charente, where in every hamlet true cognac is distilled; southwardly, and up the River Garonne, lies that strip of sandy shore, narrow in measure but wide in reputation, where Y quem reigns supreme among gardens, where grow first, second, and third class Sauterne, the white rose of the Bor- delais, as Médoc is the red; while all around, inter- mediately and beyond, are the comparatively inferior soils which yield the staple commodity of the Bor- deaux market, the claret of commerce. From the city out to the sea flows the wide and deep Gironde, the ebb tide of whose waters is a flood BorDEAUxX. if tide of wines, going out in ships of every nation to every port of the globe. In the skill of the Bordeaux merchants for com- bining and improving crude wines I can readily be- lieve, for what is it but chemistry and cookery—sci- ence and taste—and who are such chemists, or who such cooks, as Frenchmen? This skill has made the exports of their cellars the most portable, merchant- able, and generally consumed of all the wines of commerce. For this reason they are able to market not only the product of the surrounding country, but also large supplies drawn from the south of France, taking, on an average, half the large crop of L’He- rault, which they buy at from ten to twenty - five cents a gallon, and sell again at so great a profit, at least when Americans are the buyers, that lately large quantities were seized in the New York Cus- tom-house upon the very natural presumption that what was retailed for six dollars a dozen on one side of the Atlantic must have cost over six francs on the other. I ought to have made a few visits to the commer- cial cellars and store-houses where this great com- merce is carried on, but did not do so. I was tempt- ed away into the open country by the beautiful and soft weather which had just succeeded to the almost 12 EUROPEAN VINEYARDS. incessant rains of that summer of 1866, so disastrous to the cultivator. Contenting myself, therefore, with a pilgrimage to the statue of Montesquieu in the public garden, and a short stroll on the docks, I got into an omnibus running to Créon,in the neighbor- hood of which was the chateau of a gentleman whom, though’ I had only met him once, and six years before, I was resolved so far to impose upon as to ask leave to look at his vines. “Why there’s one of- Rosa Bonheur’s horses!” I exclaimed, as a dray went by the omnibus, drawn by one of the larger specimens of that admirable race of animals which the well-known engraving of the horse-market has made familiar to us all, on paper. “Ts it possible those casks are full?’ “Yes, sir,” replied my neighbor on the opposite seat ; “and there are fifteen of them, each holding 228 litres, and with the wood weighing good 250 kilos. But they can well do that, those Normandy fellows—beasts of nerve they are.” And inquiries repeatedly made while I remained in France satisfied me that it was indeed possible for the heavy draft horses of Normandy to draw on one of the enormous drays that are made for them be- tween three and four tons. If we could replace our six millions of nags, of one sort and another, with BorRDEAUX. . 13 one third their number of a breed like this, the two millions would do the work of the six, at a saving in feeding and attendance equal to double the interest of our national blessing. Thus computing, I said to myself that if I had left behind me the land of steam, Thad found the land of horses. Two farmers, whom I afterward met while travel- ing in Normandy, told me the Perche country was really the home of the breed called Norman, and that it was their custom to buy from there six- months’ colts, which they raised and broke, working them from two years’ old, and selling them when they got to be five or six years old; the prices ob- tained for full-grown and well-broken animals rang- ing from $200 to $250. I am glad to learn they are at length bringing them to America, where a late importation sold for prices which averaged $2500. Falling into conversation with my fellow-travelers, I was gratified to learn that M. P——, whom I was going to see, was esteemed a skillful and successful cultivator, with few equals in the neighborhood. I talked a good deal with my companions in the omni- bus during our two hours’ drive. They were mostly working vine-dressers, and being, as Frenchmen al- ways are, polite and communicative, I learned from them a good deal I had never heard before concern- 14 EUROPEAN VINEYARDS. ing the object of my inquiries, if one can be said to have learned any thing when the lesson he takes is a confused jumble of details which overloads his mem- ory and befogs his intellect. From my peasant acquaintances collectively I did, however, obtain the following clear ideas: 1st. That each variety of vine needed a different culture for each different soil, and again for each different climate. 2d. That there was an old school and a new school, with opposite theories on every branch of vine cul- ture, planting, manuring, training, pruning, cultiva- ting, and gathering. 3d. That every cultivator had his own whims and prejudices to qualify his application of the newer the- ories. 4th. That there were a good many varieties of French vines, and a good many different soils and situations in France. : From all which I inferred : First, that there was much to learn. Secondly, that I should never learn it. But a few clear lights will illuminate a good many facts, so that with patience and labor the rubbish can be known and rejected, and the useful brought into~ form and order. Saint GENES. 15 CHAPTER: 11. SAINT GENES. — night I lodged in the only inn at Créon, a humble little affair where the peasantry resort- ed to enjoy ‘their hard-won leisure and drink their wine, but where the food and bedding were good enough for any body. The next morning I was driv- en over to the chateau of St.Genes, whose proprietor recognized and welcomed me with the politeness of a Frenchman and the hospitality of an American. With small loss of time, and without needing to go far, we began the tour of M. P: ’s well-kept and extensive fields. Having long attended to his own. affairs, he was well informed on every practical detail; and having once been a lawyer, he could ex- plain them fluently. The weather was fine, the coun- try was beautiful, and I was happy to be walking in a French vineyard that day. The soil of the first piece we entered was a sandy loam ; in other places I found it to be gravelly loam, 16 EUROPEAN VINEYARDS. but all was mixed with more or less of clay. The better wines grew on the gravel. The piece in ques- tion was furnished with wire trellis. The vines were set two feet apart in the rows, and the space between the rows was four feet wide. The posts were round and straight locust saplings grown for the purpose, and were placed twenty feet apart. Through holes in them the wires were strung, and an ingenious con- trivance tightened them. They were further sup- ported by intermediate stakes. There were three lines, each being eighteen inches from the other, and the lowest at the same distance from the ground. The fruit-bearing cane was trained along the low- er wire, so that the bunches seemed to belong as much to the one as the other. The canes thus train- ed, however, are not allowed to grow into arms, but are renewed every one, two, or three years. The fruit of the second year, and which was produced from buds on the shoots grown during the first year, seemed to hang so close to the horizontal cane and wire that I think those shoots must have been cut back to one eye only, but on this point my recollec- tion is not quite distinct. The shoots, as they grew, were attached to the two upper wires. Although the season had been bad, the grapes were healthy, | and with a fortnight or so of the fine weather just set SaAInt GENES. LY; in, promised to do tolerably well. M.P——’s wire trellis was indeed a pretty sight. That gentleman thinks the wire saves one half the cost of manipulat- ing-the vines; namely, of training, pruning, attach- ing, rubbing off, pinching back, unleafing, amd gath- ering. “What is that?’ I exclaimed, with no little aston- ishment, as, turning away from the trellis where vines were so tenderly upheld, we entered on a field where there was never a bit of trellis nor stake at all, nor peg to tie to, nor tree to hang upon, but where each individual plant, alone and self-sustaining, scorn- ing all support—its arms embracing nothing, its ten- drils twining nothing—stood on its own bottom, and held up its own top, like a strong-minded woman planted on her rights! It was a field of the variety known as “a folle blanche” (the crazy vine), vulgarly called “ enragatt,” growing “en souche basse,” which may be translated by stump or stool, sowche meaning literally “ stock.” I paused long in presence of this abrupt commen- tary on all our learned talk about different kinds of trellis and modes of training to them, and did not move on till I had learned something about training “en souche” and “la folle blanche.” 7 I learned it was an uncommonly hardy plant, nev- 18 EUROPEAN VINEYARDS. er injured by frost, nor, to M. P——’s knowledge, by any disease; that it was a regular and reliable bearer, and, on a good sandy loam, such as I then saw, could be counted on for over a thousand gallons to the acre, and sometimes gave as much as twenty- five hundred. As a workman drew apart the branches of one of the souches, a profusion of full-sized white grapes was revealed, all hanging close about the head, and easily sustained by the rugged old stock, which was about ten inches high and five inches thick. ‘It is a perfect fountain of wine,” said the man. The quality of the wine from the folle blanche depends, of course, much upon the soil. In Médoc they habitually grow it with the malbec, a fine vari- ety, but whose must is deficient in acid; and the combination results in a wine of the very first grade, such as sometimes sells from the cellar at eight dol- lars a gallon. Although commonly grown for quan- tity, and on strong soils, it nevertheless makes the most of its advantages, and on gravelly loam will give a very good merchantable white wine. The Bordeaux merchants compound it with a strongly- colored coarse wine from the back country, costing twenty-five and thirty cents a gallon, to make a cheap claret, which is sold, labeled with the names of all Saint GENES. 19 the great houses of Médoc, to Americans. The price of wine from the folle blanche is forty cents and up- ward, though M. P sells his for fifty and sixty cents and upward. In the department of the Cha- rente this plant is the favorite, and chiefly from its strong juice the Cognac brandy is made. Now white wine mixed with red does not make a true red wine, and those of us who drink such com- pounds as the above drink two distinct beverages mix- ed together. But both are pure, and, if not adultera- ted with alcohol, wholesome. Delavan and Dow tell us that all our imported wines are not wines at all, but mere chemical illusions, as if France, with a yearly product of a thousand million imperial gallons, need- ed to draw upon her cisterns, wells, and drug-shops for the small quantity she exports. In.some parts of the south they sell pure wine at wholesale for a cent the bottle—not very drinkable stuff, to be sure, but a good deal better than dye-stuff, one would think, and cheaper too. M. P terested me, kindly offered to send me some cuttings from them. Knowing how completely had failed all attempts to acclimate European varieties in America, I did not then accept the offer; but a few months later, and after witnessing in the south of France the , seeing how much his wine-fountains in- 20 EvROPEAN VINEYARDS. wonders of souche training, I reconsidered and ac- cepted. He sent them. They arrived safe, a thou- sand of them, whereof three hundred took good root, and are now growing finely on the banks of the Ohio. Now when I shall come to relate my observations in the south of France, my reflections thereon, and plans and hopes thence resulting, I think they will be found new, interesting, and important to my fel- low vine-dressers. I think they will see in souche training the true way to get wine cheaply and easily, so that none shall need to drink water, except, as For- tescue, the chancellor of Henry the Sixth, wrote of the common people of England in the days when she was “ merrie,” “occasionally, or by way of penance.” And in the day when every farmer can, from half an acre of land, easily and cheaply planted and tilled, even by the unskillful, harvest what will fill his ten or twelve barrels with honest juice for the habitual daily drink of himself and family—our two hea afflictions and sins, excessive water-drinking and ex- cessive whisky-drinking, will vanish from the land, and a beneficent change in our national tempera- ment begin to be wrought. The vines about Créon are not generally of so low a class as the folle blanche, neither do they give great wines, such as are made in Médoc or the Sauterne Saint GENEs. . oI district, but are of those rather which yield the good, staple “ Bordeaux,” dearly loved of all Frenchmen, and for which they must pay no very moderate price either, since much of it commands, at wholesale, a dollar a gallon. It can be had in America of honor- able wine-merchants dealing with others like them- selves on the opposite side of the water, or, better still, who have direct relations with honorable propri- etors there who reside on their estates. The fields we next inspected were in good cultiva- tion, but the vines were trained to stakes only, re- minding me of those in the vineyards I had left be- hind, except that they stood nearer together and were rather smaller. They seemed to have had no very close summer pruning, but little tying up, and no leaf-pruning, though the time for it had passed. The ground had been only twice plowed, I think. The labor is to a great extent done by contract, and of necessity it is carefully classified and speci- fied. Where the superintendence is good, the system works admirably. It is desirable we should intro- duce it as soon as the vine-culture shall be well enough extended, organized, and understood, but for the present I should fear to try it. I remember that in Brown County, Ohio, they once had, and may have still, a simple plan of letting the whole labor, by con- 22 EUROPEAN VINEYARDS. tract, at forty or fifty dollars per acre for the year, which was at the same time costing me as much as seventy-five dollars. Wages in the neighborhood of St. Genes were forty cents a day in summer and thirty in winter. Women got but half as much. As paper money has of late years confused our ideas of values, I will in this connection give some of the retail market prices customary about Bor- deaux, so that the value of thirty and forty cents may be somewhat estimated. Beef and mutton, good cuts............0s006 20 cents. IB OEK? tesa, teanueaesencavien ses ccces oka tees i: Bee WOR Pel COZENs. .vesensecassuseesosessueeeesi 1236s MGIKS DEY QUAL. cr sseresdssneroassecesihedcscnee Bre Strong shoes, good for a year’s wear, $1 60 Wooden Shoes iii i5..0, tececoebohtaceceaen eke: 26) ess The same with leather uppers.............. GOuyes Our promenade extended far beyond the domains of St. Genes, and over those of several neighboring proprietors. Entirely new to me and to my feet was this going from field to field, and farm to farm, as one may do in nearly every civilized country except Britain and America, without ever meeting fences to be climbed, walls to be scaled, bars to let down, or gates to open. The contrast between the orderly, neighborly, and trustful aspect of the scene I was studying, and the fortified look of our own cultivated nti tit atin 9 SAINT GENES. 23 country, where at every few rods you encounter picket, or palisade, or barricade of stone, or double stake and ridered nine-rail worm fences, bristling like so many abattis, all of them “pig tight, bull strong, and stallion high,” was like the contrast be- tween peace and war. Returning rather late to the chateau, we could give only a few moments to the wine-house. I was pleased to notice a hand-mill for crushing the grapes—a good deal nicer way than what I saw a few days later among people less advanced than my host of St. Genes. He told me, upon my inquiry, that the crop of the estate the year before—an extraordinary good one—was 500 barriques, or 30,000 gallons. At dinner I met the ladies of the family, which, had I done before my walk, it would have been shorter, perhaps. M. P resides in Bordeaux, and the family had only come out to Saint Genes to remain through vintage. He, however, having a busi- ness-like way of looking after his interests, is fre- quently there. Next day my good friends would not allow me to go back the way I came, but drove me over to a rail- way station some ten miles distant, the drive afford- ing a sight of extensive vine-fields, and some most charming scenery as well. Q4 EUROPEAN VINEYARDS. CHAPTER 1ff COGNAC. HE speed of common railway trains in France never takes away your breath, nor whirls things out of sight before you see them. So nothing hin- dered my observing all we passed, on both sides of the track, leisurely enough to get an idea of the modes of training, and so forth, in the northern por- tions of Aquitaine—the ancient and original—the Aquitaine of Froissart’s Chronicles. Many a vine- yard I saw whose fresh young shoots and foliage covered and hid short, thick, rugged old stocks be- low, gnarled and wrinkled with a hundred years of fruit-bearing existence. But a century is a short time in the history of the vine in this antique coun- try. The Casars drank the juice of its soil and were glad. The savage Visigoths, in their turn, we may be sure, got beastly drunk on it. The pious Saracens who drove out the Visigoths broke the law of the Prophet in its honor. And from the time of William CoG@Nnac. 25 the Conqueror down to the Methuen treaty, which excluded it in favor of Spanish adulterations, it nour- ished and strengthened the best blood of England, a good deal of which same blood was again and again poured out on this same soil, in battles fought to hold and extend possessions which yielded to the thirsty islanders what Nature had denied them in their prop- er home—good wine and red. A fanciful theorizer has said that all good English comedies were written before the time of the Me- thuen treaty, which was about a hundred and fifty years ago, arguing thence that only pure wine can inspire pure wit. It is very true that both England and America mostly import their good plays from France, in shape of translations or adaptations; but I can hardly believe it was ever possible to import: them in the form of casks of Bordeaux or bottles of Burgundy; and think, with Sir Emerson Tennent, that British palates have always craved what was mixed, muddled, and strong, which, he says, is be- cause of fogs. . If so, then so much the worse for the British, I say, and all the more shame for us, who, with no fogs to excuse it, have, from mere force of example, learned to love fog medicine—port, sherry, Madeira, whisky, and ram—which, in our dry climate, rend us as they never do a Briton in his home—but B 26 EvROPEAN VINEYARDS. this reminds me we are on the way to the land of brandy. A clattering of plates and glasses called my atten- tion to the party occupying the same compartment with me, consisting of a gentleman and wife, two other ladies, and two children, who were beginning their midday breakfast. The bottles, of the size the Bordeaux people use when they drink, but not when they sell, held as much as one of our quarts. That family emptied one bottle, they emptied two, they emptied three. To tell the truth, they ate as beauti- fully as they drank, managing to divide the contents of their enormous lunch-basket into nine or ten courses, and, by taking them in detail, to conquer them all. At the end of the repast a bottle of bran- dy was produced, and a paper of sugar in lumps. A very little of the brandy was poured into a glass, and each one taking a lump of sugar, soaked it in the brandy and ate it. Still another bottle was un- corked, and from it a tumbler was filled with water —the first appearance of that liquid on the scene. In the tumbler they all washed their fingers and lips. That is the way French people drink wine, and that the way they drink brandy, and that the use they make of water. CoGNnac. 27 Leaving the cars at Angouléme, I continued my journey in a diligence. The fancy pleased me of traveling in the old slow coach of slow old times, as Sterne did when he made his “sentimental journey through France and Italy.” But sentiment was not curled hair, and could neither cushion the hard seats nor deaden the rattling din of the rackety concern, and I was glad when they set me down at a snug ho- ‘ tel in the little city of Cognac. As we entered the brandy district, the folle blanche appeared and soon covered the whole face of the coun- try. The soil was mostly stony, poor and thin; of no value at all, I should think, except for grapes, and even a grapevine, one would think, must be crazy to live there. I could nowhere see that stakes were needed for supports, though the souches were eight- een inches high. Young plantations, I have been told, need small stakes during the first two or three years, but I noticed none. It rained continuously. No vintaging could be seen, and attention soon tired of the look-out at the window of the coupé, so I looked in. Two nuns were with me—not handsome, of course, for in France beauty is too precious a commodity to shut up in convents—but very jolly and talkative, and better company than the holy women I had met in 28 EvROPEAN VINEYARDS. America; and, though their ideas were limited enough, still a seeker after wisdom could learn a good deal from them. When I told them the great majority of my countrywomen esteemed it a sin to take a drop of wine, they were astonished, and one naively asked, “Must they drink only beer, then?” adding, “I don’t like beer.” But when told beer too was forbidden, they fell to pitying the poor Protest- ants, whom they had not thought were so austere. ° “To be sure,” they said, “one must do penance; it is for the safety of the soul; but the good God does not require his creatures to injure their health by their abstinences.” Abstinences! Poor girls! If a marquis with 200,000 francs of income, young, handsome, and agreeable, were to offer himself to either of them, she would abstain from him teetotally, with might and main, as if on peril of perdition, yet she could put her quart of wine daily under her corsets, and thank God for it in her prayers; while many a pret- ty Puritan on our side, taught from childhood to be- lieve it “liquid poison” to body and “liquid damna- tion to soul,” thinks it a sin and a crime to moisten her red lips with one drop of purest Margaux, on whose conscience a hundred warm kisses accepted by those same lips would rest as lightly as a thistle- down on Plymouth Rock. Cognac. 29 Arrived at the hotel, I found a seat by the itchen fire more agreeable than imprisonment in a bed- room. The kitchen was large, and was, in fact, the chief rendezvous for all the household, as well as their guests. In my time I have stopped at many an American country tavern, and sat in their bar-rooms while my fellow-citizens came and went and drank whisky. The scene I witnessed at Cognac was, quite different. About a table in the middle of the room were seated eight or ten peasants and town-folks, re- freshing themselves with bread and cheese, and strong draughts of weak wine, while amusing them- selves with cards, conversation, pipes, and snuff. In the adjoining room was a billiard-table, where a larger party were engaged in playing or looking on. These, too, had their potations. During the two hours I re- mained below I noticed closely the conduct of all the company, and, though there was plenty of gayety and seemingly real enjoyment, there was nothing in the least like drunkenness, ill temper, or ill manners. Lager beer, so called, is an immense improvement on rum and whisky—thanks to the good Germans who have made us to know it—but simple wine certainly has moral qualities far superior to beer. A merry but decent drink, exhilarating but not infuriating, it carries neither knife, revolver, nor slung-shot in its 30 EvROPEAN VINEYARDS. pockets. To the poor work-people of ’rance it is an inestimable blessing, as it will be to ours when it is vouchsafed to them. “You don’t bake your poultry, then ?” I said to the landlady, as I saw her fix on a spit the fowl I had called for, and then set it to turning before the fire by means of a clumsy clock-work. “No, no; that’s the way they will spoil your pullet in the great ho- tels at Bordeaux, and then make you pay three prices for it. For my part, I say, ‘Vive la broche /’” (long live the spit!) The spit did look long-lived, rather ; it measured good seven feet. The fowl was roasted well enough, and ate well enough; but it was with- out dressing, was soppy from frequent basting with only water, to keep it from burning in the blaze of fagot-wood, and came before me with its head and claws on. Nobody in France roasts any better than this. In the morning it still rained hard, and I did not care to make any excursion into the surrounding country, where there would be no distilling to see, because it was vintage-time, and no vintage, because it was raining. A few years before I had received a visit from young Mr. Otard, of Cognae, of the firm of Otard, Dupuy, & Co., so thought I would look him up; but, on calling at the place of business of CoaGNac. 31 the firm, which I could easily see was an immense concern, I was told the gentleman in question was absent from town. Unfortunately, no other mem- ber of the house was in Cognac, and the highest au- thority to be found on the premises had no authority to admit a stranger. All the world have heard of the house I have men- tioned. Its name is often used in America to christen whisky. O., D., & Co. are not distillers, however, but, like the other large houses of Cognac and Jarnac, are merely merchants who buy up the liquor distilled by the country proprietors, and gather it into their mag- azines, where they treat it—or maltreat it—in some dark mysterious fashion they fear to let strangers witness, and, when it is old enough, sell it under their own. brands. Cognac brandy is not cheap, even in its own city, where such as is old enough for drinking costs, from first hands, two dollars a gallon. Brandy is made in many other parts of France for about half that price. It is a pity we in America must pay so excessively as we do for French brandy, and even then be torment- ed with doubts of the genuineness of the medicine we take. Good physicians say the aromatic quality of bran- dy gives it medicinal virtues different from those of 32 EUROPEAN VINEYARDS. other kinds of spirits, and, moreover, that pure liquors are better medicines than adulterations. Whether any one can explain why this is so or not, 1 am sure no intelligent person would have equal faith in a mixture of common druggists’ alcohol and water, as a remedy for typhoid fever, as in pure Cognac. There must, in the nature of things, be a connection between aroma, savor, taste, and digestibility—between at- tractiveness and usefulness. They brought me but lately a saddle of venison from a deer that had been chased into the river and there killed. It had utter- ly lost all taste, and could not be eaten, or, had it been eaten, it would have failed to afford the least nourishment, if Liebig is right. The nervous power had been hunted out of the poor beast, and with it had been expelled from the flesh all that could be at- tractive or useful to man. Against whisky, as whis- ky, I have no objection; but as brandy, whisky is a failure. To convert it into Cognac, they first rob it of its corn ethers, and then replace them with con- coctions which may cheat the palate, perhaps, but never the stomach. The connection between the ethereal and the substantial parts of all drinks is like that between spirit and matter—once dissolved, it can never be restored. To make a gallon of Cognac brandy, seven and a - Coa@nac. os half gallons of wine must be distilled. No sooner has fermentation subsided than distillation begins, and this is often as early as the first of September. Three qualities are made in the Charente: great champagne, little champagne, and bois. The term champagne comes from the resemblance of the soil ° where the wine is grown to that of the department of the Marne, in the province of Champagne, both being chalky limestone. The best quality is from the poorest soil, of course. The average yield of wine to the acre is 400 gallons. The cost of cultiva- tion is about twenty dollars, gathering and pressing included. Plowing is done four times a year, twice to uncover, and twice to cover the feet of the souches. A regular and certain return of five per cent. on his capital contents the proprietor in the Charente, and even this moderate rate could not be realized but for the use made of the space of twenty feet left be- tween the rows for raising general crops. B2 34 EUROPEAN VINEYARDS. CORA PE Ria MEDOC. HE district named Médoc lies to the northward of Bordeaux, with the River Gironde for its east- ern and the ocean for its western boundary, and is a peninsula of considerable extent. But the valuable portion of it, called “ Haut Médoc,” is but a narrow strip, not more than a mile and a half wide, nor more than thirty miles long, occupying the slightly raised middle ground between the sandy and sterile “landes” of the sea-coast and the rich alluvial ground of the river border. Beyond question, this narrow belt is the most notable piece of all the earth’s surface for growing red wine. The reader and I are going there to-day, not for any purpose of amusement, but on the important business of learning how to make red wine, we and our countrymen being as yet alike lamenta- bly ignorant of it. Yet it is what we must needs know something about, for the wine of our future must be red, and MeEpoe. 35 not white. To Médoc we will go to receive our first lesson, nor could a better school be found beneath sun or moon. For my part, I will emulate Pliny when he said, “T shall discourse of wine with gravity becoming a Roman treating of useful arts and sciences, approach- ing my subject, not as a physician, but as a judge, who is to pronounce on the physical and moral health of the human race.” A little deep-draft, narrow steamer of sea-going model, whose small spluttering wheels turned swiftly enough, but to wonderfully little purpose, conveyed me down to Pauillac, and was all day about it. But what if it did go slow? it carried me safe and re- turned me sound. I don’t know why we should suf- fer ourselves to feel contempt for the small craft of European rivers and lakes. Narrow and sea-sicken- ing as they are below deck, cramped and shelterless as they are above, they are arks of safety to life and limb, and an improvement on Noah’s, I dare say. True, the two boats on which I used to go and come between city and country home could either of them singly do the whole business of the Upper Rhine, the Gironde, or any Swiss lake, without drawing more than three feet of water, yet both Boston and Bos- tona, the one about the time I am writing of, and the 36 EUROPEAN VINEYARDS. other three years before, took fire and burnt up while under full steam, making excellent speed, and full- freighted with passengers and goods. But, though it took all day, the day was not lost. There was a good deal to see. We were continually passing inward-bound ships of every nationality, rid- ing at anchor till the flood should come and tide them up to the city, there to discharge their varied cargoes and again reload, two in every three of them with claret and cognac. One of them bore the flag of my country, and as I gazed on its folds I knew it would soon be waving proudly over a homeward- bound cargo of as inferior liquor as Bordeaux could export. The deck was crowded with people, mostly of the peasant class, and all of them going to vintage. The freight piled up forward, casks, baskets, and queerly- fashioned tubs, was going to vintage too, and every thing spoke of festive labor. The men wore blouses, mostly of blue linen, and the women had only caps for bonnets; yet really both men and women seemed to me better dressed than the working-people I had left at home. Perhaps this was less owing to the quality of the stuffs worn, though few were poor enough to appear in calico, than to the fitness of the costumes for the daily avocations of the wearers. MEpoc. OL Then. for their deportment—I don’t know how they would have appeared if translated to the saloon of fashion—awkwardly enough, perhaps; but, taken as they were, in their habitual sphere, the manners of those Bordelais peasants were such as our people can never emulate, I fear. They were, in a word, respect- ful and ceremonious, yet natural and easy; graceful, yet simple; gay and talkative, yet quiet and reposed. French theorists have claimed, be it known, that although a select class of English or Russians may, by mere dint of high breeding, become civilized and refined, yet the masses of their fellow-countrymen, as well as of all peoples who are without wine, must forever remain barbarians. If there be any thing in this theory, I would prayerfully entreat the Genius of Civilization, or the Spirit of the Age, or god Bac- chus, to take up bodily the whole American people, men, women, and children, youths and misses—es- pecially the youths and misses—and plunge us all up to the lips in a sea of the proper liquid, therein to soak and thereof to swallow, until politeness shall penetrate all our joints and muscles, and refinement enter into the texture of our bones. There were some oysters on board—Meédoc oysters, of great repute through France, as were their ances- tors among the Romans. As early as the fourth cen- 38 EUROPEAN VINEYARDS. tury they were mentioned in somebody’s writings as “a shell-fish as much esteemed on the tables of the emperors as were the excellent wines brought from Bordeaux.” I tasted them in as impartial a mood as Pliny’s, as I afterward did the other celebrated kind brought from Ostend, but in neither. could I find any excuse for Roman gluttony, nor, any thing else worth swallowing. Watery, thin, and coppery are Europe’s best oysters, and watery and fishy are her worst. Near the close of the day we arrived at Pauillac, and I found out and entered a little old inn in the heart of a labyrinth of narrow streets, where a tough, — chirpy old woman received me as if she had always known and long been expecting me. She seemed to know just what I wanted to learn, and, having shown me the chamber where I was to lodge, and the parlor . where I was to eat, took me to the kitchen, and dis- played the preparations she was making for a band of vintagers soon to come in from their work in the — vineyards—for she was herself a proprietor, it seem- ed. Lifting the lid of a large kettle, and letting me smell of a savory mess within, she told me it was the vintage broth, a dish of great antiquity. Judg- ing from the preparations, the vintage band was a large one ; in fact, she had a farm of no small value MeEpoc. 39 —was rich, in fact, but it was her humor to keep tavern. The proprietors, she said, always fed the bands of vintagers, and gave them three repasts daily ; the first, at eight o’clock, consisted of only bread and grapes; the second, in the field, at noon, of soup and soup-meat; and the last, in the evening, of soup and a ragotit of meats. Bread and wine were supplied “@ discretion,” which means without stint. The wine is made of inferior grapes, gathered from young vines usually, crushed and put into a barrel with the head out. As soon as fermentation has well begun, a certain quantity of water is poured in, the cask is tapped at the foot, and the liquor placed at the discretion of the drinkers. One franc a day is paid to the cutters, as those are called who cut the _ grapes from the vines, and for such as carry them to the wagon a franc and a half. But a few years ago wages were one fourth lower. After my dinner I had grapes for dessert, and they were choice bunches, and good as any I after- ward tasted in Médoc, but I could not call them de- licious. Nor did-I any where in France, Switzer- land, or Germany, find any to equal the Catawbas of the Ohio Valley in their prime. In the evening I went to see a vintage dance at a chateau just outside the town. Under a shed, lighted AQ EvRoPEAN VINEYARDS. with a single candle, twenty or thirty of the younger vintagers were dancing in wooden shoes on the bare ground. The figure was simply the old pantaloon cotillon of “forward two,” “cross over,” “right hand left,” “dos a dos,” and “ladies’ chain,” only the coup- les were placed in two opposite rows, as in a contra dance, and not as in a quadrille, so that the dancers were continually in motion. Occasionally this was varied by a few rounds in waltzing order, perform- ed with a kind of balance step, the partners holding hands and facing each other. They did not hug, as fashionable people do, nor was there any rudeness, or romping, or boisterous conduct of the men, and far less any sign of drunkenness. A hurdy-gurdy, played by the overseer of the troop, was all the music they had. The overseer is a kind of middle-man, who recruits the band in the neighboring and poorer districts, and conducts them from place to place while vintage lasts, sub-letting them at a price which yields him a profit of two or three cents daily on the labor of each person. I had seen vintage dances before this, at the thea- tre, but there was always a row of brilliant foot- lights, and a large orchestra, and the dancers wore blue and red bodices, with clean chemises, and broad straw hats adorned with gay ribbons, and had neat MeEpoc. 41 slippers on their feet, and pink stockings on their legs, quite unlike any thing to be seen in the stable- ' yard at Pauillac. One of the wooden shoes, flung from a maiden’s foot as she whirled by in a waltz, struck my knee with centrifugal force. As the Cin- derella who owned it kept on with her dancing, I had time to examine the “sabot.” It was nicely made, of good shape, and light, furnished with a simple leather “upper” nailed to the edge of the’ sole. The cost was only seventy-five cents the pair. Many people in France, who live in the country, wear this kind of shoe in muddy weather from choice, and thus avoid many a malady. An American, with common sense enough to adopt them for himself and family, could save sufficient between the birth and coming of age of his oldest child to buy a farm. “Tere is where they sleep,” said my guide, as he stopped before an open door. I looked in, and saw merely a large room in an out-building, the floor of which was covered with a comfortable thickness of clean straw, upon which straw some forty vintage youths and maidens were to sleep that night. This, they told me, was the usual mode of lodging the la- borers. They seemed very happy—and why should not they be? those trooping bands, tramping from one merry harvest to another, seeing the world for 42 EUROPEAN VINEYARDS. nothing, free for the time from home restraints, fed and lodged in foul weather as well as fair, earning wherewith to buy clothes for the year by light, so- cial, and agreeable labor in the day, and enjoying a vintage ragofit and vintage dance in the evening, eat- ing “a discretion,” drinking “a discretion,” and sleep- ing “a discretion.” When I went down to breakfast the following morning, I found madame was already up and a-field, having left her only domestic to attend upon her only lodger. Mathilde informed me M. Averous had been to call on me, and had left his compliments, with the offer of his services to conduct me to see the vintage. It was the landlady, I learned, who had obtained for me this polite attention. To lose no time, I waited on myself while Mathilde ran to bring a hack. Thanks to a soft, fair, welcoming kind of weather, such as makes you feel at home in a strange land, I could go in an open carriage. French towns take small space, and in five minutes I was beyond the outer borders of Pauillac, and going along a vine- bordered country road, where, for leagues on either side, nothing hindered the view. Soon we began to pass wagons loaded with fruit on its way to the vats, each drawn by two oxen of a most noble breed. Their color was a tawny drab, and their horns white. MeEpoc. 43 They seemed thoroughly trained, and moved along in a dignified manner, as if they drew their load of their own free will, and not from fear of the slight rod armed with only half an inch of darning-needle, carried, rather as a guide than a goad, by a man who walked beside them without blasphemy or loud words of any kind. It means something that the French use the word “ conductor” where we say “ driver.” Eyery ox wore a net over his face—quite a neat thing, too—and a cloth that covered the back and hung down to the knees, which were for protection against insects such as swarm from the low lands of the river border. This highly-esteemed race is the result of kind and judicious treatment, as much as of the rich pastures of the Gironde. In Ohio I could never get an ox-driver to un- dertake any heavy work without a fresh sea-grass snapper at the end of his short-handled, rattlesnake- looking whip, nor unless his own lungs were in good order for swearing. In one year I received the res- ignations of two good drivers, tendered solely be- cause their lungs had given out. Both were good men, and really meant nothing but business when they swore and scourged. What breed of beast such evil influences and rude discipline will produce the future will reveal. 44 EuROPEAN VINEYARDS. It was Fourier who taught that, so, soon as man- kind shall learn to take good care and make good use of the domestic animals they already have, the Creator will give them others more perfect and more useful. I don’t know what authority the philosopher had for this promise, but am sure the ass-drivers of Naples and ox-drivers of some parts of America will have to wait a good while yet for the prize animals which are to reward their humanity, while one might fancy that in the Percheron horse and oxen such as I have described, the French people had already re- ceived their recompense. The large group of cutters to which I was direct- ed to find the Messrs. Averous evinced that those gentlemen cultivated on no small scale. One of them came to the carriage to receive me, and I soon found myself at home in the busy company, and fell to eat- ing grapes and asking questions, the first one being why were the vine-leaves so spotted in many parts of the field? It was verdigris, that had been sprin- kled on the outer ranges of vines to keep away birds. Whether it poisoned or frightened them I now for- get; but a bird that comes fluttering about and drink- ing, “a discretion,” wine worth a dollar the bottle, without a cent in its pocket, is a sponge, and deserves verdigris. MeEpoc. AD The organization of the vintage troop I found to be quite systematic. First there is the rank and file, mostly women and children, who go along between the rows, one in each space, and gather the fruit into tight baskets. These cut off the bunches with knives, and are called “cutters.” J*ollowing within easy reach of the cutters, along alleys which cross the rows at suitable and regular distances, go the wag- ons, each containing two short upright casks without heads, and drawn by a yoke of oxen. Between these and the cutters come and go men who carry on their backs, with the help of shoulder-straps, the’ common deep, oval tub, of size to hold five baskets, such as the cutters carry, and called “hotte.” The hotte- bearer has in his hand a stout walking-stick, which serves to prop his burden so as to relieve him of its weight while standing still waiting on the cutters. His vessel filled, the hotte-bearer carries it to the wagon, mounts it by a short step-ladder, dumps his load into one of the casks by a quick inclination of the body, and then, with his stick, stirs about the grapes to pack them well down. Over all is the “ commandant,” whose name implies his duties. His insignia of office is a long slender lath, to the end of which is fixed a willow twig. When a cutter com- mits a fault, such as leaving a bunch ungathered, or 46 EUROPEAN VINEYARDS. not properly culling out the green or decayed ber- ries, instead of calling it to her notice by words, which would draw the attention of the whole group and cause a considerable loss of time, he lightly touches her shoulder with the tip of the twig. Every twelve cutters had two hotte-bearers and one commandant. Such a force will in a day har- vest a “hectare,” about two acres and a half, bear- ing the average yield of Médoc, which is 625 gal- lons, or 250 to the acre—a very large yield, consid- ering the fine quality of the wine. This is good work, but they go early to the field, and never wait for the dew to dry from the fruit, as is common else- where, since they do not fear it will do any harm in the vat. The rows were three feet apart in all the Médoc vineyards I saw, and the vines the same distance from each other in the rows. They stood on little ridges flung up against them by the last of the four plowings which they annually receive, two of which uncover,.and the other two cover their feet. The plow they use is of wood, except a plate of iron in form of a long triangle with which it is shod, and has but one handle, being, in fact, no other than the Roman implement of Virgil’s time. It is drawn by two oxen yoked abreast, one of which treads in Mépoc. 47 the space between the rows where the plow is moy- ing, and the other in the next one. The beam is curved quite curiously to insure the proper bearing and direction, and must of course pass above the tops of the vines, stakes, trellis, and all; and, strange to say, all of these are kept within the low stature of fifteen inches for no other purpose than to allow the plow-beam to pass over them. If there were ever any other reasons for this Liliputian training, this is the only one that has come down from the remote antiquity which clouds the origin of the cus- toms of Médoc. One of the gentlemen took me to see the wine- making in a large old stone building near by. On entering the spacious and high press-room, the first thing to see was a circle of workmen engaged in stemming the grapes. They were standing within a shallow box, or rather a wide platform with a low rim, built up about three feet above the floor, very much resembling the dish of a common wine-press, but quite large, measuring ten feet each way, and ealled “ pressoir.” Its bottom pitched a little on one side, and was grooved to let the must flow freely away; and in the rim of the lower edge was an opening about a foot wide, beneath which was a large tub of 200 gallons’ capacity, to receive the 48 EvROPEAN VINEYARDS. ” liquid, called a “gargouille.” The men were at work — about a sort of table which stood in the centre of the “‘pressoir,” having for a top a grating or screen made of rods of half-inch iron, and bordered with a low rim of wood. The rods running the shorter way were supported in the middle by passing through a bar one and a half inch by half an inch, but those running the longer way were fastened only at their ends, and rested on the others rather loosely. Close to the pressoir was a doorway opening into the yard, at which a wagon was being unloaded as I entered, which was done by bringing the casks from the wag- on directly through the door and on to the floor of the pressoir, which last was on the same level with the sill of the door and bed of the wagon, so that no lifting need be done. The contents of the casks were dumped close to the table or screen. Then, having flung a few bushels of the grapes upon the screen, the workmen took their places about it and began to rub them on it with their hands, the berries passing through the meshes, and leaying the stems behind. Soon currents of red juice crept out from beneath the mass of crushed grapes under the table, and, flowing along grooves in the floor of the press- oir, ran out through the opening in the rim and into the gargouille beneath. It needed but a short time —————— rl MeEpoc. 49 to make an end of the wagon-load, and then the ta- — ‘ble was set on one side, and the heap accumulated beneath and about it was shoveled out, by way of the same opening which the juice went through, into tubs made of barrels sawed in two, with sticks pass- ing through holes bored in the staves, and projecting on either side, for handles. As these were filled, they were carried up to the top of the vat and flung in. The juice accumulated in the gargouille was car- _ ried and poured into the vat by means of the same tubs. . Climbing by a ladder to the level of the rims of the long row of vats which lined one side of the press-house, I could see that two of them were full, and the contents already fermenting, covered with only a thick float of stems. The vats were of oak, iron-bound, eight feet deep, ten feet wide at the bottom, and nine at the top. The hoops were not riveted, but were clasped where the ends met by short screw-bolts passing through flanges or ears, the bolts serving to tighten the joints of the staves when necessary. Each vat would hold four thousand gallons. No other crushing was given to the grapes than what they necessarily got in being rubbed through the meshes of the screen. C 50 EUROPEAN VINEYARDS. On taking my leave, I received valuable instruc- tions how to shape my course in my proposed circuit among the great houses of the canton, and also what was very pleasant—an invitation to dinner—which I incontinently accepted. After quitting the Averous farm, my course lay along a wide, gently-swelling ridge of gravelly land, and commanding an extensive view in every direc- tion. The face of the country was rolling, and di- vided into long, low swells of high ground occupied by vines, and wide intermediate flats hardly above the level of the Gironde, partly devoted to grain and partly abandoned to a coarse pasturage. These flats render Médoc unhealthy, so much so that its people are weak, indolent, and apathetic; and “ mountain- eers,” as they call the inhabitants of the hill-country, are employed in considerable numbers to do the heavy work, at extra wages. Perhaps it was from the same reason that many of the houses on the great estates, and the grounds about them, appeared neg- lected beyond what one would expect to see on such valuable domains. If I remember well, the soil along the road all the way, or nearly all the way to St. Julien, showed little variation, being mostly of coarse gravel—quite coarse, the pebbles being as large as hickory and hazel nuts. MeEpoc. . : 51 Nor could I notice much variety in the modes of training or in the degree of care bestowed. Westerly winds from the ocean often sweep violently over the peninsula, and, but for the very low training, would make havoe among high trellis or staked vines, and possibly I have here discovered a second reason for a custom to explain which a very high authority could give me no other than that it was to let the plow pass. I noticed the shoots that had mounted above the tops of the laths of the trellis had a close cropped look, as if they had been trimmed like a hedge. And the driver said it was so; that it was usual. at blos- soming time to mow off, with a short scythe, both the tops and sides of the vines, in order to clear the way for the oxen and plow, which also served instead of pinching in. LA TOUR. The sight near at hand of “a stern round tower of other days” admonished me I was entering the do- main of Chateau la Tour, one of the three reigning houses of Haut Médoc, by decree of the Bordeaux Chamber of Commerce and the suffrages of princely ° drinkers the world over ranking number one in a classification of a select sixty chosen from among the 52 EUROPEAN VINEYARDS. many thousand “ wgnobles” of a district where all is choice and fine. When the Franks invaded Gaul and first drank of the juice of its grapes, they honored the vine that bore them with the name wigne noble (noble vine), whence comes vignodle, the French for vineyard. But La Tour is more than noble. It has been crowned a king. Surrounded by a field of little low vines, as insig- nificant to look at as any of the others, stood a hand- some new chateau, with press-house, store-houses, sta- bles, ete., close by, while apart from all, and rising from among the hop-o-my-thumb trellis was a stately antique tower, giving dignity, character, interest, and name to the place. A gentleman of distinguished look, with two la- dies, was walking toward the house as I drew near. I saluted him, and asked permission to walk about the property. “If Monsieur will be good enough to wait a moment, the ‘vegisseur’ will be here and will conduct him.” The regisseur, or steward coming up, I was presented and turned over to him. He showed me to the press-house. A pile of grapes, already stemmed, was heaped in conical form on the pressoir, and five or six men, with trowsers rolled above the knees, were trotting about in a circle, trampling the pile under foot, beginning at the outer circumference, MEpoc. 5s and gradually contracting their circuit till they met in the middle and on the top of the cone. This they call “fouler a pied” (crushing with feet). There might be a cleaner way of doing the thing; I don’t think there could be a fouler. The regisseur made no apology for the sight, nor did the trotters seem the least ashamed. Wherever I went that day, except at the Averous farm and Chateau Lafitte, this-mode of crushing was in prac- tice. It is said no other so effectually crushes the pulp without breaking the seed—in fact, that it is important for the quality of the wine that it be trodden out with naked feet. It is also said, and very truly, that soap and water will cleanse the feet as well as the hands. At-one place I visited I inquired oi the workmen if they washed their feet before trampling on the grapes, and was told they did not. One of them en- lightened my ignorance by explaining that wine had the power to fling off all impurities, so that it was of no sort of consequence how free they made with it. No doubt there is a good deal to be said on the oth- er side of this question of dirt. I confess that what I saw and heard disturbed my old notions. At all events, the Médoc vintagers acted as if quite sure of their chemical deductions, and would walk with bare ~ 54 EUROPEAN VINEYARDS. feet slap dash through puddle and mud, and mount the juicy heap with the assured tread of men firmly grounded in their principles. Several of the vats at La Tour were already full, and fermentation was well under way in some of them, but none were covered with any thing at all; and this was the case at many other houses. On my asking the regisseur how long he allowed the wine to remain in the vat, he told me the period varied from three or four days up to one month. This astonished me. He explained that, though fer- mentation might fully accomplish itself in a fort- night at farthest, even when the season was bad for ripening, yet that in such case it was needful to give time not only for fermentation to come to an end, but also for the greener portions of the pulp remain- ing undecomposed and suspended in the liquid to sink to the bottom. And that very vintage, he said would need a month in the vat. > The regisseur’s account of the precautions taken in drawing off, barreling, filling up, etc., satisfied me the great reputation of Médoc wines was much more the result of care and skill in “conducting” it, as they say, from the vat to the bottle, than is generally sup- posed. ; When the time comes for drawing off from the Merpoc. 55 vats and putting into barrels, they proceed as fol- lows: a sufficient number of new “barriques” (of nearly sixty gallons’ capacity) to contain all the first quality of wine that has been made in all the vats are prepared by a simple washing with tepid water, followed by a rinsing with wine or brandy, and then drained until quite dry, and arranged in one or more rows on the floor of the cellar. The vat is then tapped at the bottom, and the wine allowed to flow into a large tub at its foot, whence it is dipped out by means of oblong buckets, poured into the two-man tubs with sticks for handles before described, and carried and distributed among the _barriques, not by entirely filling first one and then another, but by carefully dividing the contents of the vat equally among them all, so that when the ~ man at the faucet, seeing the liquid begin to* run somewhat thick, turns the key and shuts off all far- ther flow, each and every barrique shall have re- ceived its equal share of the contents of the vat. The same process being repeated with each of the other vats, it follows that the wine in the barriques is uni- form in color and quality, which is especially impor- tant where such small receptacles are used. Thus is made quality number one. 56 EUROPEAN VINEYARDS. The turbid wine left in the vat is then drawn off, and set apart as quality number three. The mass of skins and seeds still remaining at the bottom, and which is called “vapé,” is then pressed with a machine resembling circular cider - presses, such as are now seen in use, and makes quality num- ber four. Formerly numbers three and four were put together. _Number two is made from fruit grown on inferior soils or exposures, or that is, from any cause, imper- fectly ripened. Grapes from young vines are also deemed unfit to mingle their juice with number one. During the first month after the drawing off, the bungs are allowed to rest loosely, on their holes, and twice a week the barriques are filled up. At the end of the month linen is wrapped about the bungs, and they are driven home. After that the filling up is done once a week. In March the wine is again drawn off. This is again done in June, as well as in October or November; but by some the June draw- ing off is omitted. In March of the second year the wine is again drawn off, after which the position of the barriques is so far changed, by turning them slightly on one side, that the bung shall always be wet, and the air-bubble rest a few inches away from it. From this time on, the drawing off is done only MeEpoc. 57 twice yearly,in March and August. At the end of three or four years the wine is ready for the bottle and for the market. In the drier climate of our country I am sure the term might be shortened by one third. Great care is taken to keep the wine from any ac- cess of air when being drawn off. The common way is to place the empty cask beside the full one, connect the two with a tube of gutta-percha two feet long, allow the contents of the full one to flow into the other till the quantity is equal in both, ap- ply a strong bellows to the bung-hole of the cask to be emptied, fitting it tightly, and blow out the re- mainder. Another plan is to place the full one im- mediately over the empty one, and let the contents flow into the latter through a tube reaching nearly to the bottom, in order that there shall be as little “churning” as possible. The wastage from ‘all causes between the first barreling and the final clarification for bottling is twenty-five per cent., and the cost of producing and conducting a gallon to the bottling stage is about seventy cents; with interest added, it would amount to a dollar. Considering that this estimate assumes the yield of an acre to be 250 gallons, which is about the average both of favorable and unfavorable soils, C2 58 EUROPEAN VINEYARDS. it shows that labor and care are needed, as well as silicious and ferruginous gravel, and that not wholly to luck does Médoe owe its high reputation. It seems the climate of Médoc is too damp to per- mit of storing wine in cellars under ground. For- tunately, however, and perhaps from the same cause, _ it may be safely kept in store-rooms on the ground level. During the first one or two years it is stored in an ordinarily light but close apartment; after that it is kept sedulously in the dark, as well as from all access of outside air. It is deemed a sign that the room is not dark enough if the mould which accu- mulates largely on the casks is green ‘instead of white. About ten feet above the floor of the store-room is a ceiling which forms an attic overhead. This attic is kept as close in all weathers as the store-room itself, and a pretty warm place it must be in mid- summer. The safety of the wine seems to depend on keeping the temperature, whatever it may be, as even as possible, since it is by changes of tempera- ture that the wine in the cask is made to swell or di- minish, thereby respiring new air, as it were. Wine of the vintage of 1865 was uncommonly good, and so was the regisseur to give me some of it. He took me into the dark and musty inner apartment MeEpoc. 59 where it lay, and there, on the very spot of its origin, I saw it drawn from the original package. Of course I found it the best wine, either red or white, I had ever tasted. Nevertheless, 1 was not dismayed, and I turned away from the precincts of La Tour with more hope and faith than ever in the Norton’s Vir- ginia Seedling. PICHON-LONGUEVILLE. ‘From La Tour I was driven to the beautiful cha- teau of Pichon-Longueyille, owned by a baron of that name. Looking at it, I wondered if the time would ever come for American vine-dressers to build houses like it from the profits of a hundred acres of ground too poor to bear mullens. Finding my way directly to the press-house, without troubling any one to give me permission or show me through, I was glad to find the workmen lounging about in the in- terval between dining and going to work again—the best time for getting questions answered. All was much the same as at La Tour, except that every vat in which fermentation had begun was covered with matched boards, closely fitted and plastered to the rim with clay or some kind of cement, so as to allow no escape for gas except through a tin tube of siphon shape, with its upper mouth submerged in a vessel 60 EUROPEAN VINEYARDS. of water—an apparatus well known in this country. Great importance is attached to the siphon and wa- ter-dish at Pichon-Longueville, but why did I meet with it nowhere else in Médoc ? Outside the gateway of the chateau was a compost- heap, to which mud from the river marshes was be- ing hauled, as well as stable manure. They told me the-compost thus formed and well rotted was the only manure tolerated in Médoc, and that even this was feared by some proprietors, who enriched their vine- yards with mud alone, or turf, or swampy earth, at the risk of debasing the natural soil, since large quan- tities are required if no richer material is mingled with these. Compost is applied in various ways. At_ Pichon-Longueville they spread it over the surface and plow it in. Others fill with it little excavations made around the feet of the vines, while others again bury it in trenches midway between the rows, eight inches wide, and deep enough to escape the plow. The ill effects of manure on the quality of the wine are not supposed to accrue in any direct manner, but - to result simply from the sap and luxuriance of the plant which it induces. Freshly-manured vines and those newly planted are placed in the same category, the fruit of both being deemed equally unfit for growing wine of the first quality; but, were not ma-— MEpDoc. 61 nuring sparingly and carefully done in Médoe, I am sure the wine affected by it would go down at least one step lower in the scale. There are proprietors who do not manure their vines oftener than every twenty years—as those of Léoville, for instance. The greater number do it every seven, eight, nine, or ten years, while some wait only five, and some only three. LAFITTE. After a pretty wide circuit, which brought within view many celebrated estates, I made the next halt at Chateau Lafitte. There, as at the Averous farm, they did not dance upon the grapes, the stemming process giving all the crushing thought necessary. Now, through nearly every wine district of France, they will tell you that crushing with bare feet is so important, no considerations can be allowed to dis- pense with it. But do they not dispense with it at Lafitte? and is not Lafitte a chateau of the first class? “Perhaps the omission of the ceremony there is an in- novation of the present owner, Sir William Scott. The British aristocracy are growing so fond of the wines of Médoc, a good deal of its soil is getting to be owned across the Channel ; but, naturally enough, they like to import as little of it in solution as can be helped. 62 EUROPEAN VINEYARDS. I saw them using the small round press I have mentioned to extract the juice of the few berries, mostly unripe, which still adhered to the stems after being rubbed. A cursory observation would fail to detect in the pebbly surface at Lafitte, any more than at La Tour, any thing to distinguish it from a good many others growing wines of only second, third, fourth, or fifth class, or no class at all. But the uniformity is only apparent, and there is nothing occult in the matter. The ground of the Lafitte vineyards is of the fol- lowing composition : | Silicious pebbles, nut size............. 629.00 parts. Mine. Sands 03. just sone seodahe we seeseacets 283.00 ‘° IPUTE SUCK 2.0 ve sees cooncuscosensecn oder 62.20 ‘° 13 fo5 00) CHEN ssnepoaorpEemeconc oosdsormcae ace 42.80 ‘* ALUMINA «6c. cas soapusesssncncesteacswesndes (eae Time stesso RS ieeacomcecneees 40.00‘ POU Gaekaice vndcceshe sates Sahat eseeeeroeee 86.00 ‘ TLOSS 2is.fs°3 ccs aacusacomedsestua. saveweesaseess 4:50) £5 Such is the composition of a soil capable of pro- ducing the very best wine. Next in excellence is a sandy surface underlaid with quite fine silicious gray- el. After these two comes a surface of limestone — pebbles, immediately resting on strong beds of shelly limestone or marly clay; and, last of all, soils where clay predominates. MeEpoce. 63 Iron, forming nearly nine per cent. of the choice soil of Lafitte, is found in similar proportions in all other choice Médoc soils of the gravelly kind, and it is well known that it causes the wines grown upon such to deepen in color as they grow older, instead of fading, as is usual. The small proportion of lime, only four per cent., will also be noticed by those curi- ous in grape soils, as also the general poverty of the whole mass. Draining has long been practiced in the tenacious alios, or hard-pan subsoil of much of the Médoc re- gion. Tile are already in use, yet many still insist that the old-fashioned brush-wood and broken stone drains are better. LEOVILLE. The next domain I stopped at was nearly two miles from the last, in the adjoining commune of St. Julien. Chateau Léoville is of the second class. There, too, the vats had only loose boards for covering. Thus had I seen since morning vats wholly uncovered, vats covered with closely-sealed boards, others with loose boards, and others still with only a float of grape- stems. When such diversity of practice is found among skillful and practiced wine-makers, is it not best for the American beginner to buy some book 64 EvROPEAN VINEYARDS. that will instruct him in but one way of conducting the wine through every step of its progress, and con- fidingly follow all its teachings, without troubling himself with running after his own facts or spinning his own theories? I think not; and the method of this volume is to present—as it was of my explora- tions to collect—as many noteworthy facts as possi- ble, let them perplex and puzzle as they may. All the arrangements at Léoville were the best I had any where seen, and for the grapes they gave me I can pay them this compliment, that they were al- most as good as I had eaten at home. COS D’ESTOURNEL. Another wide circuit, and I found myself driving by a carved stone gateway showing the royal arms of Britain as large as life. It was the entrance to Chateau Cos d’Estournel, owned by the heirs of an English gentleman named Martyn. Soon after pass- ing it the driver drew up before a second chateau, be- longing to the same family, called Pomys, and a fine old building too. A polite old Frenchman received me with an apology for the absence of the director, and showed me through not only the vines and wine- houses, but the chateau, barns, stables, ete., very well worth seeing, and all bearing the stamp of English MeEpoc. 65 order and neatness. But all his English associations had failed to make an Englishman of my old con- ductor, or he would never have declined the money I hesitatingly offered on taking leave. The grating upon which they were stemming grapes in the press-room of Pomys was framed of oak bars one inch thick on the face and two and a half inches deep, and the meshes, or openings, were one inch wide by eighteen long. On the grating the fruit was rubbed by means of a rake, also of oak, the teeth being of the same stuff and dimensions as the bars of the grating, set edgewise to the line of the handle, and sharpened at the ends. The handle was long. In this connection I will describe a utensil for stemming grapes which I think the best I have yet seen. It is the one used at the Longworth Wine- house in Cincinnati. A tub flaring at the top, three feet high and four feet across at its greatest diameter, is fitted with a cover made of one-inch thick white-oak board, which rests on shoulders that sustain it 28 inches above the bottom,.and seven inches below the top of the tub. The cover has a strong cross-piece on the under side to keep it from warping. It is pierced with holes of the diameter of one inch on the upper surface, and 66 EvROPEAN VINEYARDS. an inch and a half on the lower, the holes being four inches apart, measuring from centre to centre. Wine of Cos d’Estournel, which ranks in the see- ond class, sells for 2500 francs per cask of four bar- riques, called “ tonneau,” while that of its next neigh- bor, Pomys, of no class at all, brings only 1000 franes. The market value of the various classes will appear in the following table, which gives the prices estab- lished for the vintage of 1862. Each tonneau con- taining 912 litres, and each litre being equal to 1.760773 pint imperial measure, and the franc being equal to about 20 cents in real money, every reader may reckon for himself. ASHIGIBSS ech sneaceguscaaeeerameekeatrueeassat 4000 frances. Dds Oe stp cawestan ne ceercesenraettestee 3000‘ DG ss Saka der dchnctneveatesmenccumeavesrent 2000 ‘* TIT, 15 | a wckcchomeaniesenicentoeseonnea waned Ieee 1800‘ Btn Seek vccuanceaeve sass camareccencuceateres 1500: 35 Bourgeois supérieure..............ecceres 1400 ‘ The dinner to which I had been invited was given in honor of the reunion of six college mates, of whom two were the young Messrs. Averous, two were young and very jolly priests, one was an English- man, and the other a Bostonian. It was pleasant to drink authentic Médoc in its very home, and equally pleasant to witness the enjoyment of the college MeEpoc. 67 friends. The priests were as good fellows as any of the rest, but French priests are never required to assume a vinegar aspect, and drink melted ice on principle. 68 EUROPEAN VINEYARDS. O TAP eas ve SAUTERNE. I GOT upon the boat next day, and returned to Bordeaux once again, whence, on the following morning, I took the cars for Agen by a route that ascended the valley of the River Garonne. At Langon a gentleman entered the carriage where I was whom I found could give me full information concerning the vine district I had just traversed in the preceding half hour’s ride. It was the district where is grown the fine white wines known under the general name of Sauterne. : He told me the soil was in some places of gravel, in others of sand, and in others of clay mixed with sand and underlaid with limestone. They plant their vinés about three feet apart in both directions. They prune them low, the two or three canes allowed on each stock, or souche, being cut back to two eyes each. Leaf-pruning is practised to excess. Begin- ning early in September, they proceed with it gradu- SAUTERNE. . 69 ally, but severely, so that before vintage, the fruit, little by little robbed of all its natural shelter, hangs naked to the sun’s rays. Three gatherings are made; the first culls from each bunch only a few excessively ripe berries, the second takes such as have ripened to the same exces- sive degree since the first, and the third sweeps in all the remainder.. This protracted vintage hardly comes to an end before November. Wine of the first gathering is called “head wine ;” of the second, “middle wine ;” and of the third, “tail wine.” About ten per cent. of the whole is of the extremely pre- cious first fruit, and about forty per cent. is of the second quality. The average yield is about the same as in Médoc. They manure once in five years, plow thoroughly, “and cultivate by hand as well, and, from what I learned of my railway-carriage informant and from other sources, are even more exact and: careful in the conduct of their delicate wines than those I had just left. _ After the first two or three years Sauterne wine is transferred from the barriques into very large tuns called “foudres,” which hold nearly 2500 gallons. While remaining in barriques, it is drawn off three times a year, and filled up twice a week. In foudres 70 IuUROPEAN VINEYARDS. it is drawn off twice a year, and filled up once a week. Haut-Sauterne is of marvelous delicacy, and is the French rival of the white wines of the Rhinegau. At half past eight next morning the landlord of the hotel at Agen said, “Certainly, if the gentleman wishes it, I will wake up the cook; but the gentle- man will enjoy his breakfast better if he will wait till eleven o’clock, when we have our table d’héte.” “T will wait, certainly,” I replied, too polite by far; and it is true I enjoyed my breakfast when I got it, as any fool might who had waited two hours and a half. ‘The table was lined with those knights-errant of modern times, as Irving calls them, commercial travelers, who overrun all civilized countries, beating the reveille for customers. Of a truth drumming is a hungry exercise, or else Frenchmen are better eat- ers than I am used to see; and I here note that Americans can not compare with Frenchmen at trencher-play, either for quantity or rapidity. The commercial eaters at Agen waited patiently, it is - true, while each of the eight or ten courses was being served, but, once started, their speed from station to station could not be emulated by us. LANGUEDOG fial CHAPTER VL LANGUEDOC. oes Agen to Toulouse, and thence to Beziers, I took a third-class car. The seats were hard, with hard backs. It rained hard without, and they smoked hard within. The stoppages were frequent, and the speed under twelve miles an hour. It was a hard journey; and I would warn all travelers on the Continent who may like to study French charac- ter, and sound the feelings of the working classes throughout France, that they had better take good lodgings in Paris, read carefully some book on the subject written by an unprejudiced Englishman and rely on its statements, instead of going bumping about among blue blouses and wooden shoes, as I did. After three or four hours, the rolling of the r-r-r’s of the incoming passengers reminded me we were entering the borders of ancient Languedoc, so named from the old language of its people, which was not French, but the dangue d’oc—a country of great tra- 72 EUROPEAN VINEYARDS. ditions—Roman and civilized, rich and enlightened, when Paris was but a seat of barbarians—Paris, which now scorns as provincial the rich roll of the Languedocian tongue. The hands and feet of the peasantry of Languedoc are so small, it is difficult to believe them used to hard work. They are of a superior bodily constitu- tion—blooded animals of Greek and Roman descent ; and centuries of labor, deprivation, oppression, perse- cution, and ravages of war have failed to bend their backs, hollow their chests, make their feet flat, their hands broad, or their waists large. Their eyes are large and black, and their teeth white and clean. Having left behind me the Médoc and Sauterne districts, where, as is the boast of their cultivators, “Nature does much, but man does more,” I was ap- proaching those happier southern regions where Na- ture does a good deal more, and leaves man not near so much to do; where the kindly sun, knowing how languid the ardor of his rays renders the arm of man, takes upon himself the greater task, and performs it by a fuller efflux of creative power, leaving only the lesser one for poor lazy mortals to do. Happy, beautiful, fruitful Languedoc! I will one day see you again, please God. . So frequent were the stoppages and changes of LANGUEDOC. . 3 passengers, that in the course of the day a good many different people successively occupied the benches neighboring to mine. With most of them I man- aged to have some conversation, and they had a good deal to say on the subject of vine-culture, but it all related to vines trained “en souche-basse,” which, as I have said, may be translated “stump,” “stock,” or “stool.” As I looked out through the windows of the carriage, it meant beautiful bushes, flourishing over hill, hollow, and plain, from rail-track to hori- zon, as good to see as corn on a prairie. Not one brown stake or lath was there to mar the green ar- ray. Nature, in her strength, had flung the crutch away. / But I was not allowed to do all the questioning, and, after receiving my fair share of information, was required to give some in return. “The gentleman is from America,” I heard one of my companions say to a woman sitting next him. “Ask him, then,” she said, “if the men there can have as many wives as they like.” “Yes, madam; some of us take one, two, or as many more as we can support, but we do it to car- ry out our conscientious convictions—just as your monks, from an equally high principle, refuse to have even one wife.” D 74 EUROPEAN VINEYARDS. “ Horrible!” she cried. “Abominable!” said a priest who had just then turned round to listen. “Not a bit abominable,” growled a gray old farm- er from behind me. “Much better have too many wives than none at all.” The priest smiled and took snuff. Neither he nor I had ever before heard the case put in just that form. The woman looked down and said nothing. Beziers, where I arrived at evening, is one of the principal cities of the Department of L’Herault, which produces more wine than any other in France. The city is in view of the Mediterranean, has thirty thousand inhabitants, and is neither very neat, or- derly, nor beautiful. In going to Beziers I had plunged into the very middle of things, but, as at Pauillac, I had no clew to get at them—not so much as the name of a single soul in all the place. After supper I went to the theatre, and there had the good fortune to sit beside a gentleman with whom I soon got acquainted, and in whom I found the very person I wanted. He gave me his card at parting, and invited me to visit him the next day at his country residence in the village of Boujon, some six miles from the city. I found M. L—— at his distillery, adjoining his cellars. The stills were of ’ LANGUEDOC. 15 the newest and most complex fashion, more expedi- tious than the old well-known copper affairs, such as, in our country, good whisky is made with, and made probably no exception to the old rule regarding all things good to eat or drink, that, to arrive at excel- lence, we must travel in a slow coach. The liquor made at M. L——’s is called “ trozs-six”—three-six literally, but why, I forgot to ask or forget to re- member. It is brandy, of course; but, for some good reason, what they make in Languedoc, and in other places too, is not called by that name. Some of the wine they were distilling when I was there they of- fered me to taste. It was the five-cent quality of which I have spoken—not five cents per litre, but per gallon. In the press-house they showed me the vats, which were great square cisterns of cement, and covered loosely with boards. Cement is admitted to be in- ferior to wood, but is cheaper. The cellar of M. L— was well arranged, well kept, and very large, there being ten great casks, each of the capacity of about ten thousand gallons. All were not filled with five-cent wine, however, some of them contain- ing what was considerably better, and not intended for distillation. As we walked in the vineyards, I could see the 76 EvuROoPEAN VINEYARDS. soil was mostly of good gravelly loam, and, if it was devoted to growing such extremely cheap wine as I have named, it was not because it could not produce good crops of wheat. When M. L-— mentioned that the vines of Languedoc were mostly of Spanish varieties, introduced when that province was under the same crown with Aragon, I recalled that those of California, and which are trained in the same way, and produce wine so different from what is grown any where else in our country, were also of Spanish origin. M. L elor’s home, where, cosily seated by the fire, which took me to his house, a very snug bach- damp weather and the approach of night rendered comfortable, was another gentleman, who had come from the city to be his company during vintage time. They had been college chums together half a centu- ry before. Now, considering that at the last vintage gathering I had attended all the company were col- lege classmates, perhaps I may safely state in this place that it is a French custom for college friends to meet at vintage instead of Christmas. With the two old friends I tasted several kinds of the older and better wines of the neighborhood; then, declin- ing farther hospitality, I returned to Beziers. I resolved I would go farther into the subject of LANGUEDOC. ver growing wine on the Languedoc plan. But to do this as thoroughly as I ought would require weeks of delay. I must, for the present, turn away from the shores of the Mediterranean, and journey north- ward and eastward into the great red-wine country of Burgundy, if I would catch some of the fleeting vintage hours before the harvest-girls have gathered the latest, ripest clusters from the “Céte d’or”—the hill-side of gold. The same necessity obliged me to travel in the night-time, so that I reached Lyons without seeing much of the important valley of the Rhone. The same day I pushed on to Macon, where I staid overnight, and the following morning went on to Beaune, a small town at the foot of the Céte d’or, and not very far from Dijon, the old capital of Bur- gundy. 78 EUROPEAN VINEYARDS. CHAPTER YE BURGUNDY AND THE COTE D’OR. F a verity, the heritage of the old dukes was a goodly one. To the traveler who goes through this fair and rich province, the wonder is, that, with such wide and fertile valleys to nourish them—such strong, full-bodied drink to nerve them, such rivers at their feet and mountains at their backs, the rulers of Burgundy did not become kings of France. I had never tasted a drop of authentic Burgundy wine in all my life. Tew people have who live across the seas, for it does not bear transportation, notwith- standing its alcoholic strength, which exceeds that of Bordeaux wine. Its market being, from the cause just given, a limited one, it is sold cheaper than Bor- deaux of equal quality. Being a stranger, I made no useless attempt to ob- tain a very choice sample, but called for a bottle of such as bore a moderate price, and, being fatigued, went so far as to drink a tumbler full of it. It was very palatable and refreshing. T had never drunk any before. BuRGUNDY AND THE COTE D’oR. (79 I have never drunk any since. I shall never drink any more. Presently I will tell you why. At my special request, the hotel-keeper procured for me a driver who had been a vine-dresser, and was well informed concerning what I wanted to know about. I think it important the drivers of public carriages should be men of intelligence, for a deal of information is sought of them. They hold, in fact, the not very mean position of instructors to the traveling world. In Paris some seven hundred ex- priests sit upon the box and hold the reins. Maybe it is from having educated tutors such as these that our American young gentlemen so easily learn all the ways of that wonderful city. Telling the driver what I wanted, and seating my- self beside him, I was driven first toward the village of Bligny. The vigorous growth of the vines, as well as the appearance of the soil, showed the great plain across which our course lay to be a rich one. For- merly, my guide said, there were but few vineyards on the plain, but of late years they threatened to crowd out every thing else, owing to the increased demand for wine of the quality there grown. The souches observed no order whatever. Though at first planting they are set in regular lines five feet 80 EUROPEAN. VINEYARDS. apart, and eighteen inches distant from each other within the lines, the system of layering, to supply losses or restore decaying vines, causes them soon to break ranks and straggle hither and yon most con- fusedly. One result of layering is, the cultivation must be done by hand. They cultivate thoroughly three times a year, once in March, once before blos- soming, and again after the grapes are well formed. I nowhere saw any trellis, but learned they were slowly and doubtingly being introduced. They in- volve a reconstruction of the entire vineyard where adopted, as well as a radical change in the system of training. Some of the vines appeared to have been pruned very close, leaving only one or two eyes to each cane, but reserving several canes. These were varieties whose habit is to bear the fruit close to the souche, or old stock. Others, with a tendency to bear from buds farther out on the cane, had three and four eyes. I inquired what was the price obtained for such wine as was commonly produced on the plain, and learned it usually brought 65 francs the “ piece,” con- taining 228 litres, the same as the Bordeaux barrique, but, owing to the poorness of the present year’s crop, resulting from hail as well as excessive rains, 120 franes was bemg demanded. BuRGUNDY AND THE COTE D’or. 81 The ordinary qualities of Burgundy wine, as, in- deed, of all other wines grown in France, are disposed of early, and are generally consumed within one, two, or three years, while fine qualities must be kept and cared for during from three to six years. My guide, mentioning this, said, for his part, he would rather own a vineyard on the plain than on the Cote d’or. On the plains all kinds of manure seem to be used: stable-sweepings, oil-cake, bone-dust, guano, and rags. I believe, though, manure is only applied in layering, that operation being so frequent that the whole vine- yard gets enriched by the share allotted to the layered plants. The usual number of souches to an acre is five thousand. The vintage had nearly come to an end; only here and there, at wide intervals, did we encounter the bands at their work, or a wagon on its way to the press-house. “What wages do farm laborers get ?” I asked. “Three francs a day; how much do you pay in America ?” “A little over five; but, aside from food, it will not purchase as much there as three will here.” Thope it made the victim of imperial tyranny more contented with his lot to learn this. Arrived at Bligny,I was set down at a large wine- D2 82 EvROPEAN VINEYARDS. house where they were pressing white wine with a press of the old fashion, having a lever which is worked with a screw. They showed me into the “cave,” as underground cellars are called, where the must was fermenting in barriques. All were over- flowing in froth and impurities at the bung-holes, it being the practice to insure this effect by com- pletely filling the casks instead of leaving a void, as we do. _ The fruit was being crushed in a grape-mill. The juice running without pressure was to be set aside, and afterward mixed with a third or fourth part of the expressed must. The workmen at Bligny stoutly defended their old lever and screw against all new comers in the shape of patent presses, of which Bur- gundy is full. Its advantage seemed to lie in the spring of the wood, but this might easily be obtained in some less cumbersome way. In the course of the day I saw several presses of late invention better than any I had seen at home. Where I next stopped red wine was being made. They were stemming the fruit by rubbing it on small basket-work sieves or gratings, slightly bag- ging in the middle, resting on tubs into which the crushed berries fell. The work was quickly done. The vats I found to be much smaller than those BuRGUNDY AND THE COTE D’or. 83 used in Médoc, and with no covers at all. A smell of vinegar came from the “chapeau,” as the floating mass of skin and seeds which rises to the top is named, while swarms of little gnats, always a bad sign, hovered above it. The foreman told me that before putting the “rape” to press the top of the chapeau would be carefully pared off down to where it smelled as it should. As a precaution against ace- tous fermentation, they sometimes sift over the top of the chapeau a coating of plaster of Paris the third of an inch thick. I don’t think, however, this would be done in making fine wines, but for an ordinary qual- ity should think it good. When I inquired how long the wine would remain in the vat, they told me two weeks ; but said that last year, which was as good for ripening as the present one was bad, only four or five days was found to be enough. One half the wine-makers in France stem the grapes before putting them to ferment, and the other half do not. In Burgundy it is not done except when the ripening has been imperfect. The reasons given for this by those Burgundians of whom I inquired did not appear to me entirely reasonable, but doubt- less the practice is founded in reason for all that. People who inherit wise customs born of the experi- 84 EUROPEAN VINEYARDS. ence of a remote ancestry do not always find them- selves in possession of the rationale of those customs. Among the consequences of keeping the stems out of the vat would be a disease called “ bitter,’ com- mon in French wines, and a flat taste; the others which were named I have forgotten. One person told me the corrective virtue of the stems consisted in their acidity, and another thought it lay in the tannin. There is hardly any tannin in stems, and as for acidity, it might be better obtained from unripe grapes, as is done in Médoe, where juice of the folle blanche is mixed with that of the malbec, to correct the flatness of the latter. Grape-mills are coming into fashion in Burgundy, but crushing with feet is still the general practice. It is usual to keep red wine above ground until March following the vintage, and after that in “ caves,” which are most commonly arched. There is no mys- tery in the fact that wine will keep above ground in the intense summer heat of Languedoc, while in the cold climate of Burgundy it must go below or spoil, for the wines of the south are remarkably free of acids. At the “Hospice,” the property of an endowed hospital in Beaune, I found the arrangements excel- lent. The foreman, or one who seemed such, ex- BuRGUNDY AND THE COTE D’or. 85 plained things like one who understood what he was talking about. The vats, which.are constructed like those of Médoc, only lower and wider in proportion to their height, hold about a thousand gallons each. They usually have no covers, but sometimes a false top is adjusted below the level of the surface of the must to keep the chapeau always submerged. Often it is necessary to resort to artificial heat in aid of the fermentation. One way is to heat a portion of the must to the boiling point and then return it to the vat. .A good temperature for the must to show when a thermometer is introduced is from 80° to 90° Fah- renheit. The experiment has been tried of adding a quantity of white wine, itself in an active state of fermentation, to serve as a kind of yeast. So long as things work well in the vats, nothing of the kind is needed. But there is another mode of rousing up the slackening process, and at the same time bringing the skins and seeds which have settled to the bottom into: contact with the new-made alco- hol, so that the latter may combine well with the col- oring matter they contain. This consists in stirring up the whole mass from bottom to top. It is done twice during the process of fermentation. It needs a good one hour’s hard work each time. It is done by men. It takes four men to do it well. They all 86 EUROPEAN VINEYARDS. strip naked—naked as Adam when he was good— and then they go in—into the wine-vat—chin-deep they go in, and there, with feet and hands, fingers and toes, turn over, stir about, and mix the liquid that was getting clear with the pomace that was de- positing itself, and ‘* Make the gruel thick and slab, And like a hell-broth boil and bubble.” The nice, sweet Bordelais man only puts his foot in it, but the Burgundian goes the whole figure. It is done to give the wine a full body. They call it fermenting on the skin. He who explained all this to my astonished mind avowed it with the simple frankness of a Feejee: cannibal who admits his fondness for what he calls “long pork.” But the Feejee people are only hea- thens. In Lamartine’s letter written to justify the Em- peror’s expedition to Mexico, to set up an empire there which should hold the American Union in check—in which letter the author earned for him- self‘a good pension—rests his case on the sole ground that our peoples’ manners are bad. It is true, our manners are bad, and maybe Napoleon did right to punish us for them as he did. Cer- tainly we can not dance as well as Frenchmen; but es BuRGUNDY AND THE COTE D’orR. 87 oh, Lamartine, owner of many vineyards! can worse dancing be done than in a vat-of wine? or worse manners possibly be than afterward offering it to be drunk ? At the Hospice I first heard of this strange cus- tom, but repeated inquiry afterward confirmed the story. Nor is the custom confined to Burgundy alone, or to France alone. “Once,” say they, “our wines fermented on the skin only one or two days, and were light in color and taste; but the consum- ers of late years demand a deeper color and richer taste, so in we go.” Stirring up with poles they tried, but the warmth of the human body was wanting, and the result, they say, was not good. Besides, it was hard work. To prove, however, that no good reason exists for the practice, the Vicomte de Vergnette Lamotte tells us he succeeds perfectly in obtaining the deepest color, and even more alcohol than fermentation in open vats can give, without stirring up ( Souler) of any sort, simply by using a large cask, with an open- ing twelve inches by eight at the place for the bung. In such a vessel he has allowed the must to work for twenty-two days—quite beyond any period that would be safe with an open vat in Burgundy. But does this amount to any thing more than par- 88 EvROPEAN VINEYARDS. tially covering the common open-mouthed vat? For the benefit, however, of any who may choose to try the Vicomte’s plan, I will add that the lower door, or man-hole, through which the mare or “rape” must be withdrawn after the wine has run off, is fitted on the outside, and held with two bolts. Closing from the inside, it could not be opened, owing to the press- ure of the mare against it. From 60° to 70° Fahrenheit is thought a favorable temperature for the fermenting-room. Doctor Gall, the German writer, thinks differently, and recom- mends to heat up gradually, by means of a stove, to about 80°, and keep it so. I think I have heard stoves were sometimes used in the fermenting-rooms in Champagne. A good proportion to observe in the form of open vats is one that will give the liquid the same depth as diameter. New casks are preferred in Burgundy as well as in Médoc. Pains are taken to keep them full, and they draw off frequently. I was disappointed to find, on leaving the Hos- pice, that I had so badly reckoned the time a visit to the celebrated “Clos Vougeot” had become impossi- ble. Those travelers in Europe who visit sites of ancient monasteries may observe that by a special providence, as it were, they are usually found in the BuRGUNDY AND THE COTE D’orR. 89 midst of the most fertile meadows, the fattest grain- fields, the richest fisheries, and most golden hill-sides. One of these last, “Clos Vougeot” by name, found itself included among the broad possessions of a house of holy men—having been moved there, doubt- less, by their meritorious faith—and for many long, tranquil centuries its nectarean flow refreshed the piety of an uninterrupted succession of jovial saints, and elevated their souls almost to the ecstasy of gods —heathen gods I mean. So long as those good men possessed the Clos Vou- geot, no impure admixture was allowed to taint its virginal soil, nor was any layering done, or other means practiced to force the yield of its old patri- archal vines, which were allowed to attain the incred- ible age of four or five hundred years, and the whole plantation of eighty acres required to give only about twelve hundred gallons yearly. But the French Revolution came, and Jacobins, Republicans, and sinners drove out the monks and usurped their domain. Now see what’ followed. The good wine soon ceased to flow for the impious dispossessors, on whose lips the grapes, playing the old trick of the apples of Sodom, turned to sour cider instead. Was it that a miracle of divine wrath had blighted the soil and its fruit, to punish the sacrilege? 90 EUROPEAN VINEYARDS. No, only this: the secular owners had rooted up all the old growth, and planted new vines, which re- sponded to their avaricious exactions with a yearly yield measuring eighteen thousand gallons in guan- tity—but in quality, oh how inferior! It sells at present for about the price of fifth-class Médoc. Yet Clos Vougeot is the king of the Cote d’or. Within limits, a law of Nature ordains that fine things shall not come in gross bulk. Diamonds and emeralds are not found in massive beds, like granite and limestone. Sable and ermine furs do not grow on the backs of buffaloes, neither can a lioness, how- ever she may try, compete with a rabbit in the busi- ness of reproduction; and whoever hopes that a given vine-plant will bear one or two thousand gal- lons of choice wine to the acre, hopes against law— and hopes in vain. 150 gallons for the mean yield of the choicest and best; 250 for the mean yield of the totality of Médoc, the Céte d’or, and the Rhine- gau; and for what comes after them, 500, 1000, 2000, and even 3000, very much according to quality— quantity according to quality, and quality according to quantity—this is the law as applied to the subject in hand. The last portion of my drive that day was along the Céte d’or, and among vineyards of the delicate, — BuRGUNDY AND THE COTE D’orR. 91 slender “pinot” variety. These, like those of the plain, were set without regularity, and so closely that it took 9000 of them to cover an acre. On the hills they prune to only one cane, and on that one allow from two to four eyes, and this notwithstanding the disposition of the pinot to carry its fruit on the upper buds. The souches were rather high, little pains be- ing taken to keep them low. But there is a reason for this: the fruit grown on a high souche is better, for the same reason, probably, that on old vines is better—namely, because the sap grows richer by mounting slowly through hard and twisted stocks of old wood. To leave, as we do in America, eight, ten, or even twelve eyes to a cane, would be thought murderous treatment in Burgundy, insuring a speedy end to the victims; and, indeed, I don’t know in what part of France they would not think so. It is to be seriously considered whether our plan of long canes, bent in circles or bows, is not in the end ruin- ous—has not, in fact, ruined many a vineyard. True, M. Guyot, of whose system so much has lately been said in France, claims to have obtained great results ‘by leaving nine or ten buds on one cane, which cane he extends along and close to the ground, and ties, at the end, to a peg. But among the many objec- tions brought against it is this, that, despite the free 92 EUROPEAN VINEYARDS. use of manure which he advises, the vines yield poor fruit, and soon wear out. And, apropos to our own mode of bow-training, one of his opponents cites a case where a vineyard was ruined by that very meth- od, which, he declares, is nothing else than Guyot’s, only the cane is bent in one case, and kept horizontal in the other, the effect on the circulation being in both very much the same. Leaving on a given souche three or four canes, each of them trimmed to two or three eyes, is not considered by any means bad practice with prolific varieties, on rich ground ; yet to select a single cane, and leave on it as many as eight eyes, would be. The reason is, eyes remote from the souche will generally bear more than those near it. The habits of plants differ in this respect. Some bear more fully on the lower eyes, and with them long pruning would of course be safer. The pinots on the poverty-stricken flanks of the Céte Vor hardly looked able to yield an average of 150 gallons to the acre, which is, I think, the mean product of the more celebrated vineyards there, though, as in Médoc, 250 is the general average of the whole hill. The Cdte has a varied soil and sub- soil. On low hills at the base, resting on alluvion, and formed into elevations by the washing out of ravines and other accidental depressions, the composition is BuRGUNDY AND THE COTE D’orR. 93 clayey, but with large portions of lime andiron. On friable magnesian limestone another soil is formed, unmistakably reddened with a large admixture of iron. The harder oolitic ledges, outcropping along the hill and sustaining a broad bench of gentle slope, give a surface soil containing iron and silex in large quantities. Another kind has a subsoil of limey marl. All of these yield the very highest qualities of wine. Here is an analysis of two kinds of soil and subsoil as made by a distinguished chem- ist : Large and small gravel of limey nature......... 30.10 29.15 CATON ate Of MMe x ari .meescasasscekesiccneed esse cwvis 12.95 t 17.20 Garbonate Of Magnesia. ...\.hswavescn-scee. cece dace 3.98 Oxides Of ION. 22s cece. Matt einige tends eNeec cans 12.72 10.50 MMUUEERER Meise cial elcclejssteeisesisecisisctesecsanecsocine 5.93 (oil SU Caceseae sceesscccecesssincssscesamdcaccsoss reson 28.93 32.98 OTSANICHSUDSEANGES! 2. caves vcrsins horescssestuvesten 5.39 3.00 While the corresponding subsoils showed @arhonate sor qin’, «cn e02-5 cassie saeeccea espe ses aps 88.00 78.00 ATPINACEOUS, SUDSEANCES, ....ccscecocssscccnceceoees 12.00 22.00 100.00 100.00 It will be noticed that one of these analyses shows about thirteen per cent. of iron, and the other be- tween ten and eleven. The Lafitte soil in Médoc contained, it will be remembered, between eight and 94 EvROPEAN VINEYARDS. nine per cent. Perhaps we have yet to learn how important to the production of fine qualities of wine is the presence of iron. On estates growing fine wines, they apply manure only when necessary to save the life of the vines; but they periodically haul from the bottom of the hill and restore to the soil*its loss from washing, and the effect of this is said to be remarkable. Though the soil of the hill seemed to be of an im- permeable nature, I could not learn that the ground was ever dug up very deeply. To prepare it for planting, they dig, along the slope and following the course of the hill, trenches fourteen inches deep and twelve inches wide. Crosswise on the bottom of a trench the rooted plant is laid, with its top resting for support against one of the sides. It is covered with six inches of earth well pressed down. The top is made to rise above the soil to the same height as in the nursery. At the end of the winter, or, if the planting is in spring, then in a fortnight after plant- _ing, the side of the trench against which the plant leaned is pared away, so that the bank which served in winter to shelter from the cold shall not any lon- ger exclude the sunshine. And this seems to be the only preparation the soil receives for a new plantation. I had a vineyard : . . BuRGUNDY AND THE COTE D’orR. 95 once planted in this way by a Burgundian, and the vines took root uncommonly well, forcing their way downward and sidewise into the tough clay subsoil far deeper than they could have done if planted in the common mode on ground trenched ever so deep. The trenches were kept free of weeds, and only gradually filled up. They were not entirely filled until the end of two years, or maybe three. This is not very expensive, costing per acre, by contract, 100 frances, which represent thirty - three and a third days’ work if the summer wages of three franes are allowed; but, as it is probably done at a time when wages are lower, we may call the labor- cost fifty days. The cost of manure and of the plants or cuttings are omitted. The outlay of labor for cultivation is equally mod- erate—surprisingly so if we consider that 5000 or 9000 staked vines, standing in confounded confu- sion, are to be hoed by hand thrice in a season. It is usually done by contract, for sixty dollars the hectare, or about twenty-four dollars per acre, repre- senting forty days’ labor. This covers all the work but harvesting, and includes laying down some 560 “provins,” as they are called, which is the average yearly number of vines to be layered. Why is this done? 96°. * EUROPEAN VINEYARDS. To reinvigorate sickly plants or replace dead ones. But why do as many as eleven per cent. get sick or die every year ? Because, where they are crowded together at the rate of 5000 or 9000 to the acre, they are suffocated and starved. But why are they set so closely as to suffocate and starve each other ? In order to improve the quality and hasten the ripening of the grapes—wood and foliage being sac- rificed to product. { will recur to this system of “provignage” when I come to the vine-culture of Champagne, and de- scribe how it is practiced. It does not necessarily exclude trellis-training or cultivating with a plow. Burgundy has as yet known but little of the oidi- um; the Cote d’or has absolutely escaped. Cham- pagne is almost equally fortunate. Some have said the climates of those districts were too cold for the pestilent parasite to live there, but I found it in the Rhine vineyards, and it thrives in those of the Bor- delais districts, quite as cold, I think, as the others. It is known that young vines seldom have the dis- ease. Now the system of “provignage”’ common to both Burgundy and Champagne rejuvenates the plants and keeps them always young, and on that BurGuNDY AND THE COTE D’oR. 97 very account has been objected to as tending to de- teriorate the quality of the crop, since good wine re- quires old vines to produce it. Thus it may be that provignage keeps off the oidi- um by keeping the vines always in a state of in- fancy. I well remember a vine-dresser from Champagne, who, having purchased a decayed and rot-ravaged hill-side of Catawbas, near Cincinnati, about the year 1856, layered them all, and for years afterward con- tinued to gather good crops, while all around him were being ruined by the scourge. It is in view of the possibility that layering may be found a sufficient remedy for oidium, as well as a means of restoring vines made sickly by its repeated attacks, that I have given the cost of cultivating by hand on the Burgundy plan. I have said that in former times the Burgundians let the must ferment on the skins but one or two days, which gave only a light tint to the wine. They do the same, I understand, in Missouri, and the re- sult is a white wine, properly so called, pinkish in tint, but not; for that reason, correctly termed red. I~ am sorry to learn that the Germans of Herman, who first taught me the value of the Norton’s Virginia Seedling, and from whom we obtained roots to plant | E 98 EUROPEAN VINEYARDS. the two first Norton vineyards in the Ohio Valley, should thus abuse its noble fruit. Mr. Hussman, in his book lately published, tells us they do it be- cause a complete fermentation would render the wine too astringent. If this be so in his state, we must deny his claim to the plant, as a Missourian by adop- tion, based on the assumption that it succeeds better there than with us of this valley, for we have made a veritable fourteen-day red wine from it that none can say has any harsh quality, and which was re- ceived with respect by good tasters in France, and spoken of with praise in their first journal of viti- culture. Red wine and white differ materially, and in essen- tial respects. The Vicount de Vergnette Lamotte says, “ White wines of the same year and of similar growth ex- hibit from the beginning a perfect identity; red wines, under analogous circumstances, often show very distinctly-marked differences. “White wines, and wines from red grapes, but which have not fermented on the skin, are not sub- ject to the same disease as true red wines, or yellow wines made of white grapes fermented on the skin. “White wines are richer in alcohol and in acid salts than red wines of analagous growths. These BuRGUNDY AND THE COTE D’or. 99 last, on the other hand, contain a stronger proportion of tannin and extractive matter.” Doctor Guyot, at the same time physician, wine- grower, and author, says : “White wines are generally diffusive stimulants of the nervous system; if they are light, they act rap- idly on the organization, whereof they exalt all the functions. It seems they escape just as rapidly by the excreting organs of the skin and mucous surface, especially by the urinary ways; their action is, then, of short duration. “On the contrary, red wines are tonic, and contin- uing stimulants of the nerves, the muscles, and di- gestive functions; their organic action, being slower, continues longer; they do not increase the perspira- tion nor the excretions, and their general action is astringent, persistent, and concentrated.” Doctor Ludwig Gall, physician and chemist, says: “The greater amount of tannin in red wines fer- mented together with stalks, skins, and seeds, or even skins and seeds alone, seems to be the reason why they are generally preferred as a common beverage in Southern wine-growing countries to the white wines containing a greater amount of tartar. “The effect of the high temperature of those coun- tries in relaxing the muscles would become greater 100 EvuROPEAN VINEYARDS. by the frequent use of a beverage containing much tartar and of a laxative character, while tannin tends to produce a greater contraction of the muscular sys- tem than any other substance in daily use. “The Northern man, on the contrary, whose ten- sion of muscles is naturally much greater, requires in his drink something that quickens his blood and pro- motes its circulation, rather than an astringent; and this is done by the alcohol in its diluted state, such as is found in good wines.” For the purposes of this last paragraph, ninety Americans in a hundred are of Southern constitu- tion, and need a tonic rather than a stimulant. A Parisian physician, prescribing for a delicate American patient, will nine times in ten order red wine. “I am cured of my dyspepsy,” said one of these to me. “Did the red wine do it? I asked. “No; I think it is the variety of courses at the table Whéte. I think I shall give up the wine, being op- posed to it on principle.” Poor, inconsequential tee- totaler! He could believe in the digestibility of soup, salmon, radishes, fried beans, cutlets, salad and chick- en, cauliflower fricassee, salmi, blanquette, cheese, custard, pudding, tarts, syllabubs, raisins and almonds, cucumbers and melons, all jumbled into one meal, rather than in so simple a thing as red wine. = BuRGUNDY AND THE COTE D’or. 101 That self-devoted apostle and missionary, Professor Babrius, of Bordeaux, discoursing in 1840 on the in- fluence of wine on civilization, speaks of the effect of French wines (red, of course) on the French people thus: “So long as wine was honored by all classes, the French people remained, in virtue of their bril- liant qualities, the first of modern peoples. Courage, loyal and generous, gayety and vivacity of mind, pat- riotism, eloquence, an exquisite sentiment of personal dignity joined to an excessive politeness, an irresist- ible longing for a sweet sociability, were the princi- pal traits of their character. When coffee, tea, and tobacco successively took their place among our hab- itudes, each of these agents, more or less deleterious, impressed a sensible alteration on this beautiful as- semblage of distinguished traits.” _And there was a good deal of ground for this self-laudation. The deep-thinking Babrius goes on to say: “ What distinguishes wine from all other drinks is its general action on the bodily economy. In mod- erate quantities it increases the energy of all the fac- ulties. The heart, the brain, the organs of secretion, the muscular system, each acquire by its use a sensi- ble augmentation of vitality. “Wine acts generously on all our functions, forti- 102 EvROPEAN VINEYARDS. fying and exciting them in harmony with each oth- er, while other liquors act like those medicaments which expend their force on a single organ merely. Far from increasing the harmony of the system, their action can not fail to trouble it. “ Coffee, like wine, excites the vitality, but it stim- ulates only those portions of the brain which are the seat of the intellect, properly so called, and the speech. Its special property is to cause a flow of language, clear, lively, and facile, that is never troub- led by the emotions of a warm conviction. Under the action of coffee the heart remains perfectly calm. It is the drinkers of coffee who have said you must not feel a sentiment if you would express it well. The decoction of coffee is the liquor of men of the world; it is the provocative to counterfeits of the truth, to cold and piercing sallies of wit, to speciops argumentation—in fact, to all which makes up the charm of the elegant and blasé world of the saloons. “Tea addresses itself directly neither to the heart nor the head. Its stimulation goes to the glands of the abdomen. The liver and reins respond strongly to its action. This explains why tea facilitates the digestion of indolent stomachs, and why its drinkers are inclined to moods of melancholy. They are cold, and talk little. Tea impresses on individuals and _ BuRGUNDY AND THE COTE D’or. 103 on nations which use it a slight tinge of hypochon- dria.” But as tea and coffee still hold only a subordinate place on the tables of the French, Babrius thinks that, though they may alter and distort French civil- ization, and turn it aside from its true end, it will not perish from their influence. What he fears will en- ervate, confuse, corrupt, and finally abolish us all, is tobacco. The American people is in want of a drink. A nation has transplanted itself, but not its vines, from one hemisphere to another, and is thirsty. It is as important what we drink should be adapted to our climate, our temperament and institutions, as it is we should hold correct opinions on this, that, and the other subject. In fine, the liquor to mix daily in our blood, to act on our nerves, nourish our tissues, and qualify the vitality of every part of us, will con- trol our destiny as much, at least, as what we learn in schools, read in newspapers, or hear from pulpits. What shall we drink ? It will not answer in these days, with the deplorable results we have before us of the evils of water-drink- ing on one hand, and the evils of spirit-drinking on the other, to point to the springs and brooks, rivers and lakes, saying, “Share with the frogs and fishes, 104 EvROPEAN VINEYARDS. and four-footed beasts, the abundant washings of the earth’s surface; there is enough for all.” We live in a dry climate, and under moral condi- tions exciting and exhausting to body, brain, ‘and nerve. That climate and those conditions have al- ready, in the absence of any proper corrective, cre- ated a national temperament that responds with ex- cessive sensibility to every exciting cause. The pale, bony woman, who paralyzes her insides with unstint- ed draughts of liquid ice, and the restless, nervous man who consumes his with draughts equally un- stinted of liquid fire, are types alike of our wretched condition as a people. Dilution will not save us. , “A low dew- point (dry air) and Republican institutions are incon- Says my scientific friend, Doctor sistent with the long duration of our race.” Now we don’t want to pull down Republican in- stitutions, nor can we raise up the too low dew-point. We must raise red wine, then; and this can be done, I will endeavor to prove, as easily and cheaply as in Burgundy, where it is to be had of good quality for four, five, and six cents a bottle. Taken in the quantity of a quart daily for every adult, and a pint daily for each child, we may expect the following effects: It will slightly stupefy, and thereby soothe and quiet; gently elevate, and there- BuRGUNDY AND THE COTE D’or. 105 by promote gayety, and chase anxiety and care; warm the heart, and at the same time stimulate the flow of ideas, whence will come sociability, and with sociability, politeness and toleration, elegance and good taste. It will prevent and cure dyspepsy, the most American and the least French of all diseases that scourge the world—in fine, by virtue of its tonic and stimulating properties, touch every weak- ness for which tonics and stimulants are prescribed —not, however, as a medicine, to lose its power with use, or be followed by reaction, but as a continuing condition—a habitual alimentation, like pure air, nourishing food, exercise, and proper clothing. E 2 106 EUROPEAN VINEYARDS. CHAPTER VII EPERNAY. I TURNED aside from my intended visit to Cham- pagne on learning vintage was ended in that province, and went on to Paris. Two months later Tran over to Epernay, one of the chief seats of the commerce in sparkling wines, and presented myself to my old correspondent, M. Girbal, who received mee like a brother, and very soon put me in the way of seeing all worth seeing in the neighborhood. There are two cities at Epernay—one above ground, of buildings two and three stories high, and another under ground, of cellars two and three stories deep. This last, however, is not, like the Catacombs be- neath Paris, a city of the dead, a receptacle of skulls and cross-bones, but a store-house of well-corked and wired bottles, full of pent-up life and sparkle, laughter and noise. The caves I visited, and which took the whole day to explore, were those of Moet and Chandon, Piper and Co., Ruinart, and Roussillon. The first of these I found the most extensive, and the EPERNAY. 107 last the most interesting; for these M. Roussillon him- self showed me through, and voluntarily gave such full and frank explanations as stripped of nearly all ,its mystery an art whose few professors in America seem to keep it as close a secret as if it were alchemy. Very little masonry is seen in the cellars of Cham- pagne. Except an occasional patch of brick or stone to fill up a fault in the natural formation, all was hewn out of the solid chalk. Easily cut as this is, it is nevertheless abundantly strong, and durable as rock, while its chemical quality seems to render the atmosphere of its chambers singularly pure and dry. A. two-story cellar is common, and some are eyen three deep. Mad. Pommery, of Rheims, is making one, I am told, of which the floor of the wpper story will be eighty feet below the surface of the ground. Were it not for the ease with which Champagne bot- tlers can burrow in the earth, their wine could not be afforded so cheap as it is. To construct of stone or brick cayes as vast as those, for instance, of Moet and Chandon, would require so great a fortune that upon the interest of it both Moet and Chandon might live like princes. The wine grown in Champagne is a natural spark- ler. With Catawba, Burgundy, Hock, and all other sparkling wines known to commerce, the fermenta- 108 EvROPEAN VINEYARDS. tion which ensues immediately on the first bottling having done its work in developing the gas and de- positing a sediment subsides, and is never heard from | again; but with true Champagne new fermentations, repeatedly occur, each one depositing its sediment, to be got rid of by a fresh tabling and shaking. For instance, M. Roussillon showed me a stack of fine Still Sillery bottled, not to sparkle, but to keep quiet, and therefore without any addition of sugar, yet it had fretted and fumed within the glass during six or seven” years before it would be Still Sillery. Two and often three disgorgings and recorkings are needed before it is safe to send out for sale. By reason of this foamy quality it is that makers of Sparkling in other parts of France often use a certain portion of wine grown in Champagne to mix with that of their own districts. Iam inclined to think, from my experiments with it, that the Scuppernong, produced in North Carolina, is as good a natural sparkler as we need. Usually at least three qualities, growths of differ- ent places in the province, are mixed together, which is done toward the end of December following vint- age; but the finer kinds are never mixed. And my entertainer, M. Girbal, out of consideration for his health, puts up what he needs for table use wholly unmixed, although not using, he said, raw wine of EPERNAY. 109 very high quality. I can say for it, however, that it was good, and had a fresh and free taste, more like Sparkling Catawba than any Champagne I had drunk. They make four kinds of Sparkling—high spark- ling, common sparkling, half sparkling, or crémant, and tisane. The half sparkling is best, and the tisane the most inferior. . But better than all, and the true type of Champagne, is that which does not sparkle at all, being entirely free of sugar or other admixture, and bottled when new merely in order that while ri- pening it may keep its fresh and delicate flavor. And this is the original of bottled Champagne. The plan of forcing a sparkling fermentation only gradually grew out of the ancient practice, which did not aim at producing foam and noise, but only at preserving purity, delicacy, and grape-blossom bouquet, that they might become united to maturity and fineness, like a wedding of youth, innocence, and beauty with expe- rience and wisdom. Of such is Still Sillery, and I can testify that some M. Roussillon gave me was del- icacy itself and purity itself. For Sparkling wine an early vintage is considered important. The fruit is put to press soon as may be after being gathered, with no crushing whatever, and in as solid a condition as the necessary handling and transportation will permit. The juice reposes in large 110 EvRoOPEAN VINEYARDS: casks or vats from twelve to twenty-four hours, to deposit its coarse lees, after which it goes into new casks of moderate size. These they prepare first with a washing of hot water, and then, after drying them, with a fumigation of burning sulphur, or, what I prefer, of burning brandy, flung into the cask in the proportion of a gill to every barfel of capacity, and lighted with a wisp of paper. Late in December the mixing takes place, which is made the subject of much deep study and discussion—this sort being put in for sparkle, this for body, this for bouquet, this to prickle the tongue, and this for quantity. After the mixing comes the clarifying, performed by stirring in isinglass dissolved in older wine. Russian isin- glass is the best. Then comes a medication with nut- gall and alum in no small doses (dose is the French word for all the doctoring wine receives). Toward the end of March or early in April a second drawing- off takes place, accompanied with filtering through a sieve having two bottoms, one of hair and the other of silk. Soon afterward the bottling, which must be accomplished before the first of September, may begin. A body of wine, to the quantity usually of many thousand gallons, is brought together in one or more large casks. About two thirds of the whole is new, EPERNAY. ab le and one third old. At this stage the decomposition of the sugar contained in the must ought to have ex- hausted three fourths of it. Of the natural sugar thus remaining, and what is afterward to be added in the form of rock-candy, the wine should contain, when it goes into bottle, the quantity of 7 pounds to every 225 bottles. To ascertain the true proportion to add, the following is an approved method: Take fifteen pints of the wine, and slowly and care- fully boil it down to two pints and a half. Twenty- four hours afterward test it with the gluco-wnomeétre, as they call the wine-scale. If 5° below zero of the scale is indicated, it will not sparkle even at from 68° to 77° of Fahrenheit. In such case add, in the way hereafter described, 7 pounds of white rock-candy for every 225 bottles. Should the wine show 6° on the scale, then add, in the same way, 6 pounds of candy ; if it shows 7°, add 5 pounds; if 8°, then 4 pounds; if 9°, 8 pounds; if 10°, only 2 pounds are needed; 1 pound for 11°, and for 12° nothing at all. A simpler plan was devised by a peddler of wine- scales: Float the scale in a quart of the wine, and if it falls below zero, add sugar, carefully measured and mixed, until you bring it up to zero. This gives the proportion needed. The sirup, called “liqueur,” is composed as follows: 112 EvROPEAN VINEYARDS. For a sixty-gallon cask of sirup, take 300 pounds of white rock-candy, as pure as can be had, and 23 gal- — lons of fine Cognac brandy, and fill up with wine more than a year old. Every day, for twenty days, roll the cask well, so as to dissolve the candy; then filter and bottle, to keep till needed for use. The sirup is mixed with the wine eight days before the latter is bottled. Once got into bottles, and corked and twined, the “wine is allowed to remain on the ground floor, where the temperature should be from 68° to 77° Fahren- heit until the fermentation has got headway enough to break the glass merrily, when it is removed to an arched cellar, where the temperature ought to be from 50° to 52° Fahrenheit, there to remain till next year, when it is brought up and stored in an inter- mediate cellar, whence again, before going into mar- ket, it must be removed to a store-room above ground, to become tempered to the exposures it is to undergo. The bottle fermentation, in consuming the sugar, develops carbonic acid gas and alcohol, and deposits a sediment. To get rid of this last, the bottles are placed in racks, in which are holes to receive the neck and support the shoulder, and so formed as to allow them to take any position, from one nearly horizontal to one nearly perpendicular. Every day they are EPERNAY. 113 shaken with a twisting movement, designed to gently detach the crust of sediment without troubling the liquid ; and at every shaking are changed in position, till from one nearly horizontal they are gradually brought to one nearly upright, bottom upward. By this time the sediment is entirely gone from the side, and rests against the cork. This operation requires from fifteen to twenty-one days, and can usually be performed at any time after February of the first year. When it becomes necessary to prepare the wine for market, the operation of dégorgement takes place. Holding the bottle carefully, the workman, with an instrument half hook, half knife, cuts the lacing; the cork, sometimes coaxed a little with the thumb, flies out, followed by a gush of sediment and froth. Wine would flow but that the neck is raised in the nick of time. Then, tapping the butt lightly with his hook, he starts a further outpourifig of froth, and, as it comes, rubs with a finger the inside of the neck, to help the foam wash away all adhering sediment— and the problem is solved, that might have puzzled a conjuror, of how to remove the sediment from under- neath the wine without disturbing it. Then, if the wine is deemed fit to market, comes the last dosing of sirup, intended to give the proper 114 EvROPEAN VINEYARDS. taste. If there is nothing wrong about the wine, nothing to be helped, nothing to be masked, the sirup I have described is all that is needed for the last, as well as first sweetening. But a good deal more is usually added, and it is the composition of this last dose which is the secret and mystery of Champagne. Here is one recipe for wine intended for the English market: Port wine, Cream of tartar, Cognac spirit, Sugar, Cognac brandy, Kirsch, Brown Cognac, Raspberry extract, Elder-berry juice, Madeira wine. The sirup having been carefully dosed in even quantity to every bottle, new and better corks are driven in and wired down, the bottles are moved or waved about in a way that mixes well the contents, but can not be called shaking, and in a few weeks, more or less, may be sent off. I was more than ever convinced, by what I saw at Epernay, that 1f we would make Sparkling wine in America, we must first make the makers of it, and not import them ready-made from abroad. What chef de cave from Rheims or Epernay, for instance, to whom you might give 1000 gallons of Catawba to bottle, would not begin by preparing it with nut-gall, Ss Se Le EPERNAY. 115 tannin, and alum, to correct a disease called graisse, which I never yet knew the Catawba or any other of our wines to have, and which, in consequence of its excess of tartar, 1 am sure it is impossible for it to have. If he were very sapient, he would also undertake to mingle different kinds, a thing quite unnecessary, and, as regards effect on the health, more or less per- nicious, though in time we shall probably come to it. He would be pretty certain to add to the new wine a certain proportion of old, for he would not know that wine ripens here faster than in France, hence that no such mixture is either necessary or proper. (For my part, I consider it highly injurious, where Catawba is the wine, and would be slow to believe it good for any.) Then he would have his secret recipe for the sweet- ening sirups, which he would as carefully conceal from his employer as if it were actually the philoso- pher’s stone; but which, could he be induced to re- yeal it, would prove to be something like that I have © just given, and which, especially designed for John Bull’s palate, sweetens his posset with Port, Madeira, and Cognac, Cognac, Cognae, ete., whereas, in fact and in truth, so far as relates to bottling wine grown in the Ohio Valley, every drop of spirit added is a posi- 116 EUROPEAN VINEYARDS. tive injury, and, except perhaps what» little may be required to preserve the sirup until needed for use, has, after full trial, been abandoned. By discarding these dosings and mixings, we may thus get rid of the most troublesome and complicated part of the business; very little seems to remain that we may not learn for ourselves. In the beginning we shall blunder, it is true; but a Champagne or Hochheim professor would blunder worse. We shall have to learn; they would have to unlearn as well. One great obstacle in our way is the difficulty of obtaining good, reliable bottles and corks. The reason why 1 have not gone more fully into details is that the Sparkling wine business is so haz- ardous, and the capital that must be hazarded is so large, I shrink from the responsibility of helping any one to embark in it. Besides, any who might under- take it would find it quite as easy to obtain from abroad all the best treatises on the subject, both Ger- man and French, as to buy and import reliable bot- tles and corks, and the latest and best machines. I have only been trying to clear away, for the benefit of beginners, some of the cobwebs of mystery woven ‘in the cellars of Champagne, and which my visit there helped me to see were only cobwebs. The Americans love pop, foam, and noise, and will EPERNAY. 117 always consume largely of gaseous drinks. They have in the Catawba a wine capable of great things. Let but the product be large enough to allow the bottler to select only the choicest specimens, and of the best vintages, and those who follow the business properly, and especially those who secure good corks, need fear no competition from any thing lzkely to be sent over here, however it might be if the comparison were with those princely qualities found only on the great tables of Europe. There are those who think the day of the Catawba has gone by, but I am not one of them. Its wine has qualities which peculiarly fit it _ to combine with sugar, either in the bottle or the “cobbler.” The last, made of new and sufficiently acid wine, such as is easily found in the West, but seldom or never in the East, is a summer drink of unsurpassed excellence. Certainly there is nothing in Europe to match it. Many an American traveler would be glad if there were, and be glad, too, if he could exchange the best grapes of foreign fruit-mar- kets for the clusters he loved at home. In its place I will consider the question whether there is danger of this valuable variety being destroyed by the oidium. We will visit Champagne again when the leaves are green on the vines, and bestow our time, not on the dark, deep cellars, but on prettier objects above and outside of them. 118 EUROPEAN VINEYARDS. CHAPTER WES PARIS AND THE GREAT EXHIBITION. GREAT Exhibition was that of Paris in 1867 —gerand and magnificent as a battle—and a battle indeed it was, wherein not two, nor three, but all the nations of the round world met in the con- test, and mingled in the display ‘¢ Their rival scarfs of rich embroidery.” Worthy was it to be remembered by all who bore part in it, as a soldier remembers he was present and fit for duty when some proud day of war was won. In the three months and a half during which I was an almost daily attendant in the Champ de Mars, I saw a good deal of liquor consumed. Every country had its restaurant, where the drinks native to its soil were drunk by the natives of others—a pleasanter way, that, of tasting the soils of distant lands by sample, as it were, than of acquiring a knowledge of them by dint of locomotion. The American restaurant dispensed soda - water PaRIs AND THE GREAT EXHIBITION. 119 and iced drinks — exclusively American I believe they all are—which not only astonished, but delight- ed multitudes, who took the first glass from curiosi- ty, but the second from appreciation. An English- man who had carried either his curiosity or appreci- ation as far as the tenth glass, said,“ Your people ought to excel in compounding drinks, for, taken by themselves, your liquors are infamous.” “ Yes,” I answered, “necessity was probably the mother of their invention. Nature having thus far denied to us those more natural drinks with which other peo- ple are blessed, we have been forced to imitate them with what materials were at hand. ‘Cobblers,’ ‘ju- leps, and ‘ cocktails,’ ‘ stone fences,’ ‘ hail-storms,’ and ‘smiles, are but so many different kinds of Ameri- can wines. There is spirits for strength, sugar for taste, lemon-peel or mint for bouquet, and powder of ice for quantity.” And why are they not wines? and why should we take the trouble to grow wines when the bar-keeper can so easily and deftly make them for us? Is tan- nin wanted? nut-gall is cheap; or, Is color desired ? elder-berries and logwood are still cheaper. If the disciples of Chaptal are right, who say their imita- - tions effected by fermenting quantities of sugared water on a few grape-skins and seeds, or mixed with 120 EUROPEAN VINEYARDS. a certain portion of true grape-juice, are.really wines, then those who bring together in the tumbler spirits, sugar, water, and an aromatic, without going through any manceuyres at all of viticulture or vinification, are likewise wine-makers, and we, God bless us! are a nation of wine-drinkers. But are these imitations really wines to all chem- ical intents and purposes? or, if they be, are they likewise so to a// intents and purposes, and all effects and consequences as well? Chaptal, who was min- ister of the interior under Napoleon the First, and was, moreover, a great chemist, did not push his theory farther, I think, than to recommend additions of water and sugar to the must of imperfectly ri- pened fruit, and that to no greater extent than would make three barrels out of two. But Doctor Ludwig Gall, of Germany, whose recipes for falsification our government has taken pains to promulgate, through the Patent Office Report of 1860, goes farther, and obtains a double product. His theories seem to be well reasoned out, and his results have become so ac- ceptable in Germany that, as he informs us, falsifi- cation has been for many years in general practice there. These theories, having again been made known and advocated in the lately published work of Mr. G. Hussman, of Missouri, who, as disciples PaRIS AND THE GREAT EXHIBITION. 121 are apt to do, goes farther than his master, the time has come for accepting or refuting them. Gall finds the useful element of wine to be diluted alcohol (and in warm countries tannin also), and its attractive elements to be bouquet matter and flavor- ing matter derivable from grape acids; and he makes little or no account of any thing else. In fully ripened grapes he finds from 28 to 30 per cent. of sugar, which is just enough to give the right proportion of alcohol — about 64 thousandths of — acids, which is just enough to give the right propor- tion of flavor, and just enough bouquet matter to give the right proportion of aroma. In unripe grapes he finds too much acid, too little sugar, and either too little bouquet matter, or none at all. To make a good middling wine equal in all things except bouquet to any obtainable from fully ripe grapes, he dilutes the must with water till the-acid is reduced to the true proportion of 64 thousandths, and then adds sugar until the whole quantity of sugar is increased to the true proportion of 28 or 30 per cent. Bouquet he does not attempt to supply. Making the quantity of acids found in his must his base, and having by tests ascertained what that quantity is, he is no more at a loss for his other in- ir 122 EuvROPEAN VINEYARDS. gredients than Dr. Sangrado was, who cured every thing with warm water and the lancet: he brings both pump and sugar-hogshead into requisition, and makes sure of full a thousand pounds of wine for every 64 pounds of acid, which is often twice as much as his grapes could have made in the natural way, thus producing more wine in a bad year than in a good one. Such a vine-dresser needs little of the smiles of god. Bacchus—who was the original Sol, I think—but should rather pray to him for clouds and rain, that quantity may be abundant and quality middling. And, could he find a grape that would never ripen at all, his fortune would be assured. I don’t know why the grape acids might not be manufactured from some cheap substance, as the grape-sugar Gall uses is from potatoes; and then the vine and its fruit might be dispensed with ~ altogether, and science triumph ! Gall goes further. Finding a good deal of acid substance remaining in the pomace after pressing, he obtains all of it he can by soaking in water, estab- lishes the true proportion of 64 thousandths or less, fills in sugar to the quantity of 16 per cent., fer- - ments, then adds of spirits obtained from grape- sugar, that was once potato starch, eight per cent., and has a wine as good as the other, and even a bet- tiie ParRis AND THE GREAT EXHIBITION. 123 ter, if the grapes were ripe, for the pomace affords not merely acid, but bouquet as well. In the larger part of the American vine districts grapes usually ripen too well to furnish the excuse, and, at the same time, the foundation that Gall and his friends in Germany enjoy, namely, excess of acids. So his disciple here, Mr. Hussman, finds a new foundation in the excess of bouquet matter with which most of our grapes are afflicted, as well in good as in bad seasons. Making bouquet matter, then, his base, and paying little attention to the acids, he estimates the quantity of dilution it will bear, and manfully pours in common water and cane-sugar till he runs his product up to a point be- yond what even his teacher dared aim at. He, too, insists his wine is as good as the original; yes, and better too. Less discreet than his neighbors in Her- mann and its vicinity, who, he thinks, will blame him “ for letting the cat out of the bag,” they pre- ferring to devote themselves in secret to the pursuit of the new science, he glories in the discovery and its results. Let him be heard. “But let us glance for a moment at the probable influence this discovery will have on American grape- culture. It can not be otherwise than in the highest degree beneficial ; for when we simply look at grape- 124 EvuROPEAN VINEYARDS. culture as it was ten years ago, with the simple pro- duct of the Catawba as its basis, a variety which would only yield an average of say 200 gallons to the acre—often very inferior wine—and look at it to-day, with such varieties as the Concord, yielding an average of from 1000 to 1500 gallons to the acre, which we can yet easily double by Gallizing, thus, in reality, yielding an average of 2500 gallons to the acre of uniformly good wine, can we be surprised if every body talks and thinks of raising grapes? Truly the time is not far distant—of which we hardly dared to dream ten years ago, and which we then thought we would never live to see—when every American citizen can indulge in a daily glass of that glorious gift of God to man, pure light wine, and the American nation shall become a really temper- ate people.” “And there is room for all. Let every one fur- ther the cause of grape-culture. The laborer, by producing the grapes and wine; the mechanic, by in- ventions ; the lawgiver, by making laws furthering its culture and the consumption of it; and ad, by drink- ing wine, in wise moderation of course.”—Page 172 of “Graprs AND Wrne.” Truly our German friend has large notions of what he terms drinking in moderation. Let us see how PARIS AND THE GREAT EXHIBITION. 125 large that daily glass of the American citizen must be to hold all that is about to be poured into it. On page 22 of the book we learn that at the time it was written there had already been planted 2,000,000 of acres of vineyard, or two fifths of the area devoted to vines'in France. These, when in full bearing, as they will be in 1870, should, according to his lowest estimate, yield 2,000,000,000 gallons of nat- ural wine, about twice the product of France, from which, by Gallizing, we shall obtain 5,000,000,000 gallons. Excluding children too young to drink, there should be in the whole country some 25,000,000 able-bodied drinkers, the share of each of whom in the yearly vintage would be 200 gallons, something over three bottles a day. Then there are the tee- totalers—they might object to drink their share ; but I suppose we might funnel the teetotalers. When Mr. Hussman wrote, American wines were selling at wholesale for $2 50 per gallon; but since then, from increasing production, they have fallen to about $1 25, though consumers have to pay at least $2. The yearly crop, therefore, which we are led to hope for, will cost the drinkers of it $10,000,000,000, or sixteen times as much as we have of green money, plentiful though it be as forest leaves. With such a volume of wine to “carry,” however, it is no wonder 126 EUROPEAN VINEYARDS. there are people who think we still have ‘too little of that foliage of the root of all evil. Of a truth we are ruined! But both Gall and Hussman must give way to an enterprising Frenchman, M. Petiot, who, for the last ten years, has been working the same rich vein. Gall makes as much wine as his acids will flavor. Hussman makes as much as his bouquet matter will odorize. Petiot, taking a collective view of things, assumes the must to contain 99 per cent. of water and sugar, and only one per cent. of all other sub- stances—tartar, tannin, resin, coloring matter, essen- tial oils, and all. “It is this one hundredth part,” says he, “ to tell the truth, which constitutes the wine, which distinguishes it from other liquids, and which principally gives the distinctive qualities and fixes the price.” Having brought his wine matter into this small compass of one per cent., he strikes out boldly, and does not stop till he has attained a five-fold result, having made, as he assures us, out of a quantity of grapes, sufficient to give only fifteen hundred gallons of natural wine, seven thousand gallons of the chemi- cal article; all of it, he asseverates, better than the original, and with a better bouquet. One thing is strange. Chaptal flourished sixty Paris AND THE GREAT ExuiBiTion. 127 years ago. Gall and Petiot have been illuminating their respective countrymen some twelve years or more, and yet the plantation of the vine is every where extending, the natural product augmenting, and, at the same time, the price yearly rising. I knew great truths made their way slowly, but did not know great falsifications did. Graft Petiot on Hussman, and our crop in 1870 will be something like 12,000,000,000 gallons, oblig- ing each of us to swallow eight bottles a day, and to pay for it the very pretty figure of $24,000,000,000 ; and where is that money to come from, one would like to know ? And enthusiastic Hussman calls on us to persevere in the good work, and extend the culture more and more! Surely ; ** A Dutchman’s drink must be Deep as the roaring Zuyder Zee.” Gall has offered a premium to any chemist who will detect in his brewage any thing hurtful to health, and cites high chemical authority to the effect “that no substance conducive to health is removed from the wine by an addition of sugar and water before the commencement of fermentation.” The others are equally certain there is nothing unhealthy contained that chemistry can detect. 128 EvROPEAN VINEYARDS. This is precisely the claim of those who feed cows on distillery slops concerning the milk they sell. And chemists find nothing in it but the water, sugar, but- ter, caseine, and salts proper to the milk of all cows, only they are combined in somewhat different pro- - portions; and yet the children die of it, many and fast. There is a limit to the authority of chemistry in regard to aliments. Who would like, for instance, to eat a chemically-compounded egg, having every quality of the hen-laid article which analysis could detect? But is it true these simulated wines are chemically identical with ‘the real thing ? The sum of the theory would seem to be that wine is diluted alcohol agreeably flavored to the taste, and sometimes perfumed also—a fair definition of a mint julep. . Here are, ist, alcohol; 2d, acids; 3d, bouquet mat- ter; and, 4th, water. All these exist in real wine, and all exist in the false as well. Admitting, for the moment, these to be all the ingredients contained in either, let us look at them separately. ; 1. Alcohol. Not only do they produce this ele- ment by fermenting sugared water, but where none of the must is used, and all the wine matter is ex- tracted from the pomace, Gall enjoins adding distilled spirits in the proportion of eight per cent. . PARIS AND THE GREAT EXHIBITION. 129 Concerning such adulteration with spirits, Mr. E. Delarue says: ‘Take some of the wine to be tested in a porcelain capsule, which place over an alcohol lamp. Float in the wine a nut-shell filled with oil, in which put a floating taper. Ballast the nut-shell with shot till its edges are brought even with the sur- face of the surrounding liquid. Light the lamp and the taper. Now, if you place a thermometer in the bowl, you will see that at 45 degrees of Centigrade, alcoholic vapors will rise from the wine and catch fire, forming round the taper a reddish halo. Repeat the experiment with natural wine, and the vapors will not show themselves until the wine has reached 90° of Centigrade, almost boiling point. In the first place, the alcohol was in the condition of a simple mixture; in the second, it was in a state of com- bination, or, we may say, timate incorporation, and retained by a cohesive force not to be broken ex- cept by a high degree of heat.” The true thing, then, adheres till the heat reaches 90° of Centigrade, almost boiling point, while the im- itated thing lets go at 45°, going off at just “ half’ cock.” Now the normal temperature of the stomach is from 98° to 100° Fahrenheit, only 13 to 15 de- grees below the point at which distilled alcohol sep- arates itself from other ingredients with which it F2 130 EvuROPEAN VINEYARDS. may be mixed. Must it not, then, when taken into the stomach, almost immediately explode upon the nerves of that organ the whole of its stimulating power, to be as rapidly communicated to the brain ? while undistilled alcohol, on the other hand, as it ex- ists in true wine, bound to its associates by the hand of Nature, and not stirred in with a stick, requires twice as much compulsion to make it part company, works but slowly while in the stomach, passes out of it in a combined, qualified, and modified form, and so, entering into circulation, expends its force gen- tly and slowly (may we not presume) upon each and every part in such way as that all are equally ex- alted, thus preserving equilibrium instead of disturb- ing it, as every agent must which exhausts itself upon only one or two organs. It is a fact that a person whose stomach is sensi- tive can easily detect the presence of distilled alco- hol in wine by the burning which he feels after drinking it. This may be the proper connection for suggesting that the slower effects of red wines as compared with those of white may be due to the enveloping, so to speak, of a considerable portion of the alcohol by the coloring matter, which, being a resin, will dissolve in alcohol, but not in water. Paris AND THE GREAT ExuHiBiTIon. 131 Liebig says: “ Owing to its volatility, and the ease with which its vapor permeates animal membranes and tissues, aleohol can spread throughout the body in all directions.” Evidently the quickness or slowness with which so volatile a liquid passes to the state of an all-perme- ating vapor, to flash like thought from part to part, are most important when we are judging of the qual- ities of alcoholic drinks. Spirits and water, whether in form called cocktail, julep, or punch, are, in this respect, just like Dr. Gall’s brandied wines. If, by reason of the earlier decom- position of their alcohol and its too sudden and neces- sarily unbalanced action on the organs, juleps, cock- tails, and punches are hurtful to health, happiness, and morals—if their tendency is to breed in the nerv- ous system a disease called the drunkard’s thirst, which true wine rarely does, then Gall’s wines, hold- ing eight per cent. of added alcohol, are, for the same cause and in the same measure, injurious to health, happiness, and morals, and equally productive of the drunkard’s thirst. And, since nothing in a compound can be called a good ingredient unless it combines properly, an ingredient that goes loose at precisely the time when it should not, must be esteemed a bad one. 132 EUROPEAN VINEYARDS. Chemists like Gall and his supporters, if he has any among chemists, who take no account of the manner in which the ingredients of wine combine with each other, as influencing their effects on health, are of small value as judges of another question now arising, which is, Do wines made of a certain quan- tity of grape-juice, mixed with a large body of sug- ared water, but with no addition of distilled alcohol, contain ingredients hurtful to health? Of this we are certainly at liberty to judge for ourselves, though I am as yet unable to indicate any chemical test bearing directly upon it. A presumption against al- cohol developed by fermenting sugar and water arises from this, that, as in the case of distilled alcohol, which we have just been considering, the intruding ingredient comes in form of something artificially separated from matters with which it was once natu- rally combined. | If the wine with which Mr. Delarue experimented held its brandy but feebly in combina- tion for the reason that it had been separated by dis- ~ tillation from other wine to which it was native—and we can imagine no other reason—then, by analogy, we may infer that spirits developed by fermenting in water grape-sugar, extracted from starch that was — itself extracted from potatoes, will be held as feebly by the water, etc.,in whose company it happens to 7 PARIS AND THE GREAT ExuiBiTion. 133 find itself, as the distilled alcohol of Delarue’s ex- periment was by the wine into which it had been stirred. Extracts and mixtures naturally provoke suspicion. The sugar which ferments in juice of the ripe grape was always there. It and the watery par- ticles of that juice can hardly be called sugar and water. They are one—born of one root, and kindred . of one sap. Sap is thicker than water. We have seen that Gall finds the true mother of wine to be its acids; that Hussman thinks bouquet matter is the real quintessence, though without ex- pressly discarding the acids ; and that Petiot puts all virtue and wine power within the compass of the zisth part, and dilutes it “a discretion.” Do these materials, one, any, or all of them, prop- erly combine with pump-water? Especially do they combine as intimately in the imitation wines as they do in natural ones ? Tartaric acid, in which German as well as most American wines abound, is said never to be present as a free acid in French wines. But it is used in France to adulterate with. To detect its presence, Mr. Delarne gives us the following test: “Mix some of the wine with twice its volume of chloride of potash, saturated at the temperature of 15° Centigrade. Stir well with a glass rod, and if 134 EUROPEAN VINEYARDS. in seven or eight minutes a crystalline powder of bi- tartrate of potash is precipitated, the tartaric acid has been added. If it were natural to the wine, it would not precipitate itself wnder several hours of stirring.” Here we see the want of cohesion even more strik- ingly indicated than in the case of the intrusive alco- hol. In place of stirrmg in some pounds of erystal- lized tartaric acid, Gall and his believers collect a mass of grape-skins and seeds, and stir them in, or they bring together grape-juice in which the acids already exist, and sweetened pump-water, set the two to ferment in company, and ask the wine to share half its quality with the water. And they mix, it is true, but how? Why, in the same loose way as the tartaric acid of ‘Delarue’s experiment did, to separate ten or twenty times earlier and easier than acids natu- rally present would. As regards the effect on health, would this be ten or twenty times too soon? Yes, if the substance mixed with the sugared water by fermenting it on erape-husks or with grape-juice play any part beyond merely pleasing the palate. They may be, and prob- ably are, designed to qualify the action of the alco- hol, of the water, and of each other, while passing through the channels of circulation. In such case, we may reasonably suppose, it is as important for them PARIS AND THE GREAT EXHIBITION. 135 to combine well as to combine at all. If they have uses to perform together, they should remain togeth- er until those uses are performed. If they have uses to perform separately, they should separate soon enough to perform them.