Part 4

Of the many wines produced at Algiers, the best is probably the white wine of _Mascara_, situated on a slope of the plane of Egbris, 1,800 feet above the sea level. The Arabic name of the place is a corruption of _Umm-al-asakir_, or the Mother of Soldiers. The wine is the principal industry of Algiers. It is eagerly bought up by agents of Bordeaux houses. Wines of inferior quality are made at Boue, Tlemcen, Medeah, and Milianah. The wines of _Oran_ are said to resemble the small wines of Languedoc. In ancient times the valley of the Nile produced the wines of Mareotis, Mendes, Koptos, and Arsinoe, and its Delta the liqueur wine of Sebenytus.

AMERICA.

The first attempt to cultivate the vine in North America was made, we are informed by Drs. Thudichum and Dupré, in 1564. Some of its best known wines at the present time are the _Catawbas_[21] (still and sparkling), red _Aliso_ and _Angelico_. Wine has been made from the vines on the Ohio, said to resemble Bordeaux in quality. In several parts of Mexico, as at Passo del Norte, at Zalaya, and at St. Louis de la Paz, wines are made of tolerable flavour. The red wine of California is agreeable. In Florida, according to Sir John Hawkins, wine was made from a grape like that of Orleans, as far back as 1564. The island of Cuba possesses a “light, cool, sharp wine,” according to Redding.

In South America wine was made long ago in Paraguay. A sweet wine resembling Malaga is made at Mendoza, at the foot of the Andes, and is found to improve by transportation some thousand miles across the Pampas. The wines made in Chili and Peru are white and red. The _Muscatel_ of Chili is considered to be especially good.[22] The white wine of _Nasca_ is inferior. The wine of _Pisco_ is highly esteemed. Though the white is held by connoisseurs to be superior to the red wine of Chili, yet it is little drunk in the cradle of its production. _Chacoli_ is a wine commonly patronised by labourers. The _Mosto_ of _Concepcion_ differs from _Mosto asoleado_ by the grapes of the latter being sundried for some twenty days.

AUSTRALIA.

Australian wines are pretty well known from our tradesmen’s circulars. For instance, there is the _Gouais_, the _Carbinet_, a soft wine like Burgundy, the _Mataro_, the _Sauvignon_. There is that “elegant dinner wine,” _Kaludah_, the Singleton Red or White _Hermitage_, “noted for its refinement”; the _Tintara Ferruginous_, of “immense power and generous quality”; the _Tokay Imperatrice_; and the _Alexandrian Moscat_, both poetically described as “abounding in memories of the sun which begot them,” and possessing the “most beautiful bouquet that can be imagined,” with a flavour “resembling the first crush in the mouth of three or four fine ripe Muscatel grapes—the large white oval ones—covered with a light bloom, and attached to a clean, thin stalk.”

Drs. Thudichum and Dupré, who are themselves indebted to a publication by Toovey, have given an excellent description of these wines. _Verdeilho_ is a wine, like Madeira, of delicate aroma and a full body; _Frontignac_ is described as a thin white wine with a slight taste of the Muscat grape, being a fictitious elderflower flavour; _Malbee_ is described as made from “claret” grape; _Tavoora_ is described as a pure “port” of 1859; _Tintara_, a red, clear wine; _Adelaide_, a pure white wine, mainly from _Riessling_ grapes with a _soupçon_ of Muscatel, “a little too fiery for greatness.” _Wattlesville_ is an acidulous white wine. The poor and acid _Chasselas_, the strong-scented _Highercombe_, said to resemble good Sauterne, with many varieties of so-called claret, as _Emu_, _St. Hubert_, and so-called Hock, as _Heron_ and _Royal Reserve_, are also imported from Australia. The _Conatto_ is a rich liqueur with a flavour of Curaçoa and Rum Shrub combined.

CANARIES.

The Canary Islands have long been celebrated for their wines. The favourite Teneriffe wine is _Vidueño_ or _Vidonia_. Canary _sack_ is supposed to have been made from the _Malvasia_ sweet grape, whereas the modern sack is dry (_sec_). The best vineyards are at Orotava, S. Ursula, Ycod de los Vinos, Buenavista, and Valle de Guerra.

ENGLAND.

British made wines hold no very high rank. A cheap foreign manufacture is, according to some of their vendors, gradually ousting them from the market. But at one time they formed a part of the education of the good housewives of Great Britain. Home wines were chiefly made from plums, apples, gooseberries, bilberries, elderberries, blackberries, currants (red and black), raspberries, cherries, cowslips, parsnips, raisins, greengages, damsons, ginger, oranges, and lemons. Less commonly and in former times we had wines from mulberries, quinces, peaches, apricots, and from the sap of the birch, beech, sycamore, and other trees. Years ago “sweets” or home-made wines were sent from Scotland and Ireland, such as ginger wine and so-called cherry and raspberry whiskies. The flowers of meadow-sweet (_Spiræa ulmaria_) yield a fragrant distilled water, which is said to be used by wine merchants to improve the flavour of their wines. In a little work by Mr. G. Vine on Home-made Wines, the reader will find numerous receipts how to make and keep these wines, with observations on gathering and preparing the fruit, fining, bottling, and storing. A correspondent of the _Gardeners’ Chronicle_ gives a receipt for _beer wine_, a beverage which has puzzled many connoisseurs. The curious may find it also quoted in Vine’s brochure.

The manufacture of home-made wines is familiar. An excellent wine is sometimes made from a mixture of the fruits above mentioned, as, for instance, that from gooseberries and currants. All home-made wines are prone to run into acetous fermentation without the addition of a due proportion of pure spirits. Plums or sloes, with other ingredients, can, it is said, be turned into excellent fruity port, the “very choice” kind, silky, soft, and full bodied. A wine said to be agreeable is also made from the red berries of the mountain ash or service-tree (_pyrus aucuparia_). Birch wine is still made in some parts of England. Morewood gives a long receipt for its manufacture. Like most other wines, it improves greatly with age. This is especially true of parsnip wine. From potatoes which have suffered a sort of malting from frost, a tolerable wine has been obtained. It is said—but there are people who will say anything—that a great portion of the champagne drunk in this country is made from sugar and green gooseberries. Rhubarb wine has been affirmed to be synonymous with British champagne. The reader anxious on this subject may consult Dr. Shannon’s elaborate _Treatise on Brewing_. Cowslip wine is all too like some of the Muscatel wines of Southern France, and the wine of the _Sambucus nigra_ has been more than once, through some unlucky accident, confused with Frontignac.

FRENCH WINES.

The Great Makers of Champagne—Its Manufacture—Bottling—Treatment—Bordeaux or Claret—Its early Use and Name—Whence it comes—The different Growths—White Wines of the District—Burgundy—Different Growths and Qualities—Other Wines.

CHAMPAGNE.

Reims and Epernay are the two great centres of the Champagne district; but Reims, from its size and antiquity, must be considered its capital. Here are the establishments of Pommery & Greno, Ernest Moy, Théophile Roederer & Co., Louis Roederer & Co., Henriot & Co., Permet & Fils, De St. Marceaux & Co., Werlé & Co. (successors to the renowned Veuve Cliquot), Heidsieck & Co., De Lossy & Co., G. H. Mumm & Co., Jules Mumm & Co., Piper & Co., and many others of lesser note.

The wines of this district have, for centuries, been famous, and especially beloved of kings and potentates. Our Henry VIII. had a vineyard at Ay, and, in order to know that he got the genuine article, he had a superintendent of his own on the spot. Francis I., Leo X., and Charles V. of Spain, all had vineyards in the Champagne district. But the wine they obtained thence was not sparkling: that was to come later, and is said to have been the invention of Dom Petrus Perignon, who died in 1715, monk of, and cellarer to, the Royal Monastery of St. Peter’s at Hautvilliers. He was especially happy in his blends of wine, and having found out the secret of highly charging the wine, naturally, with carbonic acid, is said to have introduced the cork and string necessary to confine it in its bottles.

Champagne Wine owes its goodness, in the first place, to the soil on which it is grown, which is unique in its mixture of chalk, silica, light clay, and oxide of iron; in the second, to the very great care and delicate manipulation which the wine receives. Every doubtful grape is discarded, and the carts conveying the grapes from the vineyard go at a most funereal pace, so that none of their precious contents should get bruised; for if these little grapes (for they are little larger than currants) get at all crushed, or partly fermented, in carriage, the fruit is rendered absolutely worthless for Champagne purposes.

Very great care, too, is exercised in the pressing. The grapes are laid in carefully stacked heaps upon the floor of the press, where they are left for a time, and then the first gentle, but firm, sustained squeeze is applied. The juice thus extracted is the cream of the grape, and is used only for the finest brands. There are six of these squeezes made, each more powerful than the last; and the result of each is, of course, inferior in quality to its predecessor, till the sixth, called the _rébêche_,[23] is reached, which produces a coarse wine, reckoned only fit to be given to the workmen.

The must begins to ferment more or less quickly, according to the temperature, in the casks, at the end of ten or twelve hours, and the process continues for a considerable time, during which the colour changes from pale pink to a light straw tint. About three months are allowed to elapse, when the fermentation stops through repeated rackings and the cold of the season.

And now the real trouble of the Champagne manufacturer begins. First, there is the blend, which varies in the case of each manufacturer. The produce of the different vineyards is mixed in enormous vats, according to the recipe in vogue in the particular establishment, and to this mixture is added, if necessary, a proportion of some old wine of a superior vintage. A most subtle, carefully educated, and exquisite taste is required to discern when the wine, in this crude state, has acquired the proper flavour and bouquet. Then comes the important point of effervescence—a source of much anxiety to the manufacturer, for the extremest care is required to regulate the quantity of carbonic acid gas, so that there shall be neither too little nor too much. For if there be too little, the wine will be flat; and if there be too much, the bottles will burst by thousands. An instrument, called a _glucometer_, or _saccharometer_, is used to measure the amount of saccharine matter in the wine at this point; and if the necessary standard be not reached, the deficiency is supplied by the purest sugar candy. To the ordinary palate, at this stage it differs in no respect from still white wine, of somewhat tart flavour, and is now drawn off into other casks to undergo the next treatment in the process; viz., the fining, to make it bright, and remove what is known to connoisseurs of wine as “ropiness.”

The wine is now ready for bottling, and the danger to be avoided is the bursting of the bottles, for the pressure of the gas is tremendous; hence it is that the champagne bottle is the most solid and massive in use. The bottling takes place, as a rule, about eight months after the grapes have been first pressed, and the precautions against breakage are of the most minute description. The instant any symptoms of bursting display themselves, the wine has to be removed to a cooler temperature; but even with every precaution, the loss sustained by the bursting of bottles is often very serious indeed, sometimes to an almost ruinous extent. The risk of breakage is generally almost past by the end of October, and the bottles are then kept in the cellars for a period ranging from eighteen months to three years, according to the custom of the establishment.

But even now all is not over, for, during this period, a sediment, resulting from the fermentation of the wine, has been deposited, which must be removed before the wine is ready for consumption; and very troublesome work it is to get rid of this sediment. The bottles are placed in a slanting direction with the necks downward, and the angle of inclination is altered from time to time till they stand almost perpendicular, whilst every time the position is changed, the bottle is sharply twisted round, so that the sediment may not cling to the sides. Finally, the deposit collects in a ball in the neck of the bottle, from whence it is “disgorged”—literally blown out—when the original cork is removed. A temporary stopper is then inserted until the liqueur, which is to give the wine its distinctive character, dry or sweet, is introduced. This liquor consists of a preparation of the very finest sugar candy, the best Champagne, and the oldest and purest Cognac.

The next process is corking, and, as we all know, champagne corks are not as other corks. They are made larger than the vent of the bottle, and are soaked in water, and very often steamed. They are somewhat expensive, the best corks used costing about threepence each; but it is a very false economy to use common corks, for the gas would escape. The pliant cork is placed in a machine which pinches it and compresses it to the size of the aperture of the bottle, and holds it there till a twenty-pound weight is let drop, on the principle of a pile-driving hammer, and drives the cork in firmly. The powerful leverage used to bring down the edge of the cork for wiring and stringing, imparts the round-shaped top peculiar to champagne corks. The bottles, after being corked and wired, are allowed to rest for two or three months, in order that the wine and the liqueur may properly amalgamate, and are then tinselled and labelled, ready for the consumer; but some of the best wines are kept for years to mature, and are, of course, of far higher value.

A sweet Champagne may be made of any wine, but a dry Champagne must be a good wine, as, if it is not sound, its acidity is detected at once; but this defect would be hidden by the liqueur necessary to make it sweet.

At Epernay, the bulk of the wine is not so good as that coming from Reims, and sells at a lower price; but there are firms there of world-wide note, such as Moet & Chandon, Perrier, Joüet & Co., Meunier Frères, Wachter & Co., etc.

BORDEAUX OR CLARET.

In England we generally call the wines coming from Bordeaux, _Clarets_, the derivation of which cognomen is somewhat obscure; but it seems almost universally accepted that it comes from the French word _Clairet_, which is used even at the present time as a generic term for the _vins ordinaires_ of a light and thin quality, grown in the south of France, and was in use from a very early date. The old French poet, Olivier Basselin (who died 1418 or 1419), sings:—

“Beau nez, dont les rubis ont coûté mainte pipe De vin blanc et clairet ...”

There was, however, another Claret, a compounded wine, resembling _hypocras_, which Giraldus Cambrensis, who lived in the twelfth century, classes thus: “Claretum, mustum, et medonem” (Claret, must, and mead). And the venerable Franciscan, Bartholomew Glanville,[24] says: “Claretum, ex vino et melle et speciebus aromaticis est confectum” (Claret is made from wine, honey, and aromatic spices). It makes a marked feature in a curious tenure.[25] “John de Roches holds the Manor of Winterslew, in the county of Wilts, by the Service, that when our Lord the King should abide at Clarendon, he should come to the Palace of the King there, and go into the Butlery, and draw out of any vessel he should find in the said Butlery at his choice, as much Wine as should be needful for making (_pro factura_) a Pitcher of Claret (_unius Picheri Claretti_), which he should make at the King’s charge, and that he should serve the King with a Cup, and should have the vessel from whence he took the Wine, with all the Remainder of the Wine left in the Vessel, together with the Cup from whence the King should drink that Claret.” This refers to a roll of 50 Ed. III., or 1376.

But this is not the Claret of our days, which is the wine produced in the countries watered by the rivers Dordogne and Garonne and the Gironde, at least it should be so; but, in truth, owing to the good railway communication, wine comes to Bordeaux from every part of France, large quantities owing their birth to the banks of the Rhone, from the Hérault, Roussillon, etc.; and a judicious blending at Bordeaux, and its being shipped thence, is a very good title to its being grown in the Médoc; but the quantity shipped to all parts of the world, compared with the acreage of growth, entirely precludes the supposition that it possibly could have been the production of that district.

The nobility of the Médoc wines is small. There are only four _premiers crûs_, but they are magnificent. They are Château Lafitte, Château Latour, Château Margaux, and Château Haut-Brion; and all these, especially the Latour, have a flavour and seductive _bouquet_ all their own, which is believed to arise from an extremely volatile oil contained in the grape skins, which, like all ethers, requires time to evolve and mature. But the soil, undoubtedly, has most to do with it, and this must be in a very large degree composed of fragments of rock, small and large, while the smooth round pebbles reflect the rays of the sun and throw them upwards, so as almost to surround the grapes with light and heat. Again, these stones absorbing the sun’s rays during the day, give out warmth after sunset, whilst they keep the roots of the vines cool, and prevent to a great degree the evaporation of the natural and necessary moisture of the earth.

But these _premiers crûs_ are not always good; for instance, in 1869, Messrs. Fulcher & Baines, wine brokers, sold by auction a very large parcel of Château Margaux for about 30_s._ per dozen. There was no doubt but that it was genuine wine, bottled at the Château, for the cases and corks were all properly branded; but of such low quality was it, or it deteriorated so rapidly, that when sold again in 1871 the same wine only averaged 18_s._ per dozen.

_The 2nd Growths are_:—

Mouton, coming from _Pauillac_. Rauzan-Segla, ” _Margaux_. Rauzan-Gassies, ” ” Léoville-Las Cases, ” _St. Julien_. Léoville-Poyféré, ” ” Léoville-Barton, ” ” Durfort-Vivens, ” _Margaux_. Lascombes, ” ” Gruard-La rose-Sarg, ” _St. Julien_. Gruard-La rose, ” ” Braune-Cantenac, ” _Cantenac_. Pichon-Longueville, ” _Pauillac_. Pichon-Longueville-Lalande, ” ” Ducru-Beaucaillou, ” _St. Julien_. Cos-Destournel, ” _St. Estèphe_. Montrose, ” ”

_3rd Growths._

Kirwan, coming from _Cantenac_. Château-d’Issau, ” ” Lagrange, ” _St. Julien_. Langoa, ” ” Château-Giscours, ” _Labarde_. Malescot-St. Exupéry, ” _Margaux_. Cantenac-Brown, ” _Cantenac_. Palmer, ” ” La Lagune, ” _Ludon_. Desmirail, ” _Margaux_. Calon-Ségur, ” _St. Estèphe_. Ferrière, ” _Margaux_. M. d’Alesmeis Becker, ” ”

_4th Growths._

St. Pierre, coming from _St. Julien_. Branair-Duluc, ” ” Talbot, ” ” Duhart-Milon, ” _Pauillac_. Poujet, ” _Cantenac_. La Tour-Carnet, ” _St. Laurent_. Rochet, ” _St. Estèphe_. Château-Beychevelle, ” _St. Julien_. La Prieuré, ” _Cantenac_. Marquis de Therme, ” _Margaux_.

_5th Growths._

Pontet-Canet, coming from _Pauillac_. Batailley, ” ” Grand-Puy-Lacoste, ” ” Ducasse-Grand-Puy, ” _Pauillac_. Lynch-Bages, ” ” Lynch-Moussas, ” ” Dauzac, ” _Labarde_. Moulton d’Armailhacq, ” _Pauillac_. Le Tertre, ” _Arsac_. Haut-Bages, ” _Pauillac_. Pédesclaux, ” ” Belgrave, ” _St. Laurent_. Camensac, ” ” Cos-Labory, ” _St. Estèphe_. Clerc-Milon, ” _Pauillac_. Croizet-Bages, ” ” Cantemerle, ” _Macau_.

These are only some of the wines of the Médoc, so that I may be excused from recapitulating the names of the different growths of the Graves, the Pays de Sauternes, the Côtes, the Palus, and those of Entredeux Mers—their name is legion, and it would answer no good purpose. Cocks, in his _Bordeaux and its Wines_, gives a list of 1,900 of the _principal growths_, so that we can have a good choice of names from which to christen our “Shilling Gladstone.”

The wines of Bordeaux used to be greatly drank in England until the great wars with France—in the last century, when, of course, their importation was prohibited—but, even then, large quantities were smuggled. They must, however, have been of better quality than the cheap stuff now imported. In Scotland, where an affinity with France always existed, it was a common drink, and very cheap; for in Campbell’s _Life of Lord Loughborough_ (vi. 29), we find that excellent claret was drawn from the cask at eighteenpence a quart: and its downfall as a beverage in Scotland is thus sung by John Home, probably in allusion to the Methuen Treaty of 1703.

“Firm and erect the Caledonian stood, Prime was his mutton, and his claret good: Let him drink port, an English Statesman cried; He drank the poison, and his spirit died.”

The white wines of these districts are delicious, and are not sufficiently appreciated in England, where we know very little of the Sauternes, Bommes, Barsac, Fargues, St. Pierre de Mons, Preignac, and those of Petits Graves and the Côtes. Chief of all is the wine of Château d’Yquem, of which Vizitelly[26] thus writes:—