Daily Los Angeles herald., 1881-09-17
Wine and Wine Merchants.

wines, l ana now going to tell how
this object is attained with the
principal varieties of wine drank
in Great Britain at the present
day. 1 have said and I most en-
phatically repeat that all natural
red wine is subject to decay, and
that all wine whatsoever must be
treated arti tificislly before it will
last more than one or two years.
To begin with Claret. The finest
growths of the Medoc district are
peculiar In this respect. that they
contain less fermentable matter
than probably any known wine;
aud this they owe partly to admir-
able care in vinification, partly to
a very complete fermentation, but
principally to the fact that the
grapes that make the wine are not
40 charged with the elements of
vlnosity as those ripened in warm,
climates. They require in conse-
qusnce less artificial treatment
than any other, and in the cases
OF the so.cslled "frst growths" of
Chatsaux Margaux, Laross and
Lafitte, when the season has been
a good one, the curing seldom
goes farther than repeated fumi-
gatien with sulphur; and the sdul-
teration of the wine, II the word
must be employed, amounts only
to it's very slight imprsg nation
with the sulphurous acid gas,
which is Immediately converted
into sulphuric acid or vltriol. This
however. need cause no alarm; the
percentage is infnitesimaI, and
vitriol, though it has an ugly
name, is, as every doctor will tell
US, one of the best of tonics. This
existence Of vitriol in wines Is, as
might he supposed, common
ground Of attack, but a very un-
fair one, seeing that the vitriol, or
sulphuric aold, or the m uch greater
proportion of 1t, would find sub
stances that would mmediateiy
reduce 1t to the nearly inert cendi-
ton of sulphates. The quantity of
spirit added to the fine claret, Is
so small as hardly to be worth con-
sideripg at all. A few pints are
thrown upon the grapes before the
crushing begins, and few more
are added, ostensibly to rinse out
the casks, whenever the wine is
racked, and before 1t is shipped.
In some cases, cIarets get no addi.
ton of spirit at all. The "loading"
of claret is adopted chiefly for those
wines intended for the English
market, and is effected by the ad-
ditien Of fuller-bodied, more es-
tringent and more spirituous wines,
such as those of Hermitage. The
above remarks apply to the half.
dozen finer growths of the Meioc,
wines which owe their Potentially
of preservation to a happy coinci.
dence ef soil, climate, quality of
wine and care in cultivation and in
The majority of
these exquisite wines require to be
kept four years in the wood, to
gain mellown ess, and four in bot
tie to acquire "bouquet." After
this, except in rare cases, claret (if
unbranded) slowly degen crates,
loses color, aud acquires acidity
and q bitter taste, then gets thick,
and is sooner or later ruined
wine. Longevity in clarets, not OF
the fret growths is rare, and though
instances of 1t may be quoted, they
are chiefly found in wines that
never have travelled twenty miles
from their native cellar. The fact,
then, that clarets can In rare in
stances be made without antisep.
tic treatment with spirit, Ia there.
fore an apparent but not real ex-
ception to the rule 1 have laid
down as to the necessity of
such treatment in all red
wines. The life of fine claret
is indeed often greatly prolonged,
but it is not preserved indefinitely.
So much for the fine clarets. In
them the tannin or astringent
quality, the great natural preserv.
alive against decay, and the natur-
al acid Of the grape are both subor-
dinated to its other constituents to
make them in their way perfect
wines. Not SO the inferior growths
of the Medoc, which we alone of
the c0nsumers of them have
"clarst." 1t is from
these latter wines, whose acidity
and astringency are, as rule, in
most disagreesble preponderance
that are fabricated the wines
known in the wine trade as Cha
teau Margaux, Lafitte and Larose
When we remember that these
three vineyards together hardly
cover five hundred acres, and never
in the most abundant years make
SO much as two thousand
hogsheads of wine, scarcely
enough to furnish the cell
lars of a score of wholesale
wine merchants, it is somewhat
ludicrous to reflect that any num-
Der of dozens of these expensive
wines can be ordered from any
number of wine merchants in any
large city of Europe or America.
From st. Petersburg to Lisbon,
from Glasgow to Constant tinople,
from Montreal to New Orleans,
thence southwark to Rio and Bu-
snos Ayres and round the world to
the great cities of Australia and
India, man may walk into any
wine merchants and order q dozen
of Chateau Margaux or Lafitte,
and be reasonably disappointed If
he is refused. The performance of
the "inexhaustible bottle trick"
over so wide q geographical area is
only possible by treating the in
fsrior growths (not of the Medoo
only, for the exports from Bor-
deaux of so~oalled Medoo wines are
said by French writers to be twelve
times greater than the whole pro-
duction Of that district) in such a
way as to give them o fictitious re-
sem blance to the first growths. 10