Daily Los Angeles herald., 1881-09-15
Wine and Wine Merchants.
III

w
then, might wine-maker in Ca
diz, Bordeaux, Mason or Oporto ask /,
were the methods they employed
by which, in the absence of BRAN
dy, wine could be preserved for
ten, twenty and even sixty years
and upwards We have, fortun-
ately, several OF the treaties upon
wine making by ancient authors,
and we are able to follow step by
step the ingenious processes formed
on discoveries which the Romans
and the Greeks, our masters in the
art of wine-making, had arrived
at; not by means of scientific de.
ductions, but by the pure empirical
method of frequent failure and oc-
casional success. These forgotten
processes have an important bear.
ing upon the question of the pres
ervation of wines and their So
called adulteration. 1t is the ques-
tion which underlies the whole
subject of wine for us in this coun-
try, who can as rule drink none
but such as is 80 prepared artific-
tally as to enable 1t to travel by
sea and by land and to keep sound
u longer or shorter time. Il Its
Importance then being such, the
present writer, who claims to have
enjoyed peculiar opportunities of
watching the application of some of
the processes of the ancients in the
very countries were their wines
were grown, makes no apology for
dwelling for moment on this suit
ject of ancient wine-making. Iu
ancient times the preliminary
treading out OF the grapes and the
expressing of their juice were pre-,
cissly such as I have already de-
scribed, and the color of the wine
and its astriDgency were, as they
still are, greater or less according
as the must was allo wed to remain
a longer or shorter time with the
stalks and skins. The must was in
all cases eventually drawn into
doli0-large, wide-mouthed jars of
porous earthenware, coated inside
with pitch-and in these vessels
the liquid was allowed to ferment
and, on or about the ninth day, had
become wine. A lid was then fiji.
ted closely to the top of the great
jar or d0Lius,a, and, it is presumed,
tuted, to keep out the air. The lid
was removed once q month, the
wine SKINNED, and the loss
by evaporation made up
from another jar. The wine
was now ready for consu mp
tion under the name of 'vinum doll
are which We may translate freely
yin ordinaire' In the wood" Red
wine so made In the latitude of
Rome or Naples, would exactly re.
semble the commOner country
wines with which every traveller
in the south Of Europe is familiar,
with this difference, that it would
have flavor of pitch from the lin.
ing of the jar in which it had been.
kept, and this taste every single
wine made in ancient times must
have more or less possessed. This
is perhaps enough, of itself, to con-
demn such ancient wines in the
opinion of modern wine drinkers,
but il the reader will take the word
of one who has drank wine 80 f1av-
ored, the taste is by no means dis
agreeable. The pitch used in the
south of Europe is not the coarse
gum distilled from the pines that
grow in nothern Europe, but the
much milder and more aromatic
pitch yielded by the pine of Italy,
the stone pine; and men soon ac-
quire taste for such fsvors.
Before l began to describe the
methods whereby the ancients,
who possessed neither spirit nor
sugar (the two substances without
which modern wine merchants
and wine doctors could not move
siugle step). practiced the art of
wine curing with u success now
lost, l will state in very few
words what is the nature of the
problem offered to them and to us
by the preservation of wines.
The juice of grapes contains,
among many compOnents, mostly
in infinitessimal proportions, such
as gelatine, gum, wax, potash,
soda, lime, iron and many Others
which need not at present be re-
garded; considerable percentage of
acid, OF sugar, of albumen and of
tsnnin. 1t IL with these four con-
stituents only that we need, for the
moment, occupy ourselves. 1t is
the presence of the albumen chiefly
that makes grape juice fermens-
able liquid when il 10 exposed to a
temperature of between 60e and S0e
Fahrenheit. Sugar has, as is we'll
known, no power of fermsntipg
and of passing into decay-of
which fermentation is one of the
first stages-is by itself incapable
of change, but the albuminous part
of the must, the so.called Jermaent.
causes the sugar to be decomposed,
to break up and separate into
spirit and into carbonic acid-in
plain English causes the must to
ferment, and when most of the
sugar is thus transformed into
spirit, the wine making is COM
plete; but the process does not end
here, seeing that vinous fer
mentation is but one step
towards complete decay. 1t
left to itself the liquid would next
undergo the acetous fermentation,
and thereafter the putrid. A nat
ural wine accordingly, with due
Difference to certain ''doctrinaires,o
is wine that whatever may be its
present soundness, is on the high
road to decay. Wine-makipg Is
therefore, the art of stopping, for
longer or shorter time, and by ar
tiffcial means, the progress of pu-
trescence, after the liquor has
passed the first stage towards 1t. l
have shown how with common
wines this is done, by drawing the
wine from its lees, removing 1t.
that is, from q part of the ferment,
producing albumen, fibrin, and So