Daily Los Angeles herald., 1881-09-16

Wine and Wine Merchants .


In lts course as far as the d0tauna
was by the anoients racked again
and again so soon as the ferments-
tion had completely ended; being
received each time into vessel
charged with the fumes of burning
sulphur. 1.-THE antiseptic properties
Of sulphuric acid gas are better
known than understood. Sulphur
ing wines is universal practice at
the present day with the wine
makers of all countries. The sui
phur probably destroys the spores
and germ growths which exist in
most vInous liquids), each time ac-
quiring a fresh impregnation from
the various resinous and antiseptic
substances with which the jar was
lined, and each time losing more
and more of its albumen, and
Therefore each time getting nearer
and nearer to being an indestructi-
BILE fluid. In the meanwhile some
of the first and sweetest runnlngs
from the wine press had been kept
apart and the fermentation of this
liquor arrested while it was still
full Of sugar. The possibility of
this feat without the employment
alcohol is q measure OF the skill of
these old wine makers, and of the
strength of their. antiseptic com.
pounds, that will come home very
readily to the comprehension of
the modern wine maker. To pos
sess this sugar.charged liquid,
whose sweetness was increasabIe
by boiling, and whose albuminous
portions were preoipitated by the
same means, was equivalent to and
even better than the possession of
sugar itself, whose use is SO indis-
pensable in the Improvement" of
such wines as burgundies and
brown sherries. When the wine
had made all the spirit it could
and parted with most of its sugar,
its austerity would have been
great; so great, indeed, that old
wine of this sort, made without
sugar, was drank mixed with hon
ey, in the proportion of four of
wine and one of honey. 1t was
therefore to restore the sacchariue
matter that the sweet must was
added to the fermented wine, Just
as in the present day in the great
wine factory of Bercy, where the
wines drank In Paris undergo their
final preparation for the metropo.
lis, thousands of tons of sugar are
mixed annually with the too aus
tsre wines of southern and central
France. Hence the advantage
would clearly be with the ancients.
To add fermented grape juice, con-
tanning in itself all the elements OF
wine, is obviously better for the
consumer than the simple addi-
tion of sugar. The ancients, how
ever, knew great deal more than
this of wine.curing. A French sa-
want, Monsieur Appert, has pro.
fessedly discovered the preserva-
tive and ripening effects upon wine
of a heat nearly equal to the boil
ing OF water, and Monsieur Pas
teur has more recently fully ex-
planned the rationale of the pro.
CESS in learned volume. By ex-
posing wine in close vessels for
few hours to temperature of 1S5
degrees of Fair, these effects are,
according to the French savant,
produced. They were produced
two thousand years ago, but ia a
much more complete way, by the
application Of artificial heat for
weeks and months to the jars OF
wine; and this practice was SO uni.
versal that an ancient writer tells
us that q heatiDg-house, an apeth-
ec0 or funaariuns, was an indis-
pensable part OF every country
house. The red wines, such as the
Falernian, were, we are told, hard
ly fit to drink under twenty years,
and even the common wines re.
quired from four to ten. The Ap
pert-Pasteur process, though much
talked Of at the time, has found
but little favor with wine mer-
chants, and is q proof how lament
ably modern science, for once at
least, falls short of ancient empiri-
cism. BY the by, the
learned have concluded, very muoh
to their satisfaction, that the Fa.
lernian, the most famous of the
wines of antiquity, was a white
wine, like Madeira. 1t was GER
tainly, however, a red wine,
and the "ambel color ascrib.
ed 10 it (Pliny SAYS that
amber of a good color was
called "Falernian" would apply |
only to its tawny appearance after
long keeping. The frequent rack
ings and tiniDgs to which it was
subjected, would in a few years de-
prive it of color. Red wine almost |
always loses Its color with keep
ing. Old Burgundy is invariably |
tawny, and port wine thirty or
forty years old is of the very am.
Der color that distinguished the
Falernisn. A. wine that possessed |
In some cases the austerlty and in |
others the swee tness ascribed to |
Falsrnian, could only have been u
red wine made with the full and !
perfect constituents Of the grapes.
The mellswness which all wine ac-
quires by age, Is supposed, and
believe rightly supposed, to be
partly" due to Its slow, or
rather lis gradual oxygenstion,
and the heating of 1t
would certainly promote this
oxygenetion, besides Destroy
lug the germs Of fungus growth
which has been proved to be the
forerunner, and perhaps the cause
of the decay of the wine. All,
then, that modern science processes
to accomplish by the immersion Of
the wine, in bottles or other her.
metically closed vessels, in hot
water for two hours, was accom-
plished In the fumariuna; and II
good deal more was done, for the
fumarium, as its name implies,
was a smoke. house, aud there is
not the smallest doubt that the