The Columbian. [volume] (Bloomsburg, Pa.) 1866-1910, 1902-11-20
THE WINE EXPERT.
he MUST BE AS TEMPERATE AS AN
ATHLETE IN TRAINING.
By sight, Smell and Taste He Tests
: the Quality of Liquors and Hence
5 He Must Lead Life at Once Rig
orous and Ascetic.

Many hotels and restaurants of i'm
portance as well as many wholesale
and retail liquor dealing firms employ
wine. expert 1t is the duty Of this
man to pass upon the quality of all
wines, brandies, whiskies and other
alcoholic beverages handled by his
| house. He works with an empty stom-
ach, and he makes his tests through
the three senses Of sight, which tests
the spirits color and clarity; smell,
! which tests its odor, and taste, the
most important sense, which tests its
! flavor. To keep these senses at once
delicate and sharp the expert must not
use tobacco, and In the use Of liquors
he must be temperate to the point of
| teetotalism.
If two glasses of champagne are set
before a clever wine expert, one a
champagne of the vintage of 1864, the
| other Of the vintage of 1SSS. he will
tell readily which is which. There are
indeed half dozen vintages which he
can designate by their taste alone
without the helpful presence of the
labeled bottle.
The wine expert must also have
| profound knowledge of red wines.
Among the red wines of France he
| must be able to tell those of the Ga
rome from those of Burgundy and Of
| Dauphiny.
In the white wines also he must be
| learned, and he should have no ditf1-
Guilty in distinguishing the champagnes
Of Slllery, of Ay, OF Reims and Of
Epernay and in distinguishing also
their best vintages. Among the other
French white wines he must know
those of Sauterne, Barsac, Preignac
and Bommes. And the Spanish white
wines Of Xeres, the German white
wines OF Johannisberg, Steinberg and
| Hockheim must be like old time friends.
Whiskies and brandies are divisions
of his work that are as important as
| the wines. He must tell at n glance
whether q brandy has been aged in
wood or In glass, and he must not only
separate with ease the Irish, the Scotch
| even must designate the districts in
| Wnlcn eacD was QlSulleu.
| Considering his knowledge the salary
of the wine expert is not great. 1t
averages $40 a week. Occasionally it
| falls as low as S25, and occasionally 1t
mounts to munificence.
The expert must not eat rich, heavy
foods and pastries. He must not keep
late hours. His life, in word, must
| No 20 haf Of a+h
in training. This is In order that his
senses of sight and taste and smell
may be at their best always. Smoking
is bad for the smell; rich foods are bad
for the taste; late hours or any sort of
dissipation, even the mildest, is bad
for the health generally and for all the
senses, sight in particular; hence the
rigorous and ascetic life of the wine
expert.
! The wine expert works with stomach
empty, for then his taste and smell are
at their keenest. He works on bright
! days only in room flooded with sun
| light, for then he can best weigh a
liquors color and lucidity. He uses
glasses of the oldest shapes-a differ
ent glass almost for every liquor-for
these help him to distinguish the most
delicate gradations of smell and color.
The brandy glass, for instance, has a
bowl almost as big as a washbowi.
The bottom of this bowl the brandy
covers In the thinnest layer. The ex-
pert puts his face down close and. with
his nose inside the bowl, rolls the
brandy about, thus getting the full bou-
quet of the liquor.
He must never swallow the bever-
| ages he tests. He holds them In his
mouth about a minute, rolling them
upon his tongue and letting them
touch his palate, and that is sufficient
for an accurate judgment. To swallow
them would not aid him, for there are
no nerves of taste in the stomach.
TO swallow them would, on the con-
trary, hinder him, sending him drunk
to bed each testing day.
The. expert of a large and fashiona-
BILE New York hotel in discussing the
other day his business said:
what is more difficult than to de-
scribe in words the taste of anything?
How, for instance, would you say
what bread tastes like or meal or po-
tatoes?
But red wines have. after all, de-
finable taste. The poor red wines are
earthly. They have a flavor of fresh
soil The good ones taste like field
mushrooms. and the best ones taste
like trufies. But the taste of whis-
kies and brandies and white wines is
not to be defined in any such concrete
way as this.
The wine science is nice one. Few
men, know It. Few men indeed can
tell with their eyes shut whisky from
brandy or ale from beer. Few men
who use liquor even know the wines
that custom demands should be drunk
with a dinner at which wine il
served"
When asked what those wines were,
he said:
"Sauterne with the oysters, sherry
with the soup. Rhine wine with the