Amador ledger., 1903-01-23
THE WINE EXPERT.
HE MUST EE AS TEMPERATE AS AN
ATHLETE IN TRAINING.

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
moet 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 1888, 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 a
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 diff
Guilty in distinguishing the champagnes
Of Sillery, 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 glance
whether a brandy has been aged in
wood or in glass, and he must not only
separate with ease the Irish, the Scotch
and the American whiskies, but he
even must designate the districts in
which each was distilled.
Considering his knowledge the salary
of the wine expert is not great. It
averages $40 a week. Occasionally it
falls as low as $25. and occasionally it
mounts to munificence.
The expert must not eat rich, heavy
foods and pastries. He must not keep
late hours. His life, In a word, must
be as temperate as that of an athlete
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 a room flooded with sun
light, for then he can best weigh q
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 washbowl.
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-
Enable taste. The poor red wines are
earthly. They have flavor of fresh
soil The good ones taste like field
mushrooms, and the best ones taste
like truffies. 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 is
served"
When asked what those wines were.
he said:
"Sauterne with the oysters, sherry
with the soup. Rhine wine with the
fish, claret with the roast, champagne
with the game, salad and dessert and
cognac with the coffee."-New York
Tribune.
The Amendment.
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