Bordeaux mixture

“ Boil until of a clear brown color—one to one and one-half hours. Cook in iron kettle in the open. Add this amount to each fifty gallons of bordeaux for onions and cabbage. For other plants difficult to wet, add this amount to every one hundred gallons of the mixture. This mixture will prevent the bordeaux from being washed off by the heaviest rains.
Ammoniacal copper carbonate.—Copper carbonate, 5 oz. ”

“ Upon the principle, I suppose, of the nearer the church, the further from God, Bordeaux is by no means a good place for good ordinary wine; on the contrary, the stuff they give you for every-day tipple is positively poor, and very flavourless. In southern Burgundy, the most ordinary of the wines is capital. At Macon, for a quarter of a handful of sous they give you nectar; at the little town of Tain, where the Rhone sweeps gloriously round the great Hermitage rock, they give you something better than nectar for less. But the ordinary Bordeaux wine is very ordinary indeed ”

“ The sun of many summers is locked up in these bottles."
"I wall take Chambertin," said the Duke.
"And I, Pomard," said his son.
"And I," said Des Illes, "Romanée Conti. But all here are in the peerage of wines."
Then, when each of this curious company had made his choice, our host said to us:
"It will be best that I choose for you. There is already enough of Burgundy to trouble some toes to-morrow. Shall we say Bordeaux? Here are two of long descent, and one is a comet-wine—of a name long lost—and one is Laffitte, and both are in good order; neither is less than thirty years old. ”

“ The total value of the exports and imports of Bordeaux averages between 25 and 26 millions sterling yearly. Of this amount exports make up 131/2 millions, of which the sales of wine bring in about one quarter. The city is the centre of the trade in “Bordeaux” wines, and the wine-cellars of the quays are one of its principal sights. Other principal exports are brandy, hides and skins, sugar, rice, woollen and cotton goods, salt-fish, chemicals, oil-cake, pitwood, fruit, potatoes and other vegetables. ”

“ For the rest of the quarrel my first section in the essay on Crécy already alluded to must suffice, but for the link with Gascony a more particular emphasis is needed. The trade of Bordeaux, its great town, was principally with British ports. Its export of wine was a trade with Britain. It lay far from the centre of the French monarchy. It had counted in its Basque population an element indifferent for hundreds of years to the national unity of Gaul. ”

“ But this is not the Claret of our days, which is the wine produced in the countries watered by the rivers Dordogne and Garonne and the Gironde, at least it should be so; but, in truth, owing to the good railway communication, wine comes to Bordeaux from every [71] part of France, large quantities owing their birth to the banks of the Rhone, from the Hérault, Roussillon, etc.; and a judicious blending at Bordeaux, and its being shipped thence, is a very good title to its being grown in the Médoc ”

“ During the three centuries of English rule continual commerce was maintained with Bristol, London, and the intervening ports on the English coast, and the taste for Bordeaux wines became a national 209habit. As the cloth manufacture increased in England, another valuable commodity, used in dyeing and known as Toulouse woad, was also in demand, and was obtained exclusively from Bordeaux. ”

“ Every year seemed to produce an improvement in the wine, the older varieties gaining greatly in delicacy and softening very perceptibly in flavour.
Finding that sparkling wines were being made in most of the wine-producing districts of France, where the growths were sufficiently light and of the requisite quality, Messrs. E. Normandin & Co. conceived the idea of laying the famous Bordeaux district under contribution for a similar purpose, and, aided by a staff of experienced workmen from Epernay, they have succeeded in producing a sparkling Sauternes. ”

“ Toulouse was soon on a par with the towns of Lower Languedoc, and the Garonne poured into the markets, not only the produce of Guienne, and of the western parts of France, but also those of Flanders, Normandy, and England. We may observe, however, that Bordeaux, although placed in a most advantageous position, at the mouth of the river, only possessed, when under the English dominion, a very limited commerce, principally confined to the export of wines to Great Britain in exchange for corn, oil, &c. ”

“ These wine lists, which are handed to you in every hotel and restaurant, are magnificently bound in morocco and lettered in gold, and it is set forth that the ‘cellars’ from which you are drinking belong to a house founded so many years after the Flood, and that it has ‘a speciality for the grand wines of Bordeaux, bottled at the châteaux, with the mark of their authentic origin on the corks, capsules, and labels.’
If ever one drinks genuine ‘Bordeaux,’ it ought to be at Bordeaux. At Yarmouth one does not suspect the freshness of the bloater; in Devonshire one blindly accepts the cream ”

“ The Bordeaux press for this purpose is rather ingeniously constructed. It consists of a sort of a skeleton of a cask, strips of daylight shining through from top to bottom between the staves. In the centre works a strong perpendicular iron screw. The rape, as the refuse of the treading is called, is piled beneath it; the screw is manned capstan fashion, and the unhappy seeds, skins, and stalks, undergo a most dismal squeezing. Nor do their trials end there. The wine-makers are terrible hands for getting at the very last get-at-able drop. ”

“ In this respect the famous Bordeaux or Gironde district is, perhaps, more fortunate than any other part of the world. The thrifty and methodical habits of the French peasantry, and also the system of small holdings which prevails in France, have, there is little doubt, done much to raise the French wine industry to the pre-eminent position which it holds. There is perhaps no branch of agriculture which requires more minute attention or for which a system of small holdings is more suitable than wine culture. ”

“ I do not think it is easy to be certain of Bordeaux wines until they have been in bottles some years. A wine which while in{285} the wood may be excellent, may not ripen the right sort of way in bottles and prove disappointing. Decant all your clarets before serving them, even your vin ordinaire. If at a dinner you give both Burgundy and claret, give your finest claret with the roast, your Burgundy with the cheese. ”

“ Bordeaux is a day's railroad ride from Paris—twelve hours away from the German cannon, which even now are only fifty miles north of the boulevards, twelve hours nearer Spain and Africa. And you feel both these things.
All about you is the wine country—the names of towns and villages round about read like a wine-card—and, as you are lunching in some little side-street restaurant, a table is moved away, a trap-door opens, and monsieur the proprietor looks on while the big casks of claret are rolled in from the street and lowered to the cellar and the old casks hauled up again. ”

“ But as a daily drink Madeira should be avoided: even in the island I should prefer French Bordeaux, not English claret, with an occasional change to Burgundy. Meanwhile, 'London particular' is a fact, and the supply will probably exceed the demand of the present generation.
I also carefully sampled the wines of the north coast, which had not, as in Funchal, been subjected to doctoring by stove, by spirits, and by blend. They are lighter than the southern; but, if unbrandied, some soon turn sour, and others by keeping get strong and heady. ”

“ The Bordeaux are arranged in their proper precedence, the wines from the great vineyards first, and the rest in their correct order down to mere bourgeois tipple. Against each brand is the price of the vintage of all the years within a drinkable [Pg 11] period, and the man who knew the wine-list of Voisin's thoroughly would be the greatest authority in the world on claret.
Mr. Rowland Strong, in his book on Paris, tells how, one Christmas Eve, he took an Englishman to dine at Voisin's, and how that Englishman demanded plum-pudding. The maître-d'hôtel was equal to the occasion. ”

“ In short, the incongruity which mingles more or less in everything French, shows itself nowhere more strongly than in the buildings of this town, certainly one of the most beautiful in France.
Bordeaux occupies a much larger space than is absolutely necessary for its population. Long rows of trees, planted in the finest streets, magnificent public gardens, and promenades, now fill the ground, which in the city's earlier days would have been piled up with story above story, and warehouse over warehouse, till earth groaned under the load. ”

“ Bordeaux itself became a different town under this chaperonage. In the restaurant at which we lunched we were treated as old and distinguished friends, not merely of Monsieur A., but of the proprietor, and shops where we should have been ignored became gushing in their attentions. In the full glow of this borrowed radiance we travelled that afternoon along the sluggish railway line that traverses the Médoc, and saw at intervals, with a sense of old acquaintance, the sails of the ships and the smoke of the steamers on the Gironde appear above the vineyards on our right. ”

“ The association of water-merchants prided itself on keeping up a constant supply of provisions, and boats were constantly reaching the capital from Burgundy at one end of the Seine or Normandy at the other. It was on Burgundy for many centuries that Paris depended for its wine, and it was not until a certain nobleman, dilapidated in constitution, sought refuge in the Governorship of Gascony, where the wine of the province restored him to health, that Bordeaux gained the good name it has since enjoyed among the Parisians. ”

“ Through the agency of merchants, the hardware finds it way to Bordeaux, and the wine to Birmingham, without any direct exchange between either place, or without either having more of the commodity wanted than is required by the market,—that is, the supply proportioned to the demand of each town. Through the division of labour, the merchant who exports the hardware to Bordeaux, and the merchant who imports the wine from Bordeaux, are different people ”

“ The principal English wine merchants at Bordeaux, are Jernon, Barton, Johnston, Foster, Skinner, Copinger, and M’Cartey: the chief French wine merchants, are Feger, Nerac, Bruneaux Jauge, and Du Verget. Desgrands, a wine-broker, tells me they never mix the wines of first quality: but that they mix the inferior ones to improve them. The smallest wines make the best brandy. They yield about a fifth or sixth.
May 28, 29. From Bordeaux to Blaye, the country near the river is hilly, chiefly in vines, some corn, some pasture: further out, are plains, boggy and waste. ”

“ He gave good food, most of which he cooked admirably himself; he furnished excellent Bordeaux wine, imported by himself from Bordeaux, where he was born. His voice was pleasant and hearty; his broad, ruddy cheeks dimpled when he smiled, and the smile itself disclosed white, even teeth. ”

“ At a time when the bulk of the vintage of Burgundy was denounced as rough, sour, and harsh; and that of Bordeaux stigmatised as thick and black; and when good and bad years were allowed to have a considerable influence upon the growths of the Isle of France, the Orleannais, and Anjou, it was admitted that ‘the wines of Ay do, for the most part, hold the first and principal place, ... and are, in all good and evil years, found better than any others.’ [467] The kings and princes of the day made the wines of Ay their ordinary drink. ”

“ The development of the wine trade is in keeping with the phenomenal progress of the rest of the country. Although the great bulk of the product is not of the highest quality, the presses turn out each year enormous quantities that bear the labels of Bordeaux, Burgundy, Moselle, and Muscatel, produced from the very best imported vines. ”

“ Cognac is a real place, it appears—an old town of twenty thousand people or so, and it is really where cognac comes from, all other brandies being, of course, as one will learn here, mere upstart eaux-de-vie. We went through some of the cellars to-day, as venerable and vast as the claret cellars in Bordeaux, although not quite as interesting, perhaps, because not so "alive." For wine is a living thing, as the man said in Bordeaux, and it must be ignobly boiled and destroyed before turning into a distilled spirit. ”

“ For are not more people versed in claret than in history? And this commonplace landscape, this western bank of the Gironde, a mere peninsula lying between the river and the low Atlantic coast, is called Medoc, and embraces all the best known Bordeaux vineyards in the world. It seems as if a single parish--say St. George's, Hanover Square, for that is a big one--might hold them all. ”

“ The district which produces the best wine, about Bordeaux, is Medoc. That county is divided into upper and lower Medoc, lying between the Gironde and Garonne and the Bay of Biscay. It is much such a country, as to hill and dale, or general surface, as that between Philadelphia and Trenton, of a sandy, sandy-loam, and gravelly soil, with some few exceptions of small patches. About seven leagues from north to south, and three from east to west, of this district, is occupied with vineyards, which produce the best wine, whose expositions are from east to south. ”

“ Bordeaux is the "Somewhere in France" from which cablegrams from passengers on the French liners usually are sent. This will be no news to the Germans, nor to Americans who read the advertisements of the French liners, but it may be news to Americans who receive the mysterious cablegrams "from a French port," after their friends have landed. It is a dear old town, mouldy, and weather-beaten, and mediaeval, this Bordeaux, with high, mysterious walls along the street's over which hang dusty branches of trees or vines sneaking mischievously out of bounds. ”