Winemaking

“ He says:—"To form a correct opinion of what may and can be done in the manufacture of wine, we must be thoroughly convinced that Nature, in her operations, has other objects in view than merely to serve man as his careful cook and butler. Had the highest object of the Creator, in the creation of the grape, been simply to combine in the juice of the fruit nothing but what is indispensable to the formation of that delicious beverage for the accommodation of man, it might have been still easier done for him by at once filling the berries with wine already made. ”

“ It must also be understood that certain influences which will greatly improve a strong, alcoholic, or a sweet wine, might in a short time entirely ruin a weaker one, or a dry wine.
Influence of the Air.—When a wine of ordinary strength, a table wine, comes into immediate contact with the air, a portion of its alcohol evaporates, it loses its bouquet and flavor, and if long exposed, a whitish scum is formed on its surface, called flowers. These have already been described in the chapter on fermentation as micoderma vini and micoderma aceti. ”

“ Every body knows that no product of the arts varies so much as wine; that different countries, and sometimes the different provinces of the same country, produce different wines. These differences, no doubt, must be attributed chiefly to the climate in which the vineyard is situated—to its culture—the quantity of sugar contained in the [Pg 90] grape juice—the manufacture of the wine; or the mode of suffering its fermentation to be accomplished. If the grapes be gathered unripe, the wine abounds with acid; but if the fruit be gathered ripe, the wine will be rich. ”

“ LXV. When the must is stored in the vat to make wine, it should not be racked off while it is fermenting nor until this process has advanced so far that the wine may be considered to be made. If you wish to drink old wine, it is not made until a year is completed; when it is a year old, then draw it out. But if your vineyard contains that kind of grape which turns sour early, you should eat the fruit, or sell it before the succeeding vintage. ”

“ They grafted and crossed the vine plants till they got the most admirably bearing bushes, and then, generation after generation, devoting all their attention to the quality of the wine, without regard to the quantity—scrupulously taking care that not a grape which is unripe or over-ripe finds its way to the tub—that the whole process shall be scrupulously clean, and that every stage of fermentation be assiduously attended to—the results of all this has been the perfectly-perfumed and high-class clarets, which fetch an enormous price ”

“ This may easily be done, where each grape grower makes his own wine, and has immediate supervision of the picking, and has sufficient men to finish it with promptness. But in the case of large manufacturers who buy their grapes and cannot supervise or order the gathering in the numerous vineyards whose crops they purchase, it may sometimes be necessary, when the grapes come in overripe, and it is not desirable to [Pg 20] make sweet wine, to add a small quantity of water to insure prompt and complete fermentation. ”

“ The ordinary manufacture of choice wine for people who are not princes, requires the following ingredients: for the original fluid, cider, or Common cape, raisin, grape, parsnip, or elder wine; a wine made of rhubarb (for Champagne) ; to these may be added water. A fit stock having been chosen, strength, color, and flavor may be grafted on it. Use is made of these materials: for color-burnt sugar, logwood, cochineal, red sanders wood, or elder-berries. Plain spirit or brandy for strength. For nutty flavor, bitter almonds. ”

“ The produce of a particular vineyard, although from the same species of grape, cultivated under precisely similar conditions, will differ materially in flavour and bouquet, not merely in bad and good years, but in vintages of equal excellence. Moreover, these wines need the most skilful cellar treatment during the long years they are maturing. All great wines, it should be remembered, ripen slowly, and cannot be ‘pasturised’ into perfection—that is to say, cannot be rapidly matured by heating them to a certain temperature, as ordinary wines may be. ”

“ At five o'clock in the evening I again set off. The spectacle of yesterday evening was repeated, and at sunset the grasshoppers again began to sing. For about a league the journey lies between walls above which the grape-espaliers are visible. Other walls, which are not high enough, have been eked out with stones, thorns, etc., to prevent passengers from plucking off the grapes. Many owners sprinkle the foremost rows with lime, which renders the grapes uneatable, but does not hurt the wine, as the process of fermentation drives out the heterogeneous matter. ”

“ In all wine-growing countries of Germany, for a number of years past, experience has proved that a corresponding addition of sugar and water is the means of converting the sourest must, not only into a good drinkable wine, but also into as good a wine as can be produced in favorable years, except in that peculiar and delicate aroma found only in the must of well-ripened grapes, and which must and will always distinguish the wines made in the best seasons from those made in poor seasons. ”

“ For the like reason, a certain evidence that port wine has completed the process of fermentation is the collection of tartar in the interior of the bottle, forming a crust; hence the term Crusted Port. A very bad wine of whatever kind usually bears the name of Three Men Wine, owing to the idea that it requires one man to hold the drinker, and another to pour it down his throat, while the third is the unfortunate individual himself. The derivation of the term Wine is the Anglo-Saxon vin from the Latin vinum, allied to vinea, a vine. ”

“ There are cases, however, when cutting becomes necessary, as when the wine from being kept too long in casks, has commenced to decline, has lost its fruity flavor, has become acrid and dry; when made in a bad, cold season; and when they are too poor, green, or too feeble to keep well.
When wines are too old and worn out, they should be fortified with young wines of the same kind, produced, if possible, from the same vineyard, one or two, or at most, three years old, and possessing great mellowness. ”

“ To walk amid these upright, branching casks of purple wine, which retain and diffuse a sunset glow, tasting each one with your eye, instead of counting the pipes on a London dock,—what a privilege! For Nature's vintage is not confined to the vine. Our poets have sung of wine, the product of a foreign plant which commonly they never saw, as if our own plants had no juice in them more than the singers. Indeed, this has been called by some the American grape, and though a native of America, its juices are used in some foreign countries to improve the color of the wine ”

“ Mixing the wine produces results similar to those caused by mixing the fruit, and it may be done by the wine maker as well as by the merchant. As they come from the vat, wines manifest the qualities and defects communicated by the vintage, and which are varied by a multitude of circumstances, such as the nature of the soil, varieties of grapes, temperature of the season, and the like. ”

“ Select the finest wines of a year’s vintage, put them away by themselves, and carefully care for them and nurse them by racking, etc., during the year. The next year, separate the finest wines from the vintage, always leaving ullage in the casks of three to five gallons, according to size, and the bungs loose, simply laid over the hole. Go on in this way for five years. Now a fifth of this five-year-old wine may be drawn off for, and used to establish another solera, and the casks refilled from the four-year-old wine, which, of course, must be as nearly as possible of the same nature. ”

“ There are wines still preserved of this year’s growth, nearly two hundred years ago; they have assumed the consistency of honey, with a rough taste; for such, in fact, is the nature of wines, that, when extremely old, it is impossible to drink them in a pure state; and they require to be mixed with water, as long keeping renders them intolerably bitter.1241 A very small quantity of the Opimian wine, mixed with them, will suffice for the seasoning of other wines. ”

“ The soil, which is of the customary calcareous formation, has a marked ruddy tinge, indicative of the presence of iron, to which the wine is in some degree indebted for its distinguishing characteristics—its delicacy, spirituousness, and pleasant bouquet. Vintagers were passing slowly in between the vines, and carts laden with grapes came rolling over the dusty roads. The mountain which rises behind the vineyards is scored up its sides and fringed with foliage at its summit, and a small stone bridge crosses the deep ravine formed by the swift-descending winter torrents. ”

“ The ancients frequently kept their wine in skins, or leathern bags, well secured at the seams; hence the passage in the gospels; "neither do men put new wine into old bottles; else the bottles break, and the wine runneth out, and the bottles perish: but they put new wine into new bottles, and both are preserved."
The kinds of wine are extremely various. The difference which exists betwixt them is not, however, so much owing to a distinction in the species of grapes, as in the quality of the fruit, produced by the varieties of soil, cultivation, and climate to which they are subject. ”

“ The vintage had not indeed as yet begun, but I saw the process performed on a small quantity of grapes, which had been ripened in a garden. Every vineyard proprietor, besides his stock-fruit, has some peculiar species of grape from which he makes the wine for his own use and that of his immediate friends: these grapes are very carefully picked and culled, and none but the soundest and best are thrown into the tub. The wine thus made is infinitely superior to the stock-wine for sale: when old, it is not inferior to Hock, and I believe is frequently sold as such by the foreign purchasers. ”

“ A green wine, then, is an imperfect wine, which, besides this defect, generally lacks alcohol, body, mellowness, firmness, bouquet, and color, because the incompletely matured grapes contain much tartaric and malic acid, and but little grape sugar and other mucilaginous matter, and because the matters destined to give color to the skins, as well as the aromatic principles, are not completely elaborated. ”

“ The vine, although a rank and healthy grower, is unproductive; seldom setting more than half a dozen berries on a bunch, and these are so sour, have such a hard pulp, with such a decided frost-grape taste and flavor, and are so deficient in juice, that no sensible man should think of making them into wine, much less call it, as its disseminator did, "the true port wine grape." ”

“ A correspondent of the Gardeners’ Chronicle gives a receipt for beer wine, a beverage which has puzzled many connoisseurs. The curious may find it also quoted in Vine’s brochure.
The manufacture of home-made wines is familiar. An excellent wine is sometimes made from a mixture of the fruits above mentioned, as, for instance, that from gooseberries and currants. All home-made wines are prone to run into acetous fermentation without the addition of a due proportion of pure spirits. ”

“ Some are planted in a very light and strong Soil, and they yield a bright and fragrant Wine; others are placed in a more nourishing Tract of Land, and they produce a Wine of a greater Body. The reasonable Combination of these different Fruits will produce an exquisite Liquor, that will have all the Advantages of a sufficient Body, a Delicacy of Flavour, a Fragrancy of Scent, and a Liveliness of Colour, and which may be Kept for several Years without the least Alteration. ”

“ I should add that a character somewhat similar to that of natural dryness is obtained by mixing with the grape-juice wine a secondary product, obtained by adding water to the marc—i. e., the residue of skins, etc., that remains after pressing out the must or juice; a minimum of sugar is dissolved in the water, and this liquor is fermented. The skins and seeds contain much tannic acid or astringent matter, and this roughness imposes upon many wine-drinkers, provided the price charged for the wine thus cheapened be sufficiently high. ”

“ Wine multiplies itself into many forms, which appear to be distinct; it is new, it is old; it is sweet, it is sour; it is sharp, it is soft; it is sparkling, it is still; water is ever the same. Wine must be petted and cherished, stored up in special skins and special caves, styled by particular names, praised under special titles, and heartily liked or disliked, like a child of passion ”

“ If every grower in the State will only devote a portion of his ground to the cultivation of the choicest varieties of grapes, making sure that he knows what he is cultivating, will use the best methods of vinification, preserve each kind of wine by itself, or keep a careful record of his blends, and will age and rear the different products according to the best and most intelligent methods, the writer confidently expects that favored spots will be found in time which will produce wines that will compare favorably with the fine wines of Europe ”

“ There is a vast field open to the wine maker of this State, for we have differences of soil and climate suitable for the production of a wonderful variety of wines. But every man must decide for himself what kind of wine his soil and situation are best adapted to produce, and his aim then should be to produce the best of that kind. ”