the varieties of grape employed. The highest
are extracted from as few as two sorts of grape
only. The best clarets are made almost exclusively
from the Carmenet or Petite-Vidure, and
the Carmenère or Grosse-Vidure grapes. A
vine-owner who wishes to maintain the repute of
his wines will make two or three gatherings. In
general the first batch will prove the best. The
bunches hanging on the vines will be carefully
selected, cutting only those that have been well
exposed to the sun, and whose berries are equal
in size and colour. Bunches ripened at the base
of the vine will have the preference, while all
green or decayed berries will be thrown away.
For some wines, a certain proportion of the
grape-stalks are rejected. These rules are followed
with such minuteness that in certain communes
the vintage lasts full two months.

Second-class red wines admit into their composition
a larger number of varieties of grape;
and the more ordinary the wine, the greater is the
number so admitted. It is singular that several
kinds of grape, which are excellent to eat, produce
defective and imperfect wine; it is apt to
turn sour, or has a want of delicacy, or its colour
is pale, or it has not exactly the right tint; it may
be plentiful, but of inferior quality; it may have
a particular taste of the soil in which it is grown,
disagreeable or not, as the case may be. From
these varieties, judiciously mingled, good and
wholesome, though not first-rate nor first-priced
wines, are prepared.

It will be evident that, in consequence of this
simultaneous fermentation of the stalk, the skin,
and the pulp of the grape together, all genuine
red wines contain divers medicinal elements
supplied by the vine-plant, which must have
their effect on the human system, according to
the place of growth, and the varieties of grape
used in making the wine, and also according to
the constitution of the individual drinker.*

The same cannot be said of all white wines:
some of them are less tonic, less medicinal than
others. Sanitarially, white wines may be classed
as those made from red grapes (or a mixture of
all and any grapes), and those made from white
grapes only, mute wine from red grapes may
seem a paradox, but it is a fact annually accomplished.
The skin of the grape, when not
over-ripe, does not readily part with its colour,
without maceration in its own juice or in water.
Consequently, grapes carried, as soon as they
are gathered, to the mechanical wine-press (not
to the slow mingling, mashing, and treading
out by human feet), give out a colourless juice
very nearly as limpid as water. This juice
clearly contains only the elements to be found in
the pulp of the grape, to the exclusion of those
which are peculiar to the pips, the skin, and the
stalk of the grapes. It is not, indeed, truly and
completely wine. There would be no tannin or
astringent principle in it. Anything, too, is
good enough to put into these white wines ;
sour and decayed berries, as well as ripe and
sound berries, serve to bring in grist to the mill.
The value of the best white wines never attains
anything like the figure of the red wines of the
choicest vineyards. Amongst the white wines
so manufactured from coloured and miscellaneous
grapes, is the world-wide favourite, Champagne.

* The maximum of alcohol contained in the first-rate
wines of Medoc is from 8.50 to 9.25 per cent.
They contain, besides free acids and vegetable and
mineral salts, tartaric, malic, acetic, and Å“nanthic
acids. The salts are, bitartrate of potash, tartrate
of lime, tartrate of aluminium, and tartrate of iron.
They carry from seventeen to eighteen hundredths of
tannin, and from thirty- four to thirty-five hundredths
of colouring matter.

There are other white wines, made entirely
from white grapes, and treated in the same way
as red wines are, only, perhaps, with somewhat
less care. Many of these might fairly be called
"yellow wines" by way of distinction; they
contain more aroma and medicinal virtue than
the white wines of the previous category, nor
does their temperate use appear to be followed
by any inconvenience. On the contrary, the
wines of the Rhine and the Moselle are found
by many persons to be particularly agreeable
and restorative on recovering from a fit of sickness.
Some of the French yellow vins de
liqueur or sweet wines, such as Muscat,
Frontignac, and Lunel, are delicious and gently-
stimulating elixirs. One glass at a time is a
dose; it is like drinking plum-pudding or richly
perfumed cake. They should be tasted after
any other beverage or aliment; for whatever
comes after them is comparatively insipid in its
savour. They attain these highly concentrated
flavours by being left to hang until they are far
on the way to the condition of raisins, before
being applied to wine-making.

The well-known white wines from the environs
of Bordeaux are made from white grapes,
and possess the corresponding merits. No less
than seven varieties of white grape are grown to
furnish the best qualities of Sauternes, while
four others help to supply an abundant quantity
of ordinaries. The vins de Grave, so called
because the choicest are grown on " graviers"
or gravelly soils, exhibit still more frequently
the yellow tint which is an indication of their
wholesomeness. They bear a close resemblance
to the Rhenish family. Their head-quarters is
the Château Carbonnieux, remarkable also for
its collection of vines, which, at the date of a
recent report, comprised more than a thousand
varieties of grape, contributed by Madeira,
Hungary, Portugal, Spain, Greece, and Corsica,
not to mention France. The dominant variety
employed for the Graves, as well as for the Sauternes,
is the Sauvignon, which gives bunches
well furnished with oblong amber-coloured berries,
and is, moreover, one of the best table
grapes. Wine made of the Sauvignon only is
highly aromatic, but has a tendency to get into
the head. And yet some people say that it is
a waste of time to try to get tipsy with French
wines.

On this delicate question the opinion of the
Turks would be valuable. It is rumoured that
Champagne is innocently tippled by Mahometan