established, and the cuve can be emptied of
its contents in from twenty-four to thirty-six
hours; but, in cold seasons, fermentation does
not begin till the third or fourth day, and
the emptying of the cuve on the sixth.
When the mass of bunches of fruit has
sufficiently fermented, it is fouléd, or trodden
by a man without clothes (sometimes
there are several), who enters the tub, and
squeezes out the juice as well as he can
for about an hour, by stamping, kicking, and
hugging the fruit, pressing it against his
chest, and embracing it in his arms till he
becomes himself a perfect red-skin. This
vinous bath is sometimes so overpowering
that the treader is obliged to give up the
task through absolute tipsiness, and allow
another and a soberer man to take his place in
the bacchanalian fountain. The operation
lets loose into the cuve a large quantity of
saccharine matter, which has not yet fermented,
and the sweetness of the cuve is much
increased. The fermentation re-commences
violently; and if it is found that the grapes
are still insufficiently crushed, the red-skin
Indians renew their onslaught.

As soon as the treading-out is finished,
the whole contents of the cuve—grapes,
stones, stalks, and all—are transferred into
the actual pressoir, or wine-press. Pressoirs
vary considerably in construction.

From the pressing-place, the pièces are
carried at once into the cellar, and there
left to fine, perfect, and finish themselves,
with no other interference than what is
produced by the eye of the master,—in all cases
a most potent agent.

Simple as the making of burgundy wine
thus appears to be, it requires great nicety,
careful watching, experience, forethought,
and skilful application of the rule of thumb,
to insure success both with the cuve and the
insensible fermentation afterwards in the
cask. Many little precautions and guiding
symptoms are traditionally transmitted from
father to son, from one generation of cellarmen
to that which succeeds it. Bad methods
are also adhered to with equal obstinacy,
which accounts for the permanent
unpalatableness of the wine produced in several
favourable localities in France. Large
establishments are able to avail themselves of
mechanical aid. Thus, at Clos Vougeot, the
new wine runs from the pressoir to the
cellars through closely fitted pipes. All the
pure Côte-d'Or burgundies are the wines for
great and wealthy people to drink. For
second-class folk there are second-class wines,
known on the spot as passe-tout-grain, which
are made from vineyards planted with a
mixture, mostly half noirien and half gamay.
In good years, passe-tout-grain is excellent,
brilliant in colour and high in flavour.
It is less liable to change, and bears longer
keeping than many of the finer wines; nay,
aristocratic liquors are often obliged to call
in the aid and intreat the alliance of the
plebeian fluid, in order to preserve their own.
body and reputation. And the hard-working
vigneron, when he is thirsty, what has he to
drink at home? After the grapes are
squeezed in the press, he fills some tubs with
marc or refuse, carefully excluding the air
during winter. In spring, he fills up the
tubs with water, lets them stand a week or
ten days, taps one, and draws a drink which
if it does him no great good, at the same time
does him no great harm.

The management of wine in the cask is
infinitely intricate. One wrinkle may be
useful to housekeepers. M. Pomier, an
apothecary of Salins, has discovered a simple
mode of removing the odious smell and taste
from wine which has been put into a mouldy
hogshead. It consists in mixing a certain
dose of olive oil with the injured wine, and
agitating the mixture violently. In four-and-
twenty hours the oil is all at the top, charged
with the ill savours which it has absorbed
from the wine. The experiment has been
repeatedly tested. It has also been recommended
to oil the inside of old mouldy casks,
because the tubs thus lose their disagreeable
smell, and the wine put into them acquires
no unpleasant taste. It appears that the
substance which injures the wine in such
cases is of a nature similar to that of essential
oils. If fixed oils are violently shaken together
with distilled aromatic waters, the
latter entirely lose their aroma, which
combines with the fixed oil. One more wrinkle
to amateurs of burgundy. Import your wine
as soon as you can get it out of the grower's
cellar, and let it perfect itself in your own.
At its culminating point of ripeness it is too
delicate to stand a journey, even from one
end of a town to the other.

Though the Burgundy wines are the
most delicious in France, their consumption
is more local and sparse than that of
any others of the first class. You get good
ordinary burgundies in Paris, but not
generally elsewhere. The grand requisite for
a more extended enjoyment of the golden
draught, is a European peace, enabling the
French to make more cross-country railroads,
and allowing the English (though we might
do that at once) to reduce the duties on
French wines to what they ought to be:
namely, to the merest trifle. We shall attain
these happy results by and by. It ought to be
known that, by opening our cellars, we may
do as much good to our allies and neighbours
as to ourselves. The grand wine-fountain,
though perennial, has its spring-tide and its
neap. At the present moment, it is at lowest
ebb, and wine is dearer and dearer every day.
Thousands in France will have to go without
it this year. But there occur successive years
of over-abundance, when the owner really does
not know what to do with the produce; and
these epochs return from time to time after
an indefinite lapse of years. A tub has been
filled with wine, in exchange for an empty