Oaken casks affect the wines which are
kept in them. They affect them chemically;
also in colour. This last is by means of the
quercitron or yellow colouring matter in
the wood. They are not all alike. For
instance, the Dantzic and Stettin oak did not
affect the white wines of La Gironde much,
when kept in cask, but a little of the quercin
dissolved gave them a pleasant flavour. The
same wines treated with Memel, Lubeck, and
Riga oaks were rendered strong and astringent.
American oaks, on the contrary, have
a very slight influence when powdered, but a
strong one when in block, hence are improper
for wine casks; and Bosnian oak, from the
Adriatic, colours the wine almost black. The
French oak from Angoumois is less injurious,
but still gives too much tannic acid, and
therefore is an improper wood for wine casks.
These remarks hold good only for white
wines. The red, containing already so much
tannic acid, are less injured by the addition
of a little more. Burgundy is now kept in
troughs, or reservoirs, coated with Roman
cement, and covered with a wooden lid; and
the mode appears to answer very well.

"Corked wines" are diseased wines. Mould
has formed either on the cask or the cork,
which gives them the flavour which every
one knows to his cost when dining at tables
where the host is curious as to his wine and
ignorant of its real value. Another disease—
of young wines this—is caused by the
decomposition of the tartar which they deposit;
this is when wine casks are said to "turn;"
ropy wines breed a vegetable mucus. But of
all wines the Greek are the worst and most
easily spoiled. From the immense
quantities of pitch and gypsum which are used to
keep them they are known to the trade by
the not very inviting name of "pitch wines."
Effervescing wines also keep badly, owing to
their being saturated with carbonic acid;
and all acid wines are fugitive; though harsh
wines have the most bouquet, and to many
people would seem to have most of the
vineyard in them.

But, oh ! that treacherous bouquet ! How
little thinks the connoisseur who holds his
tawny port up to the light, passing it lovingly
below his nostrils before that first blissful
sip ; how little he dreams that the tawny
hue has been got by unpleasant clearing
matters, and that the bouquet is nothing but
a few drops of acetic ether, or perhaps a dash
of butyric ether which gives it that rich
pine-apple or fruity smell we all know of.
Caprylic acid is another counterfeit of
pineapple, capriol ether combines the fragrance
of the melon and the golden rennet in one.
These last two ethers come from fermented
beet-root juice. Then there is pelargonic
ether, largely met with in Irish whiskey;
capric ether, found in the fusel oil of potatoes;
butyl alcohol, again from beet-root; hydrated
oxide of amyl from beet-root, also from sugar;
and a liquid as yet chemically nameless, sold
in England under the trade baptism of
"grape or cognac oil;" with many others
too numerous and technical to mention.
Now, all these are to be found in wines;
but only in wines of superior quality. Poor,
thin, and ill-made wines know them not;
but poor, thin, and ill-made wines are
doctored to factitious strength and likeness;
and the oxides and the oils, the ethers and
the essences, which should have been in the
pure grape alone, are distilled in some
inodoriferous laboratory out of some unenticing
material; by which the wine-doctor is
benefitted, science enlarged, the public imposed
on, and the wine-drinker drugged to an
extent undreamt-of in the whole circle of
Dionysiacs. Besides these, more agreeable
aids to flavour and odour are employed.
Rose-leaves, lime and elder flowers, meadowsweet,
the peel of quince pears, the blossoms
of wild vines, sage-leaves, and the ferment
oil of the centaury, all these are used to
improve the bouquet of wines. Violet roots
and the roots of the Florentine iris give the
bouquet of Bordeaux to inferior wines; and
fallen vine-blossoms, the juice of golden
rennets and other apples, the leaves of the
quercus robur and millefoil may also be
added to the list.  We are fast approaching a
period when no chemical tests as yet known
will be able to distinguish pure unadulterated
wines from those doctored by cleverly
selected drugs. The natural chemical
components of wine, it will be impossible to
determine whether they were given out by
the grape itself, or the product of other
fruits and vegetables added in the manufacturing.
Hitherto, the adulterations have
been gross and clumsy; logwood for colouring
matter, a wild per-centage of alcohol,
gooseberry wine for champagne, and raisin
wine for everything, being the bases of the
English wine market. But now more subtle
chemical agents are brought into play; and
until science has organised a detective police
in proportion to her evil-doers, we, the poor
wine-bibbing public, will be in a sad plight;
drugged and poisoned by every wine-bottle
in our bins, duped and cheated by our
merchant and his House in Bordeaux, the
unresisting prey of the doctor and the manufacturing
chemist, melancholy spectacles of the
potency of a name and the ignorance of
the uninitiated. Henceforth let no one
boast of his fruity port, of his tawny, or his
full-bodied. Those small strongly-smelling
bottles on the dusty shelves of an analytical
chemist's laboratory will rise up in judgment
against him, and butyric ether, acetic acid,
and that deadly cognac oil will stand out
against the light, accusing witnesses of his
simplicity and ignorance. Henceforth the
mystery of wine-making is at an end; but
wine itself has become a myth, a shadow,
a very Eurydice of life. There is no such
thing, we verily believe, as honest grape-
juice wine remaining—nothing but a vile