OLD WINE.
(For the Mirror.)
The passion for old wines has sometimes been carried to a very ridiculous excess, for the "thick crust," the "bee's wing," and the several other criterions of the epicure, are but so many proofs of the decomposition and departure of some of the best qualities of the wine. Had the man that first filled the celebrated Heidleburg tun been placed as sentinel, to see that no other wine was put into it, he would have found it much better at twenty-five or thirty years old, than at one hundred, had he lived so long, and been permitted now and then to taste it.
At Bremen there is a wine-cellar, called the Store, where five hogsheads of Rhenish wine have been preserved since 1625. These five hogsheads cost 1,200 francs. Had this sum been put out to compound interest, each hogshead would now be worth above a thousand millions of money, a bottle of this precious wine would cost 21,799,480 francs, or about 908,311l., and a single wine-glass 2,723,808 francs, or about 113,492l..