The Champagne wines are divided into sparkling (mousseux), demi sparkling (demi-mousseux), and still wines (non mousseux). Their effervescence is owing to the carbonic acid gas, produced in the process of fermentation. And we are told that as this gas is produced in the cask or (as more quickly) in the bottle, the saccharine and tartarous principles are decomposed.
If the latter principle predominates, the wine effervesces strongly, but is weak; if the saccharine principle be considerable and the alcohol found in sufficient quantity to limit its decomposition, the quality is good. Wine of moderate effervescence is invariably selected by connoisseurs in Champagne, and such wine carries the best price.
Of the still class, a wine put into bottles when about ten or twelve months old designated, ptisannes of Champagne, is greatly recommended as aperient and diuretic.
The champagne wines are light in quality in respect to spirit, the average of alcohol in the generality of them, according to professor Brande, being but 12.61 per cent.
It is a remarkable and well ascertained fact, that the alcohol in wine combined in the natural way, when drank in that state, is not productive of those complaints of the liver, and other diseases, which arise from drinking the brandied wines of Portugal, in which the spirit is foreign. The union of the alcohol, being mingled with the other ingredients of the wine by artificial means, is never perfect, and is beyond calculation more pernicious than the strongest natural product.
The light wines of France may not on first acquaintance prove so relishing or pleasant to the English palate accustomed to adulterated or brandied wines; they however in reality, not only impart a cheerfulness and exhilaration, a kind of pleasant easy buoyancy entirely different from what arises from the use of port, or the spirituous heavier wines but have when taken largely a much less injurious effect upon the constitution.
This remark would perhaps seem more strictly to apply to the wines made for home consumption, as a small per centage of Brandy and syrup of raisins are generally mingled with the French wines to please the foreign palate.
The generous juice of the grape, was undoubtedly bestowed upon man by his benificent Creator, to impart health and vigour to his physical energies, and a wholesome cheerfulness to his soul; and if he would wish to avoid enervating the one or brutalizing the other, he will do well to eschew all «mixed wine», which before the period of its scriptural denunciation to the present, has ever and anon manifested itself in the «living temples» of its besotted votaries in the character of indigestion, apoplexy, dropsy, gout, delirium, tremours, and a long train of diseases.
«Strong drink is raging, and whosoever is deceived thereby is not wise»; but pure wine upon a healthy stomach, is grateful and precious as the light of truth and the exercise of discretion, to a sound and well-regulated mind.[B]