3. Mash the grapes with a beater in a tub, or by passing them through a cider-mill. "Treading the wine vat" was the ancient method of mashing the grapes, not now practised except in some parts of Europe.
4. To make light wines put them at once into press, as apple pomace in a cider-press.
5. To make higher-colored wines let the pomace stand from four to twenty-four hours before pressing. They will be dark in proportion to the length of time the pomace stands.
6. To make wines resembling the Austere wines of France and Spain, let the pomace stand until the first fermentation is over, called "fermenting in the skin."
7. The "must" or grape-juice is to be put into casks, the larger the better, but only one pressing should be put into one cask. Put in a cellar of even temperature, not lower than fifty nor higher than sixty-five degrees of Fahrenheit, and where there is plenty of air.
Prepare the cask by burning in it a strip of paper or muslin, dipped in melted sulphur, and suspended by a wire across the bung-hole. Fermentation commences very soon and will be completed within a few days or weeks according to the temperature. Its completion is marked by the cessation of the escape of gas. No sugar, brandy, or any other substance, should be added to the grape-juice to make good wine. They are all adulterations. The wine having settled after this fermentation, may be racked off into clean casks, prepared as before. A second fermentation will take place in the spring. It should not be bottled until after this second fermentation, as its expansion will break the glass. While in the casks they should always be kept full, being occasionally filled from a small cask, kept for the purpose. When this fermentation ceases, bottle and cork tight, and lay the bottles on their sides, in a cool cellar. The wine will improve with age.
Sometimes it remains on the lees without racking and is drawn off and bottled. Frequently the wine does not become wholly clear and needs fining. Various substances are used for this purpose, as fish-glue, charcoal, starch, rice, milk, &c. The best of these substances is charcoal, or the white of eggs and milk. Add by degrees according to the foulness of the wine. An ounce of charcoal to a barrel of wine is an ordinary quantity; or a pint of milk with the white of four eggs—more or less according to the state of the wine.
Rhine Wine of Germany may be made as follows:—
Take good Catawba or Isabella grapes, and pound or grind them so as to crush every seed and leave them in that state for twenty-four hours. Fumigate the cask by burning strips of muslin dipped in sulphur as in the preceding recipe. Strain or press out the juice into the cask filling it and keeping it entirely full, that impurities may run out of the bung, during fermentation. In the spring prepare another cask in the same way and rack it off into that. When a year old bottle it and it is fit for use.
Sweeter wines than any of the above are made by adding sugar to the must before fermentation. It should be double-refined sugar, and still it is an adulteration.