He winds up with a moral dissertation on the punishment of drinkers, and, after detailing the various effects of alcohol on different races, as rendering the Gaul petulant, the German quarrelsome, the Goth obstreperous, and the Finn lachrymose, he suggests that drunkards should be seated on a sharp wedge, compelled to drink a mighty horn of beer, and then be hauled up and down by a rope.
J. A.
WINES.
Definition—Various Meanings of Wine—Alcohol—Varieties of Wine—Miller—Professor Mulder—Origin of Wine—Brook of Eshcol—Strabo and Reland—Francatelli’s Order of Wines—Classification of M. Batalhai Reis.
In the matter of wine, as in that of beer, it is perhaps as well to commence with a dictionary description or definition. Ogilvie declares it to be the “fermented juice of the grape, or fruit of the vine.” It is, however, also the juice of certain fruits, prepared in imitation of wine obtained from grapes, but distinguished by naming the source whence it is derived, as currant wine, gooseberry wine, etc.; and a third meaning of wine—a meaning with which we have happily little to do—is the effect of drinking wine in excess, or intoxication.[17]
Wines are practically distinguished by their colour, flavour, stillness or effervescence, and what is known as hardness or softness. The differences in quality depend on the vines, the soils, the exposure of the vineyards, the treatment of the grapes, and the mode of manufacture. The alcohol[18] contained is the leading characteristic. In strong ports and sherries this varies from about 16 to 25 per cent. It is about 7 per cent. in claret, hock, and other so-called light wines. Wine containing about 13 per cent. of alcohol may be assumed to be fortified, as it is called, with brandy or other spirit.
The varieties of wine produced are said to be “almost endless.” This great number of wines is in some measure owing to an interesting fact mentioned by Miller in his Organic Chemistry (3rd ed. p. 187), who tells us that a particular variety of grape, when grown upon the Rhine, furnishes a species of hock; the same grape, when raised in the valley of the Tagus, yields Bucellas, in which the palate of a connoisseur may possibly detect the flavour of hock; whilst in the island of Madeira the same grape produces the wine known as Sercial, which, though generally allowed to be a delicious wine, has suggested, it seems, to no skilled palate the flavour either of Bucellas or of hock.