As a rule, the large firms do not distil the brandy they sell, but leave that operation to the small farmers round about, and then blend their products; as, to produce the quantity they sell, enormous distilling space would be necessary, wine only producing one-eighth or one-tenth of alcohol to its bulk. The farmer’s distillery is very primitive; merely a simple boiler with a head or receiver, and a worm surrounded with cold water. There are generally two of these stills at work, and when once the farmer commences making his brandy, he keeps on day and night, bivouacking near the stills, until he has converted all his wine into crude spirit, as colourless as water, which he carts off, just as it is, to the brandy factory for sale. There it is tasted, measured, and put into new casks of oak, hooped round with chestnut wood. These casks are branded with the date, together with the quality and place of growth of the wine from which the brandy was distilled, and they remain some time in stock before their contents are blended in the proportions which the firm deem suitable.
This new spirit is housed on a floor over large vats, which are filled from selected casks, the spirit being filtered through flannel discs on its way. This mixes the various growths pretty well, but the spirit is run into other vats, being forced through filters of a peculiar kind of paper, almost like paste-board. When it gets to the second series of vats, it is kept well stirred, to prevent the heavier spirit sinking to the bottom. It is then drawn off into casks, which are bunged up, and stored for several years that the brandy may mature, and that the fusel oil may develope into the ethyls, which give such flavour and fragrance to the brandy.
Perhaps the oldest house in the Cognac district is Hennessy’s, but it would be invidious to say that their brandy was superior either to Martell’s, Otard and Dupuy’s, the Société Vignicole, Courvoisier, or many other firms. That must be left to individual taste. But from these firms we can rely on having pure unadulterated brandies, the pure product of the vine, without any admixture of grain or beet spirit. At one time, adulteration was rife among the farmers, but in 1857 and 1858 several of them were prosecuted, and they are now credited with having abjured their evil ways.
J. A.
GIN.
Massinger’s Duke of Milan—Pope’s Epilogue to Satires—The Dunciad—William III.—Lord Hervey—Sir R. Walpole—The Fall of Madame Geneva—Hogarth’s Gin Lane—Schiedam Adulteration—Gin Sling—Captain Dudley Bradstreet—Tom and Jerry Hawthorn.