Tut. Barley is made malt by putting it in heaps and wetting it, when it becomes hot, and swells, and would sprout out just as if it were sown, unless it were then dried in a kiln. By this operation it acquires a sweet taste. You have drunk sweet-wort?
Har. Yes.
Tut. Well, this is made by steeping malt in hot water. The water extracts and dissolves all the sweet or sugary part of the malt. It then becomes like a naturally sweet juice.
Geo. Would not sugar and water then make wine?
Tut. It would; and the wines made in England of our common fruits and flowers have all a good deal of sugar in them. Cowslip flowers, for example, give little more than the flavour to the wine named from them, and it is the sugar added to them which properly makes the wine.
Geo. But none of these wines are so good as grape-wine?
Tut. No. The grape, from the richness and abundance of its juice, is the fruit universally preferred for making wine, where it comes to perfection, which it seldom does in our climate, except by means of artificial heat.
Geo. I suppose, then, grapes are finest in the hottest countries?
Tut. Not so, neither; they are properly a fruit of the temperate zone, and do not grow well between the tropics. And in very hot countries it is scarcely possible to make wines of any kind to keep, for they ferment so strongly as to turn sour almost immediately.
Geo. I think I have read of palm-wine on the coast of Guinea.