when, perhaps, the yield has been great, and
the wines are deficient in sugar, then cane or
beet-root sugar is added or potato syrup,
glucose; which additions can be detected by
no chemical tests known. The aroma is not
so fine in wines which have been thus
sweetened, but no other change takes place.
Raisins are used for the inferior German
wines; but, as raisins are simply grapes
from which the water has been evaporated,
this can hardly be looked on as an adulteration
when compared with the chemical messes—
the butyric ether, the oxide of amyl, and
other sweet-smelling falsehoods which
pretend to make good wine for the public out of
syrup, alcohol, and water. Sugar is also
added to obtain a stronger wine from good
grape juice; for, as we have said before,
alcohol is in proportion to sweetness; and
thus wines are made to imitate port, which
are not of the genuine Oporto grape. Chalk
is added in such cases to correct over-
acidity. In two or three days after expression
fermentation begins; this fermentation
being due to the sugar—sugar setting up
fermentation in opposition to putrefaction.
The whole mass must be kept well stirred
up; kept, too, in an even temperature, and
rather warm than chilled. It used to be the
custom in France—even now it may not be
wholly disused—for a naked man to go into the
vats to stir up the juice and to aid in the
fermentation by the heat of his body; but many
died in the process, owing to the carbonic
acid gas evolved. After the first fermentation
is over, when the sediment has been
deposited and the liquid drawn off, a milder
action is kept up for some months, increasing
in spring when the wines are said "to blossom,"
and being continually drawn off, leaving
the sediment at the bottom. It being found
in some breweries—notably in those for
Bavarian beer—that a free supply of air
increased the action of fermentation, Liebig
recommended that openings similar to those
employed in the brewing vats should be
made in the wine vats. Prince Metternich
gave six casks of Johannisberg, each cask
containing one thousand two hundred bottles,
for the experiment to be fairly tried. This
was in eighteen hundred and forty- six. The
result was doubtful—unsatisfactory in the
white wine, but in the red answering better.
It was found that the white wine lost some
of its aroma, and that the surplusage of air
caused acidity; as, indeed, any one may
prove for himself who leaves his wine-bottles
unstoppered for a couple of days. Schubert
attacked Liebig savagely on the question, and
the chemical world was in a state of
fermentation itself on the question. The
experiment has not been tried again. Another
matter of the same process agitates it to this
hour—namely, whether fermentation be due
to a purely chemical or a vegetable agent.
Some affirm that ferment is the lowest form
of vegetable life—the link binding the
inorganic and organic worlds together ; others,
that it is simply chemical, and has nothing
whatever to do with life in any of its forms.
Who can decide ? Be it as it will, it is a
most powerful agent, the great eliminator of
impurities and arrester of decay. All owing
to the varied qualities of sugar. Nay, if
meal, gluten or ferment in an advanced state
of decomposition be put into sugar and
water—one part of the former and four of
the latter—putrefaction is arrested, and the
liquid becomes of a most pleasant odour ; if
distilled, resembling alcohol. We all understand
the antiseptic qualities of sugar in our
jams and jellies; and alcohol, the product of
sugar, is the known preservative of
everything. The ancients used honey as their
antiseptic.

Wine is sometimes sulphurised as a
preservative, and often so excessively as quite to
taint it. The sulphur is burnt in the casks
and bottles, and then the wine is poured in.
If, by chance, the sulphur is arsenical, then a
slight dose of arsenic is administered to the
public, far too innocent to understand whence
comes the side-wind which blows them
illness and disease. Cloves, cinnamon, lavender,
thyme, and other aromatic substances are
used to weaken the influence of the sulphur,
and the combination gives a peculiar taste
and odour. They are burnt in the casks
together with the strips of linen dipped in
sulphur, and the whole horrible medley of
taste and smell passes for "bouquet" by the
multitude, who believe what their wine-
merchants tell them, and praise according to
price. In France, one-thousandth part of
pulverised mustard-seed is put in to prevent
any after-fermentation; but the greatest
secret seems to be to preserve the wine from
any contact with the outside air. Some
Malaga wine, which had been buried during
the Great Fire of London—that is to say, in
sixteen hundred and sixty-six was dug up
twenty years ago, and, though nearly two
hundred years old, was found perfectly good,
well-flavoured, and full-bodied. Exclusion
of air alone would not have preserved it;
sweet and alcoholic, it bore in itself the
elements of longevity; had it been poor in
sugar and rich in acids, it would have been
dug up a vinous skeleton. Wine kept in
wood loses much of its water by evaporation;
the same may be said of that kept in leather
and skins. By this diminution of water the
alcohol remaining is concentrated and
strengthened; but only originally strong
wines can be so treated. With weak and
acid wines, the very concentration increases
the formation of tartaric acid, and that, without
the proper counterbalance of alcohol,
spoils all. This evaporation does not go on
in glass bottles, and Saint Vincent therefore
recommended that all bottles should be
secured by bladders, not corks, so that
evaporation might be carried on in them. His
advice has not been followed.