The Packaretti Sherry is dry and pleasant. The wine of Benicarlo is mild.*

Throughout Italy the wines are good, and the greatest part of the French grapes were originally Italian. When the Gauls had cleared the high mountains that separated ancient Gaul from Italy, and had tasted the grapes, and the juice of them on the Italian side, they incited their compatriots to make the conquest of Italy. Then the grapes of that country were propagated among the Gauls, who, in their turn, a few centuries afterward, were invaded by the people of the north, or the Normans: they made us pay dear for the wine our ancestors had drank in Italy, as well as for that which, in consequence of our conquests, we had been enabled to drink in France.

Of the Italian wines, the most esteemed is the Falernian, so much praised by Horace, and sang by J. J. Rousseau. The wine of Alba, the original site of Ancient Rome, was the first wine made by the Romans: it preserves its reputation yet. It is very pleasant, not heady, and easy of digestion. There is of it, both white and red. It is even permitted to persons indisposed, from its being not so strong as to disorder the nerves of weak patients. Tuscany produces wine which rivals these; the Monte Fiascone.f This wine passes there for being the best of the Italian wines. İ do not agree to this; for wine may have other good qualities beside that of intoxicating.

The Florence wine is a Muscat; ‡ and being boiled, it has the double advantage of keeping a long time, and bearing transportation. There is great consumption of Florence wine.

The Venetian wine is excellent: though rich it is piquant. The wines of Naples, the Lacryma Christi, and Gaeta wines, are well known. They are light and agreeable, and the odour is good.

These are all the wines with which I am acquainted as a dealer. On the racking of wines.-The first racking should take place about the middle of March after the vintage. For this purpose the casks should be recently emptied, and rinsed with great care; scraping off all the tartar that adheres to their sides; for should any remain, it will greatly injure the quality, delicacy, and perfume of the wine meant to be put in. It is also necessary to wash the outside of the cask, and to brush off all the hard dirt and the moss that may adhere to the bottom, as well as the small fungi that are apt to form there. Nothing should be left unwashed, even to the bungs. The cask is then brimstoned; using a piece * The Benicarlo is an inferior wine, much used to adulterate Port. The fine old song of Dr. Walter Pope says,

With Monte Fiascone or Burgundy wine,

To drink the king's health, as oft as I dine.

Florence wine, usually imported in cases, like oil, and stopt with cotton and covered with oil, is a strong heady wine: not a Muscat as I should judge, or boiled.

of brimstone cut tapering.

This should be done when the wea

ther is perfectly dry. Before the wine is racked off into the cask, it should be rinsed with a pint of good Cogniac brandy, and then drained. Then fill it with the clear wine with a syphon or a pump, so as not to disturb the lees: bung it up with a very clean bung fixed in a clean white linen rag.

The casks thus filled, are placed on the tressels: they must be examined from time to time, and filled up, (if there be any empty space in the cask,) with the same wine, of the same press and vintage: any inferior wine used for the purpose, will spoil the whole, and you will lose your trouble.

At the end of six months, rack the wine again, taking all the precautions above directed. It is by a repetition of the process of racking, that wine acquires its fineness and delicacy, and at length its ripeness. When it has acquired its full flavour, it should be fined: for which purpose, take the whites of six eggs to the hogshead (piece) in the following manner. Beat up with a quart of river water the whites of six eggs: draw off three bottles of the wine: take a clean white stick, split it at the end in four pieces receding from each other; beat up the eggs and water, pour it in, and stir the wine in the cask well, with the stick thus cleft, introduced in the bung hole; but it is not necessary that the stick should quite reach to the bottom. Then, when well stirred, leave it (after being bunged up) for at least eight or ten days untouched. The fining should never be attempted but when the weather is calm and serene.*

The same remarks and directions apply to white wine, except as to the manner of fining: which is managed thus:

When the wine has been sufficiently racked, it may be rendered still clearer by fining, which improves both the taste and the colour. Take for this purpose some isinglass, wrap it in a piece of clean linen, beat it with a hammer till it parts into fine shreds:put it in a vessel with a little rain or river water, adding water by degrees as it is imbibed by the fish-glue; add three pints of water to a common-sized ring of isinglass; this is enough for three pipes of wine. When the isinglass is dissolved, add three pints of white wine, and if you wish to keep it for the purpose of fining other casks, add to it some good brandy. Pass the whole of it through a filter of fine linen to strain off the sediment: do this a second time; then put it up in very clean bottles (nearly filled) well corked, and kept in a dry place. One bottle will be enough for a piece

* Hogshead (un piece). Milk is better fining than eggs, because it combines with the tartarous acid of the wine, which eggs do not. Half a pint of skimmed milk (or rather less) beat up with the white of an egg, is a strong fining for a quarter cask. The brewers use isinglass; and when the beer is strong they beat up with it a little fine sand, to overcome the adhesiveness of the liquor. Too much egg or too much milk, gives an unpleasant flavour. Isinglass is more uncertain as to quantity.

or hogshead of wine. Use this in the same manner as directed for fining the red wines, substituting the solution of isinglass for whites of eggs. You must not forget to admit a little air by means of a vent peg.

If, contrary to expectation, the wine should fail of being clear after having been fined in the manner above directed, boil a quart (pinte) of milk or cream, which when boiled must be permitted to cool. Skim off the skin, or buttery matter that will appear on the top: pour it into your wine, which will soon be clarified.*

If it be red wine that continues dull, take some clean white unsized blotting paper. Roll it up so that you can put it in loosely at the bunghole. Of this put in ten or a dozen sheets. Let it thus remain till the paper sinks to the bottom, and the wine will be fined; even if it should be thick and ropy (gros.)

Several other methods are prescribed for the same purpose, but as I have never employed them in my own cellar, and as some of them are objectionable as being unwholesome, I think it better to omit any further remark on these receipts.

As I have spoken of turbid wine, it may be proper to point out the causes of this malady. Some of them depend on us, others are not under our command. For example, want of care in racking the wine may powerfully contribute to this defect-if during the first year we do not draw off our wines from the thick lees or, if after having drawn them off, we neglect to fill up the casks at least once a month-if in such case the wines are stored away-especially in a warm cellar in summer timeif as often as you want wine you draw it from a cask and leave it thus, only part full for a long time, especially with the spile outall these causes will suffice to render your wine foul. It is true then, that many of the faults depend on ourselves. But it is fair also to say that very often in spite of all the care we take, the accidents in question will happen.

Sometimes the season opposes the due combination of the constituent parts of the wine; so in very hot and dry years, the essential oil is in over or under proportion to the must; and the oily, aqueous, and sugary particles do not enter into complete chemical union; in this case, the fermentation that is to produce this union, is slow and imperfect. A similar inconvenience results from very cold or very rainy seasons, which equally tend to prevent the in

*In Philadelphia it is not unusual to put about a table spoonfull of salt in a hogshead of Madeira; I am not aware in what way it acts, but I know it contributes to take away ropiness in malt liquor.

Papier gris, sans odeur. Clean, white, fine writing paper is better; because it contains a small quantity of glue, and also a small quantity of alum. To fine strong ale, put in at the bung hole, a sheet of paper; let it unfold inside of the cask: sprinkle on it some clean white sand, to sink it. By degrees it will fall to the bottom and the sediment with it.

testine motion that combines the oil, the sugar, the water and the acid, into a vinous liquor.

So soon as you perceive a tendency in the wine to turn thick and turbid, the following symptoms will also appear: when you pierce a cask to draw a glass of the wine to taste it, it drops slowly, and does not spin out in a stream like wine in good order: on tasing it, you feel something thick and oily that fills the palate, not that lively stimulant sensation which is produced by well managed, generous wine. On these symptoms appearing, beside the means I have mentioned, you must again rack off the wine.

Then take an ounce of cream of tartar, dissolve it in a quart of the wine thus racked off, shaking the bottle well; (perhaps two quarts of wine instead of one would be a better proportion because cream of tartar is of difficult solution.) To this mixture, add half a pint of good Montpelier (or Nantz) brandy, and also a few quarts of good wine of the same year, and add them to the turbid wine. This method will probably cure the disorder in a short time, but it is necessary also, to drink off the wine without delay, because there is danger of its falling again into the

same state.

On bottling wine. When a cask of wine is tapped for bottling, gently raise the opposite end about two inches by means of a few pieces of brick or wood. The cask may be bottled off by means either of a cock, a spigot and faucet, or a siphon. The augur ought not to be larger than the tube to be inserted. In boring the hole, take care to hold it in a straight direction, and directly in the middle of a stave, not between two staves. When in boring it at the bottom you perceive the wine to ooze out, do not go on to bore it quite through to the wine, but take the augur clean out the hole, wipe it, and drive the thin remaining part of the stave inward by forcing the spigot or cock, on the outside; in this way the wine will be less disturbed, and the cock will fit tighter. In filling the bottles, incline them a little, so that the wine may not enter with too much motion and violence. When a bottle is three parts filled, half turn the cock, or half stop the siphon to fill it up, and in meantime the bottle last filled may be corked.

It is a point of the first necessity to be attended to, that the bottles be well rinsed. No care will make up for this neglect. For this purpose make use of small shot, of coarse sand, or a small chain, or all of them. When the bottle seems clean, blow in it, and smell if there remain any musty odour. Even when there is no bad odour the bottle should nevertheless be rinsed several times in clean water.

Do not quite fill the bottles; leave a space (about two inches) between the cork and the wine, otherwise the bottle will be brokNever use a bottle that is starred, or that has any blemish. It is false economy to hesitate for a moment about purchasing the

en.

If the

most perfect bottles, and paying the best price for them; otherwise you risk both bottle and wine. For this reason also, examine the necks to see that the corks are likely to fit tight and regularly. For the same reason, employ only new, well cut, soft corks; reject those that have been used, and have lost their elasticity, or that have dusty holes, and cracks in them, or that are in any way defective or rotten. You can never cure wine that tastes of the cork. To cork your bottles well, you must employ force, with an oak hammer, having a broad surface: the cork must be driven almost entirely within the neck of the bottle. In corking the bottles, hold them over a tub, that if by accident a bottle should break, the wine may not be lost. When corked, dip or smear the top of the bottle and cork in Spanish wax. wine be suspected of subsequent fermentation, tie down the cork with strings, or wire it down. (In England they have a machine expressly for forcing the corks into bottles, and every bottle in the process of making it at the glass house, is compressed at the neck, so that the cork on entering may swell out after it has passed the narrow part of the neck where the glass has been a little compressed by the workmen, while red hot and soft.) The corks are better for being previously boiled in clear water.* If the wine be intended to be kept long in bottles, they should be dipt in a mixture of pitch, rosin, and a very little wax; not enough to soften the composition, but to give it tenacity merely. If these precautions be not taken, and air is permitted to find a vent, however small, either the bottle bursts, or the wine turns flat and sour.

It will be well however, to give directions for the most approved composition for waxing corks. Take by weight equal parts of pitch and rosin, (arcanson) with three fourths of a part of tallow; melt them gradually together in a varnished or glazed pot of earthen ware, stir them well over a moderate fire till they are all incorporated: then increase the heat till the mixture begins to boil up: be sure to take it off the fire before it boils over, otherwise your mixture will be apt to inflame and produce danger.

When the ebullition has subsided, and all is melted, stir in a little red ochre, yellow ochre, Spanish white, or lampblack: if you use the latter you must add a little more tallow. This depends on the kind of colour you wish to give to your cement. (Bricks dried and powdered very fine, will prove a good addition to the cement, in lieu of the ochres and white.)

When the cement is well mixed let it cool a little-wipe the top of the neck clean and dry-smear the composition over the cork, and under the edge of the neck, taking care that it sticks well-let it cool set upright. Keep the pot on a moderate fire, so as to have the cement in a state sufficiently fluid but not too hot: it is useless to employ it if too cool, and it will not answer so well if too hot.

*And dried afterward. c.