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the Médoc wines. Probably Bordeaux has many experts who can at once distinguish a St Estèphe from a Pauillac (speaking now of the lesser wines in these districts), and either of them from a St Julien or a Margaux: I have no such pretension. But anybody should be able to know a St Emilion from any of these wines of the flat Médoc land. On the other hand, coming back through Paris, I dined with French friends, and drank a decanted wine which my host and I averred to be a St Emilion, till his wife sent for the bottle and showed us it was a Burgundy.

In Pauillac I saw the extreme example of this local distribution of excellence; for we lunched at Pontet Canet, where the vineyard lies in between those of Lafite and La Tour. Only a footpath divides the property from that of Château Lafitemost revered of all these names. Pontet Canet is one of the wines which in practice ranks far above its official classification: yet nobody denies that Lafite is definitely a much greater wine. But looking over those undulating acres of vineclad country, it was impossible to guess what freak of nature, what subtle combination of elements in one patch of soil, decided that it should be so.

All the same, Pontet Canet will to me be always venerable, for I was privileged to drink then the oldest bottle of claret I have ever met. It was wine of 1878, matured in bottle long

before the hosts who gave it me were born: and it was of a ripe perfection. No doubt my host was right in saying that this was only possible because the wine had never been stirred from the place when it was pressed from the grape.

That phrase-as I learnt at Pontet Canet and elsewhere

is not exact concerning red wine made by modern methods. The grapes are brought by ox-carts, in great tubs which the vintagers have filled, and in the upper storey of the chai is a tackle which lifts the tub with its half-ton of grapes on to a huge table. The grapes are then shovelled into a machine which tears away the stalks from the fruit. This is a new labour-saving ccatrivance formerly men used to detach the grapes by rubbing the branches along a wooden grid, through which sieve they fell. Now, however, they are generally forced through a long tube, and come spattering out into a great vat-apparently liquid: but when you stir the contents with a pole you find a semi-solid mass. There is no pressing the skins of such grapes as have come through unbroken burst during fermentation : and at the end of a fortnight the wine can be run out. At Pontet Canet they do not like the idea of tubing, and arrange so that the égrappilleur or stalk-separator is set up on the table, and grapes and juices flow from it, and are let fall through wide holes in the floor into vats (the

table moving on rails). In this way the wine touches nothing but wood.

Making of white wine differs, because in it the skins are not allowed to ferment with the grapes, and there must therefore be a pressing, which is done with a machine. But the white wine of Bordeaux that ranks with Lafite has a special technique of its own with a very curious history, which I learnt when I was taken to the Sauternes district.

To get there from Bordeaux you turn your back on the Médoc, and follow the river up-stream that is, you go south-east instead of northwest. The Graves country is on your right; you pass between it and the Garonne: and after about twenty miles you reach Barsac. But the great wines are all made still farther on, near the village of Sauternes : Château Yquem, the old castle of the Counts de Lur Saluzes, is on a hill overlooking the village.

Here was always made a first-class wine, but conforming generally to the type one associates with Barsac, till about sixty years ago a strike occurred on the Yquem property. Before labour could be found to gather them, the grapes had all withered and shrunken on the branches. The owner counted his year lost, but decided to press some kind of a juice out of the unsightly clusters. Anybody who has tasted a grape in this state knows that it is candied and sugary; and

the wine made from these developed extraordinary strength. Two or three years later, a Russian Grand Duke visited Bordeaux, and was offered some of this Yquem as a curiosity : he fell in love with it and bought the whole yield: the fashion was established, and now not only Yquem, but Château Filhot (where the Count de Lur Saluzes nowadays lives), Château Vigneau, Château d'Arche, Château Suduiraut and all the vineyards which touch each other here, make their wine in the same way. The grapes are left to grow over-ripe: when they are brought in, workers go through them and take off every grape that has remained plump and clean-skinned. The unattractive-looking residue goes into the press, and there issues a muddy, greenish, distasteful fluid. Yet within a year it is crystal clear: there could be no more surprising proof of the cleansing that wine undergoes in complete fermentation than to set, as I saw done, a glass of 1925 Yquem from the cask beside what poured into the vat this year.

I do not know whether one year's white wine really differs less from another than is the case with red-but certainly I could detect very little difference between those of '23, '24, and '25; and other visitors were candid enough to admit the same lack of discrimination.

But not even the least educated palate could fail to distinguish, say, Haut Brion

of 1924 from that of 1925- the biggest of all Bordeaux's both considered to be good years. The 1924 wine was stronger and (at that stage) harsher; the expert with me was all for it, though I found more likeness in the other to what a Haut Brion can be and ought to be and no wine that comes from Bordeaux better deserves the archbishop's saying, who told a temperance advocate that a fine claret was "one of God's good creatures."

merchants in the white wine
trade. For him, Yquem was
in a class by itself and I
leave it at that. But if any-
body will give me Château
d'Arche (or any of the others)
to drink with dessert, I shall
surely not complain. Why
people do not use them, es-
pecially after lunch, instead of
port, is to me a mystery: the
natural wine, innocent
brandy,
brandy, has no stupefying
effect.

of

But when all is said, the glory of Bordeaux lies in its red wines, and if at present they are hard to come by in perfection, time will set that right. a right. The French just now are, more is the pity, in no condition to be lavish in their outlay. And it is only right to remember one main reason for the shortage. The French fought the war on wine; at one of the decisive moments General Pétain insisted that every poilu should have his full litre a day, and that was no small help in surmounting the worst of all dangers that France encountered-the mutiny in 1917.

Also, it is certain that none of us amateurs could find any appreciable difference between the Yquem which we tasted and the produce of its neighbour vineyards-Château Filhot and Château Vigneau. It was It was a relief to be told by the representative of a great firm (having at least as much interest as any one else in the repute of Yquem) that the difference has no relation to the difference in prices. Yquem fetches double or treble what the others do. He himself had a special affection for Château Vigneau, a name little known over here. For my part, I hope I may never forget the Château d'Arche of 1911 which I was given in one hospitable house. It had lost none of the keenness and scented freshness which the French prize in a great white wine the tendency of these products of the over-ripe grape is to become syrupywhich they call madéré-too like a Madeira.

But, since I am setting out other people's wisdom, it is only right that I should quote

If anybody is shocked that one should write such an article as this in praise of a fluid which undoubtedly can make men drunk, the conscientious objector may be asked to consider the part which wine holds in the daily life of the most industrious and sober people in Europe-the French.

No doubt the poilu in time of war, or the average French

household at any time, sees self with the least costly of

little of the choice growths about which I have been writing: but even a little knowledge of France teaches one how much good wine goes unlabelled. Your host in the provinces may give you wine that is delicious, and you ask (as you should) what it is; and you are told that it is simply some old Médoc, bought direct from some small grower-but, of course, kept and kept with care. And Médoc has no monopoly except of the best. Wine is grown all through the Bordelais: quantities of it in Entrè-deux-mers, the flat tongue of land between the tideways of Dordogne and Garonne. This is not highly esteemed. But on the slopes of the right bank of the rivers are many good lesser wines, especially at points opposite the great vineyards on the left bank. Thus, Sainte Croix du Mont, facing Sauternes, gives a wine that I shall drink again whenever I get the chance: and opposite Pauillac, and opposite St Julien, are little nests of good vineyards-as if the seam of favourable soil passed under the broad water.

In short, a visit to Bordeaux gives one useful guidance in the business of providing one

all luxuries. But many will feel, as I do, that it adds to the enjoyment of a wine when you have a picture in memory of the place it comes from: you drink it with affection-at all events, if the associations are pleasant. And this at least I can say, that whoever visits Bordeaux with a few introductions finds himself among people so friendly and welcoming that he cannot fail to remember them with gratitude whenever he drinks Bordeaux wine. Also, he will make acquaintance with a town superb in the beauty of its buildings and full of historic interestabove all, for a native of these islands. Bordeaux fought for centuries to remain English. That, no doubt, ended some five centuries ago. But since then Bordeaux has turned a good many Englishmen, Scots, and Irishmen into citizens of Bordeaux who have even given their names to noble vintages (Léoville Barton, Château Kirwan are two examples, both Irish); and the interest of commerce is certainly supplemented by a kindliness into which perhaps more of ancient tradition enters than those who show it or who receive it often guess.

A STUDY IN STANDARDS.

BY L. I. CRAWFORD.

DON ALEJANDRO MACKENZIE had no heart; there was nothing in his bosom but a bag of pesos. That had been said of him so long ago-for he had been wealthy enough to annoy the envious for many years— that it had passed beyond the realms of jest, and become an axiom to his business associates and the depositors of his bank. Otherwise, they might have said if they could have seen him, as he sat alone in his office one December morning, that here was a man who had not only a heart but a broken

one.

The wire blinds, which excluded the glare of the midsummer sun (for the Republic of San Martin lies south of the Line), showed, mirror-fashion, the legend "Banco de A. Mackenzie y Cia." Behind the banker's silver head as he sat, and so arranged that he might look through it by drawing aside a curtain, was a glass panel, giving upon the main floor of the bank, where, as he knew without needing to verify, a hundred picked clerks drove their quills the more furiously, and the tellers at the long counter handled the gold eagles and broad silver dollars with an enhanced alacrity, for fear of his possible glance. It struck Don Alejandro that they would have been easier in their minds

if they had known how he felt that morning. He wished Julio were back from Europe. He was a comfort, Julio-a good son, and a good banker, too, or Don Alejandro did not know a banker when he saw one. It would have been good to have him by his side at a time like this, when he was feeling, all of a sudden, so-so elderly. Yes, that was it. He was feeling old.

A clerk came in with some papers, and he roused himself to sign. His keen aquiline face, the colour of old ivory, bent over the script as usual (he was a little near-sighted, and would not wear glasses), and he wrote his firm clear signature without speaking. The clerk noticed nothing amiss. When Don Alejandro asked questions, he wanted to know, and when he knew, he asked no questions. But on this occasion Don Alejandro, for the first time in forty years, signed a business document without first mastering the contents. The clerk dexterously blotted off the wet ink, and disappeared without noise through the swing doors.

Old! Well, he was old, though he had never thought much about it before-been too busy to be old. Born in 1809 - why, he would be seventy-five this coming April

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