Dry Bed Wines and Their Treatment. 733 



tendency now is towards a wine almost sweet. There lies a delicacy 

 of definition tliat it is laard to do justice to with the pen. 

 It can only roughly be gauged by the saccharometer. No 

 wine in which the saccharometer sinks below the deg. will 

 be too sweet for export, though it may yet be fruity. There 

 must be a sufficient roughness in the wine to precipitate the 

 albuminous matters still in suspension, as well as a safeguard to 

 protect the wine from its deficiency in fixed acids. Here the press- 

 ings may be of use. If they are racked after about the first week, 

 and then a few weeks later begin to clear, they can be of value in 

 giving that roughness that is required. It must not be overlooked 

 that the pressings are inferior to the other wine. If they are stringy, 

 stalky, or bitter this must not be confounded with roughness which 

 is simply tannin. It would be better to buy tannin and add it to 

 the wine to supply the deficiency rather than add pressings that are 

 stalky. This stalkiness seldom completely disappears, and often 

 spoils an otherwise palatable wine. To summarise, let the grower 

 discard his thinnest wines and keep them for Clarets, etc., his 

 sweetest wines and fortify them for Port, and his pressings and 

 faulty wines to distil them, and only keep his fullest, roundest 

 and best for the export type. He must aim at a high grade and 

 keep to it, and rather make other use of his wines than render 

 them unsuitable for a market that is capable of extension, provided 

 only the type be always of a class to suit the consumer, and not 

 merely the overflow from an overstocked cellar. It is to the grower's 

 own interest to arrive at uniformity, so as not to have the cream 

 taken by the buyer and the second quality only left upon his 

 hands. 



