58 DISTILLING COGNAC FROM SUGAR AND GRAPE JUICP:. 



second category, only there is too much sugar addfd, which 

 ^ives it an unpleasant taste. Four gallons of a light spirituous 

 wine yield one gallon of cognac by distillation. It is a very 

 great mistake to think that good cognac can only be distilled 

 from a highly palatable, dear, and heavy wine. The best French 

 cognac is really fabricated from "petit vin " obtained from 

 grape juice and an addition of a watery sohition of beetroot 

 (sweet turnip) sugar. The wine must of course be healthy and 

 of a good flavour, but it can be sour and very poor of extract. 

 If there is much sugar in the wine it will cause the production 

 of caramel in the still, and the cognac will smell of rum. Use 

 the cheap cane sugar in addition to some grape juice for the pro- 

 duction of a healthy, light, and spirituous wine ; distil cognac 

 from this and export it — in other words, turn the cheap cane 

 ;sugar into dear cognac. Let me give some figures derived from 

 experiments. One ton of sugar at £8 12s., with two tons of 

 grapes at £16 8s., gives 1584 gallons, or twenty-seven hogsbeads 

 of good wine, containing 10 per cent, of alcohol. The gallon of 

 this wine costs the producer 3^d. ; four gallons are 14d., and 

 these four gallons yield one gallon of good cognac, which will 

 bring at least 5s. in Europe, so that the £25 costs will bring a 

 return of nearly £100. DistiUing, shipping, duty, &c., will, 

 of course, reduce the profit, but still there is life in the idea, as 

 5s. is a very low price for one gallon of cognac, and very likely 

 more could be obtained if the prices for sugar and grapes 

 unavoidably rise. The following points must be borne in 

 anind : — 1. A sugar solution does not ferment well without the 

 addition of grape juice. 2. The sour grape juice yields, by 

 fermentation, the sour esters of the wine, which go over into 

 the cognac by distillation, imparting to it the proper flavour. 

 3. Yeast, produced by the fermentation of a really good and pure 

 wine, if added to a watery sugar solution, mixed with grape 

 juice, produces a wine coming near in good qualities to the wine 

 from which it originally was derived. This fact was found out 

 only lately in France, and also in South Germany, as can be 

 read in the "Pharmaceutical Journal" of 1889. 4. The 

 fermentation of the wine must not be hurried on by heat, as a 

 quickly-fermented wine is destitute of a good flavour as well as 

 ihe cognac derived from it. 5. By drying the grapes and 



