WINE CULTURE IN N. S. WALES. 933 
injures the public taste ; and as a wine on the down grade rapidly 
grows worse, the wine industry suffers to a very mate1ial extent 
from the rubbish held for sale and put into consumption through 
the absence of a modern Distillery Act. Bad wine is good wine 
spoilt, and entails a loss upon its unfortunate producer, all the 
greater the longer it is kept. Here again, when the Act permits 
it, there will be a field for co-operation by the establishment of 
local distilleries to separate the alcohol, and of a central distillery 
to rectify and make the brandy. Furthermore, were the Distil- 
lery Act altered, and a suggestion recently put forth carried into 
effect, that there should be a remission of excise duty on brandy 
made from grapes only within the Colony of 5s. per gallon, the 
expansion of wine farming would take place immediately by the 
planting of large vineyar ‘ds of the true br andy grape, the La 
Folle. 
DEFECTS OF WINE MAKING. 
The difficulties of making wines in small cellars are so great 
that a co-operative effort to establish central wine cellars should 
commend itself to all who are outside the range of existing large 
cellars that purchase grapes. The first process of manufacture is, 
in the generality of the N. 8. Wales cellars, performed with 
all due care as to cleanliness, but the ensuing cellar management 
is where too frequently carelessness comes in. The time to rack, 
regularity in filling up, the use of suitable wine for filling, and 
the thousand details of skilled management are all liable to un- 
conscious neglect. The small maker has so many calls upon his 
time that he forgets and the mischief is done. The cask stock is 
liable to special neglect until the musty, mousey flavour of 
decaying wood pervades all the wines of the cellar, and too 
frequently, strange to say, the proprietor is entirely unconscious 
of it. The “sour sweet” of careless fermentation is also 
frequently met with, and is due to the want of means of checking 
the rapid rise of temperature in the fermenting must. In the 
brewing industry this control is regarded as a cardinal point of 
success, and special appliances have long been in use. In the 
English system of brewing cold water is circulated through pipes 
immersed in the wort, and under the German plan the whole 
fermenting chamber is kept at a low temperature by refrigerating 
machinery. The advanced wine-making establishments of America 
and some in Europe are introducing artificial cold, but so costly 
an installation can only come within the range of large and central 
cellars. Some little stir has been made in the use of pure cultures 
of wine ferments, also a step in the wake of the brewers, and as 
in the experience of the latter, the theoretical advantages are not 
always reaped in practice. The preferable method is probably to 
carefully pick berries of even ripeness, to cull out decayed and 
