THE ART OF WINE MAKING. 231 



At Bordeaux, and in many other districts of 

 France, the transvasing is never performed but 

 with a north, or northwesterly wind. It is be- 

 lieved that the air deprives the wines of a portion 

 of their delicate flavour, and particularly when the 

 wind is at the south or southeast. 



The winds at east or west, are, at Bordeaux, 

 believed to exercise a less unfavourable influence 

 on the quality of the wines. There are many 

 who ascribe to the moon an important influence, 

 and are particularly careful not to agitate or 

 work among their wines during the first and 

 last quarters of the luminary. But transvasing 

 alone will not be sufficient to extract from the 

 wines all those substances which tend to acidity. 

 We are obliged frequently to employ other 

 means to remedy the evil, such as clarifying by 

 fish glue, burning sulphur papers in the cask, all 

 of which tend to precipitate the hostile foreign 

 substances held iii suspension, and thus lessen 

 their deleterious influence. Fish glue is gene- 

 rally the means used to clarify the wines. The 

 mode of using the ingredient, is to cut it into 

 particles, and dissolve them in a small portion of 

 the same wine on which it is intended they shall 

 act. When thus immersed, they swell, soften, 

 and dissolve, forming a glutinous mass, which is 

 poured into the cask to be clarified, which must 

 be again rolled from side to side, and so shaken 

 that the whole may be completely mixed. There 

 are many vintners who whip up their wines 

 with small birch rods, till they are covered with 

 a thick froth or foam, which they collect careful- 

 ly and take out of the cask. The dissolved in- 



