24 



FARMERS' REGISTER. 



[No.l. 



three men turn by the help of three other levers: 

 this screw tends to press together the thick and 

 heavy plank of the table on which the marc is 

 placed. 



This wine is put away separately, or mixed 

 with the first to give it a deeper color. 



Wishing to have the means of increasing this 

 depth of color, some proprietors cultivate the vari- 

 ety called teinturier the whole merit of which is 

 to produce a wine as black as ink. 



The great value attached to the coloring of the 

 wine proceeds doubtless from the prelerence given 

 by the trade to that which is highest colored, and 

 this preference is itself founded fn part perhaps on 

 the capability of the high colored wines to receive, 

 without its appearing, at least, to the eye, a cer- 

 tain quantity of water. 



Yet, is it really indifferent whether the. wine 

 contain much of the coloring principle or be al- 

 most deprived of it? On this question it. may be 

 observed, that wine as it. acquires age, loses its co- 

 lor and improves in quality, and besides, that many 

 poor wines are very high colored, but that would 

 not prove that it is useless to wine to have color 

 at first: to determine this question it is proper to 

 collect all the facts, reserving the endeavor to as- 

 certain the cause of them afterwards. Wines de- 

 prived of this principle, when first made, easily 

 become thick or acid, and the more certainly the 

 more completely they are deprived of it. When 

 wine becomes thick it loses its alcohol and acquires 

 oil: it becomes acid only by contact with the air. 

 It ceases to be liable to turn acid when it is de- 

 prived of that mucilage, which some chemists 

 have called extractive, considering it as a distinct 

 substance: by this mucilage also wine is capable 

 of becoming thick; the most mucilaginous wines 

 are the most subject to this fault. 



The more coloring principle there is in the 



f rapes, the more tartar also is there in the wine, 

 'he mucilage, the tartar, and the coloring princi- 

 ple are precipitated together, and form the lees. 

 The mucilage is not precipitated in white wines, 

 at least it, is not precipitated either so promptly or 

 so abundantly as in red wines; yet in the first as 

 well as in the last, the tartar is precipitated, 

 whence it may be concluded that the mucilage is 

 precipitated by the coloring principle. In separa- 

 ting from the lees, the wine does not lose its alco- 

 hol, and becomes less and less capable of turning 

 thick or acid. 



These tacts prove that the coloring principle is 

 useful to the preservation of the wine so long as 

 the mucilage is not precipitated; they enable us, 

 besides, if I am not mistaken, to understand more 

 easily, some phenomena which are displayed in 

 the wine, which depend in some measure upon 

 this principle, and which explain, at least, in what 

 manner the color may contribute to the preserva- 

 tion of the wine. 



When, in the spring, the mucilage undergoes a 

 new fermentation, the carbonated hydrogen which 

 is disengaged decomposes a part of the alcohol, 

 and is combined with its constituents in the pro- 

 portions requisite to make oil; the whole quantity 

 of alcohol is diminished, the mucilage puts on an 

 oily appearance, and the wine has become thick. 

 The coloring principle, which is itself without ac- 

 tion on the alcohol, becomes nevertheless an ob- 

 stacle to its decomposition, by fixing, in the muci- 

 lage, to which it is capable of being united, and 



which can even dissolve it, the tartar which ac- 

 companies it, and which tending, as well as sugar, 

 to form alcohol, ought to prevent its decomposition. 

 By being precipitated to the bottom of the casks, 

 carried down by the coloring principle and the tar- 

 tar, the mucilage ceases to be in contact with the 

 air; it has scarcely any fermentation, and the acidi- 

 fication of the wine is more difficult. I submit to 

 the judgement of chemists this theory, incomplete 

 without doubt, false perhaps, and which I offer 

 only with very great and very well founded diffi- 

 dence. 



When no more wine can be produced by the 

 action of the press, a colored liquid is obtained by 

 watering the marc and pressing it again: this 

 makes the piquette which is the ordinary drink of 

 the wine-dressers when they are not supplied by 

 the proprietor. 



Every year at the commencement of the spring, 

 prudent proprietors rack their wine after having 

 fumigated the casks destined to receive it by burn- 

 ing a match made of cloth dipped in sulphur, four 

 centimetres wide by two in length, for each pipe in 

 quantity. The cask in which the match has been 

 burned is left shut close for five days; sometimea 

 aromatic substances are added to the sulphur 

 which forms the match, whence results a per- 

 fumed flavor, an artificial bouquet which is not 

 equally agreeable to all amateurs. Fining the 

 wine with the whites of eggs is practised by only 

 a small number of economical and careful propri- 

 etors. 



The wine of Marcillac, it is said, cannot bear 

 transportation and keep long; this is a mistake. I 

 have drank it at Paris very good, and four or five 

 years old, coming from the hill of Gradels. The 

 wine of the hill of Cru<nt, when made with selec- 

 tion and care, can keep (or twenty years, the ordi- 

 nary term of the ancient Falernian. On this 

 same hill a wine is obtained worth from two to 

 three hundred francs the hectolitre. But an old 

 custom decides peremptorily one of these ques- 

 tions. In the years when the best wine was 

 made, the inhabitants of the place who were in 

 the most easy circumstances, formerly filled a cask 

 with it, from which, after four or five years, they 

 drew successively what they required for their con- 

 sumption, and replaced it afterwards with new 

 wine: this cask became thus inexhaustible, and 

 was called the tmineau perpetuel. Would this 

 custom have existed if the wine would not 

 keep? 



If however the wine of Marcillac has lost in 

 general, something of its old quality, it is, doubt- 

 less, because the cultivators have given up, as not 

 sufficiently productive, the plants with grapes con- 

 taining much saccharine matter, but small and few, 

 to substitute for them vines with grapes less sweet, 

 but large and numerous; and besides because they 

 neglect the means to prevent the wine from be- 

 coming thick or acid, such as racking, [vintage,] 

 fining, and when necessary the addition of a little 

 sugar or boiled must, when the weather has been 

 rainy before or during the vintage, and when the 

 wine is weak. 



From the various qualities of its soil, and the 

 different temperatures of its climate, from the 

 achvity of its inhabitants, from its proximity to 

 lands cultivated in grain, and the facility of ob- 

 taining from them the dung of sheep, preferable 

 in all respects, to the manure 1'rom half rotted 



