WINE-MAKING IN CALIFORNIA. 271 



mellowness which a good red wine ought also to have, is sel- 

 dom found. While I fully recognize the importance of good 

 color and astringency in red wines, I hope to show my readers 

 how they can make them with a sufficiency of these, and also 

 have them of good bouquet and mellow. The general practice 

 in this State has been formerly, to crush the grapes, put them 

 into six feet high fermenting tanks, and then let them work 

 out their own salvation. I have often been in wineries that 

 looked more like slaughter houses, with the purple juice bub- 

 bling over the top, a crusfof a foot thick had formed on top, 

 which had become dry and mouldy, was swarming with vine- 

 gar flies, and in many cases, maggots were crawling around 

 lively. When the fermentation was over, the whole mass was 

 often left for a week yet, as the manipulator thought to gain for 

 it color and tannin, and become more saleable thereby. That 

 under such treatment decomposition and acidification had 

 often set in, can hardly surprise any one. Yet these were 

 often, and even in the majority of cases, so called " old skill- 

 ful wine makers " from France or Italy, who felt insulted if 

 their practice, which their fathers and grandfathers had fol- 

 lowed before them, was not considered perfect. If told that 

 five days of thorough fermentation would extract all the color 

 and tannin, and make a deeper colored and more lively wine 

 than theirs, they would not believe it, had it been demonstrat- 

 ed before their eves. I know of large establishments, even 

 now, which make from 200,000 to half a million of gallons of 

 Claret every year, who keep their fermenting rooms at such a 

 temperature at night, that suffocated rats are strewn about the 

 floor in the morning. And yet the wine made under such 

 conditions is sent all over the Country as " California Claret/* 

 Is it a wonder that it has a bad name and reputation ? 



Most of the clarets are now fermented under so called 

 ' 'false" or perforated tops; that is, after the crushed grapes are 

 put in, a perforated top which fits on a rim or cleats nailed to 



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