WINE-MAKIN<; IN CALIFORNIA. 301 



East. Our genial climate will give us a must, rich enough in 

 sugar, and light enough in acid, to make a good, saleable 

 wine every season, and it would be foolish indeed to resort to 

 additions of sugar when the pure grape must is so much 

 cheaper. While I think the practice of using pure grape 

 sugar is perfectly harmless in Europe and the East, and even 

 necessary to make a good, sound wine, to use it here would 

 be folly, as we can make it without such additions, and fur- 

 nish a cheaper and better article thereby. Here again, Cali- 

 fornia can excel the world. 



DEFECTIVE FERMENTATION". 



It is or rather has been, frequently the case in this State 

 especially in some seasons, when the summers were extraor- 

 dinarily dry, followed by very hot weather during the vintage, 

 that wines, especially the red, were "stuck" as the common 

 expression is during fermentation; that is, fermentation set in 

 very violently, running up the temperature in the fermenting 

 tanks to over a hundred degrees, then suddenly stopped, 

 when the must yet retained from three to eight per cent, of 

 free sugar. In 1885, this was especially the case, and per- 

 haps one-sixth of all the wines in certain sections did not 

 "go through" as the common expression is. 



The cause of this can perhaps be found in the long period 

 of drought, when the grapes at last ripened suddenly and 

 rather unnaturally, with many shrivelled berries, especially in 

 the Zinfandel. The product was sluggish, and the fermen- 

 tation properties not sufficiently active to carry fermentation 

 through evenly and correctly. Add to this very hot weather, 

 and the mistaken idea which seemed to prevail, that the 

 most rapid fermentation was also the most thorough. The 

 mash, generally confined under the abominable perforated 

 head?, or still worse, left exposed without stirring, rapidly 

 rose to a degree of heat above, which amounted to more 

 than boiling, killed the germs of fermentation, and turned 



