246 MEAD. 



to Madeira and other Spanish wines, and also to 

 some of the French wines, would destroy Burgundy. 

 If there be an excess of fermentation the scientific 

 operator will regulate, check or suspend it, by 

 skimming, racking, fining. If skimming and rack- 

 ing do not succeed, recourse must be had to 

 fining, which may be effected by isinglass, in the 

 proportion of about an ounce to 100 gallons. 

 The isinglass must be beaten, for a few days, with 

 a whisk in a small quantity of the wine, till com- 

 pletely attenuated. This solution must then be 

 well stirred into the cask of wine, which in about 

 a week will become fine and fit for being racked 

 off. This fining is accomplished by the union of 

 the isinglass with what is called the tannin of the 

 wine. Fining may also be effected by stumming, 

 i. e. by burning in a close vessel containing a small 

 part of the wine a brimstone rag, at the rate of a 

 dram of sulphur to thirty gallons ; and when con- 

 sumed, rolling the cask about for a quarter of an 

 hour, that the wine may absorb as much as possi- 

 ble of the sulphuric acid gas. This being done, 

 the cask is to be filled up with the remainder of 

 the wine, and bunged down. In this process the 

 sulphuric acid or its oxygen unites with the ex- 

 tractive matter or soluble leaven, which being 

 thereby rendered insoluble is precipitated to the 

 bottom, as I before observed. If wines be per 



