176 VINEGAR, CIDER, AND FRUIT-WINES. 



proceed too rapidly and preventing the appearance of other fer- 

 menting processes besides that of acetous fermentation. 



Every vinegar, no matter from what kind of raw material it 

 may have been prepared, acquires a finer odor by storing ; and 

 this is especially the case with wine-vinegar, which, when freshly 

 made, has not an agreeable, but rather an unpleasant and stupe- 

 fying, odor. By storing such vinegar in an apartment in which 

 the ordinary temperature of a living room prevails, it acquires in 

 the course of a few weeks an agreeable bouquet, which, similar to 

 that of wine, increases in fineness for a certain time, and can be 

 preserved unchanged for a long time by excluding the air and 

 storing in a cool room ; finally, however, it decreases. 



Drinkable wine can be profitably used for the manufacture of 

 vinegar only in countries where, in consequence of a very abun- 

 dant harvest, it can be bought at astonishingly low prices, as for 

 instance in Hungary, where a hectoliter (22 imp. gallons) of ordi- 

 nary wine can in some seasons be bought for a few dollars. 

 Otherwise only spoiled or " sick" wines, which are cheap enough, 

 are used for the purpose. 



The term " sick" is generally applied to wines in which altera- 

 tions take place by the activity of a certain ferment, which when 

 progressed to a certain degree renders the wine unfit for a beve- 

 rage. "Turning sour" is, for instance, a sickness frequently 

 occurring in wines poor in alcohol ; it manifests itself by the 

 development of large masses of a certain ferment which quickly 

 destroys the tartaric acid contained in the wine. Another sickness 

 chiefly occurring in red wines is the so-called "turning bitter," 

 the wine, as the term implies, acquiring in a short time by the 

 action of a peculiar ferment such a disagreeable bitter taste as to 

 render it absolutely unfit for drinking. Such wine cannot be 

 used even for vinegar, the latter showing the same disagreeable 

 bitter taste. Wine attacked by what is called "lactic acid de- 

 generation" can be used for the manufacture of vinegar, but 

 yields a" product of very inferior quality, because on the wine 

 being subjected to acetous fermentation the lactic acid contained 

 in it is readily converted into butyric acid, which possesses a dis- 

 agreeable rancid odor completely killing the pleasant aroma of 

 the bouquet substances. There only remains as a material 



