150 MASSACHUSETTS AGRICULTURE. 



but from a great variety of fruits and berries indigenous to our 

 own country. And an article can thus be produced nearly, if 

 not quite, equal to the best imported wines, and far superior 

 to the adulterated article as we -commonly receive it. 



Several original elements are necessary in order to produce a 

 sound, wholesome and good wine. These substances are sugar, 

 water, tartaric acid' and mucilage. Besides these, there are 

 other substances, not positively necessary, but usually existing 

 in the juice of grapes, which give the wine its color and flavor, 

 such as gluten, potash, tannin, aroma, malic acid and a coloring 

 principle. Perfect wine cannot be made without the presence, 

 in considerably definite proportions, of the four first-named arti- 

 cles. If the must, let it be the juice of grapes or any other 

 fruit, is deficient in one of these substances, it must be supplied, 

 or good wine cannot be made. If any one of them is in excess, 

 it must be reduced or neutralized. Foreign grapes, all of which 

 are varieties of a single genus, or species, contain the wine- 

 making principles or ingredients in just about the right pro- 

 portions. Some varieties contain more sugar and some more 

 acid than others ; but the variation from the proper quantities 

 of each is so little that it is very seldom that any additions have 

 to be made. The juice of the grapes is expressed and manu- 

 factured into wine at once. In our own country the juices of 

 all our native grapes are deficient in sugar and have an excess 

 of acid, hence it becomes necessary to dilute the acid principle 

 by adding water and to supply the saccharine principle by adding 

 sugar. A perfect must should contain about seventy-five parts 

 of water, twenty parts of sugar and five parts of acid, mucilage, 

 coloring matter, &c. Only about six one-thousandth of one part 

 in a hundred are acid. 



FOREIGN GRAPES AND FOREIGN WINE. 



There are a multitude of varieties of foreign grapes, from 

 whicli are manufactured all those choice wines. Port, Madeira, 

 Rhenish, Moselle, Champagne, &c., that come to us the purest 

 and best foreign wines. But they are all the offspring of a 

 single species of the grape-plant, the Vitis Vitifera, of Linnaius. 

 From this single species are derived all the varieties of culti- 

 vated foreign grapes of whatever name. And there is a striking 

 similarity in the natural elements of the fruit, or the wine- 



