256 GILVPE-CULTURE AND WINE-MAKING. 



wine-acid lime, forming itself to a residue in case they remain 

 standing upright, or are laid down after being corked up. 



2. If it contains gypsum jMrticks, it will, being used to the must, 

 impart to the produced wine a disagreeable taste. 



It hardly needs mention that neither water from still-standing 

 ponds nor from foul wells should be used. In a very wet fall, 

 the quantity of dew or rain-water entering the must depends 

 greatly on the form of the grapes. "We shall look a little closer 

 into the quantity and the effect of this water. For instance : a 

 grape, if plucked on a warm day, and accurately weighed after 

 this, then put into a vessel filled with water for a few minutes 

 and weighed over again, will show a gain of 8 to 12 per cent, 

 water, according to the distance of the berries from one another. 

 If, therefore, the vintage takes place after a rain or a heavy dew, 

 from 8 to 12 per cent, of water is transferred to the tubs by the 

 grapes themselves : 100 pounds of grapes, on an average, how- 

 ever, giving not more than 70 pounds of wine, it is evident that, 

 as all the added water remains in the must, this 8 or 12 per cent, 

 of the weight of the grapes forms from ll-j to 18 per cent, of the 

 weight of the wine. In case such a must, as is usual in rainy 

 seasons, holds besides a sugar content of 16 per cent., this will be 

 reduced in the first case to 13, in the latter to 12 per cent., and 

 produce in both but an inferior quality of wine ; while, if the 

 clouds have opened upon the fall, it will be but necessary to add 

 but 3 or 4 per cent, of grape-sugar to produce not only a wine 

 equally as good as without rain, but really a much better article, 

 because more palatable and mild, and, besides, from 11 to 17 per 

 cent, more in quantity. Greatly increased will this quantity of 

 water be if the gathering takes place on a rainy day, because then 

 the rain falls also into the open receiving-tubs. 



Knowing by experience that the perfectly -matured grapes pos- 

 sess all the ingredients necessary for the production of the most 

 superior wines, in proportions that suffer no change whatever, 

 and learning by the exterior form of the grape that to attain this 

 required end the most matured ones must only be gathered dur- 

 ing sunny, warm days, a gathering, during a rain, of only half- 

 ripe grapes will therefore, in one point, only tend to profit by the 

 misproportion of the too much prevailing acid to the water and 

 sugar being at least improved, however not regulated — a mispro- 

 portion vastly more annoying than that of a low content of sugar. 



We might therefrom long ago have drawn the lesson to add 

 ourselves the wanting water to the acid must whenever the clouds 

 fail to send it. 



Sugar contained in the Orape, and the Must-Scale. 



The sugar contained in the grapes in a dissolved state appears 

 in the raisins in the shape of white grains, essentially being the 

 same kind as that crystallizing in the honey when it dries up. 



