BOOK XIV. M. 83-xii. 86 



casks, they plunge the casks in water till midwinter 

 passes and re^ular cold weather sets in. There is 

 moreover anotlier kind of raisin-wine known in the 

 Province of Xarbonne, and there particularly to the 

 \'ocontii, under the name of ' sweet wine.' For the 

 purpose of this they keep the grape hanging on the 

 vine for an exceptional time, with the foot-stalk 

 twisted. Some make an incision in the actual shoot 

 as far as the pith and others leave the grapes to dry 

 on tiled roofs, the grapes in all cases being those from 

 the helvennaca vine. To these some add a wine called 

 in Greek ' strained wine,' to make which the grapes 

 are dried in the sun for seven days raised seven feet 

 from the ground on hurdles, in an enclosed place 

 where at night they are protected from damp ; on 

 the eighth day they are trodden out, and this process 

 produces a wine of extremely good bouquet and 

 tiavour. Another wine of the sweet class is called 

 honey-wine ; it dilfers from mead because it is made 

 from must, in the proportion of thirty pints of must 

 of a dry quaUty to six pints of honey and a cup of 

 salt, this mixture being brought just to the boil ; 

 this produces a dry-flavoured liquor. But among 

 these vnrieties ought also to be placed the hquor 

 called in Greek 'protropiim ," the name given by 

 some people to must that flows down of its own 

 accord before the grapes are trodden. This as 

 soon as it flows is put into special flagons and allowed 

 to ferment, and afterwards left to dry for forty days 

 of the summer that foUows, just at the rise of the 

 Dog-star. 



XII. The liquors made from grape-skins soaked in A/ter-mnes. 

 water, called by the Greeks seconds and by Cato and 

 ourselves after-wine, cannot rightly be styled wines, 



243 



