The Story-Book of the Fields 



wine the proportion of alcohol varies from 

 9 to 14 per cent. 



Wine is made from the juice of grapes. 

 This juice when extracted from the sweet 

 grape has neither the scent nor the taste of 

 wine, because it then contains no alcohol ; 

 but it has a sweet and pleasant flavour, 

 which gives the grape its value as a table 

 fruit. The grapes owe this taste to a kind 

 of sugar. If you examine carefully the 

 raisins that are sold by the grocers you will 

 see on their surface small white specks, 

 which crackle when bitten and have a sweet 

 taste. These specks are tiny lumps of sugar 

 which have come through as the grape dried. 

 So there is sugar in grapes. 



This sugar is precisely the substance at the 

 expense of which the alcohol is produced. 

 That which was sugar in the fresh juice of 

 grapes is alcohol in the same juice which has 

 fermented and become wine. We will shortly 

 consider how this comes to pass. 



The vintage is first crushed by men stamp- 

 ing on it in great vats, and then the mixture 

 of juice and skins is left to itself. This liquid 

 mixture soon becomes hot and begins to boil, 

 sending out great bubbles of gas as if it were 

 warmed by a fire. This process is called 



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