120 TRANSACTIONS OF THE AMERICAN INSTITUTE. 



grape convention in Connecticut, I have heard men who have had the name 

 of being scientific, say you might just as well add rum to grape juice as 

 cane sugar. Every practical man knows better. I have seen them after 

 all their talk pronounce my sparkling wines the best, when they knew they 

 had additional sugar. At the time I did not know that Liebig had 

 expressed a different opinion ; and knowing from experience that my own 

 opinion would not be of any worth to them, did not offer any. Liebig 

 says: 'It may therefore be sasily understood that we can exercise a 

 most decided influence upon the quality of the juice of the grape by our 

 manner of cultivation — by a judicious choice of manure. We may 

 rationally improve a must rich in ferment (i. e., blood constituents) by the 

 addition of sugar, and it is a matter of perfect indifference that this sugar 

 has been produced in the organism of some other species of plant; or we 

 may add to the expressed juice of our unripe grapes the dried grapes of 

 southern climes. In a scientific point of view, there are real improve- 

 ments which have nothing in them very recondite, very difficult of compre- 

 hension, or objectionable.' Do you not have, sometimes, too much theory ? 

 As in your strawberry question, one says staminate plants grow, the best 

 berries, and another, pistillate varieties. Both are good, and both are 

 strawberries, no matter whether sour or sweet. Would it not be just as 

 right for Mr. Prince to call your sour seedlings sour krout, as for you to 

 pronounce all wines that are sweetened with cane sugar, swill. I'll lay 

 you and Professor Mapes a bottle of my best wine that you both prefer 

 champagne to claret, and leave you to answer." 



Mr. Robinson. — To this last proposition I most distinctly assert that Mr. 

 Middlebrook is mistaken — that I do not prefer champagne to claret. I do 

 prefer any sound wine, however sour, for instance Mottier's Cincinnati 

 " still wine," to any sparkling wine I ever saw, and that, or claret, or 

 Rhine wine, is preferable to any sweetened stuiF ever made. The pure 

 wine is healthy; the sweetened wine is not. The pure wine is very 

 slightly intoxicating; the sugar added to wine is converted into alcohol, 

 and makes it decidedly intoxicating, and liable to produce headache and 

 biliousness. That is why I object to using sugar and grape juice together. 

 If we cannot produce grapes that will make wine without sugar, let us 

 relinquish the attempt to make this a wine producing country. It is only 

 a vitiated taste that prefers sweetened wine. It is a taste that I do not 

 prefer to cultivate. I wish to elevate .American wine above slops, and 

 correct the taste so that people will enjoy the pure juice of the grape. 



Prof. Nash. — Dr. Underbill contends that the cane sugar that he adds to 

 his grape juice is converted into grape sugar by the action of the grapes 

 upon it in the course of fermentation, so that the wine is just as good as it 

 would be if the sugar was produced in the grupes. How is this? 



Mr. Solon Robinson said that Dr. Underbill, and all other manufacturers of 

 beverages called wine, are like all other manufacturers. They make what 

 will sell. If the bad taste of customers requires a sweet driidv that will 

 produce headaches and intoxication, the manufacturers will furnish it. 

 Cane sugar in fruit juice does not change its whole character and become 

 grape sugar. It does make rum by fermentation without undergoing any 

 unnatural change. The public buy and use such wine because they do not 



