54 THE VINE AND CIVILISATION. 
‘Monte Fiascone is of fine aroma and intoxicating; it is 
grown near Lake Bolsena, and is called ‘ Est, Est,’ from its 
having caused the death of a bibulous German bishop, named 
Defoucris, whose valet arrived in advance of his master at 
Monte Fiascone, and approved of the wine. The bush is a 
bunch of evergreens, hung up over the entrance to a house to 
show that wine is sold there. Defoucris’s valet wrote under 
the bush ‘Est, est,’ meaning very good. The good bishop 
soon followed, found it so palatable, drank too much, and 
repeating the experiment too often, drank himself dead. His 
valet wrote his epitaph as follows: 
« «Est, est,’ propter nimium ‘est’ 
Dominus meus mortuus ‘ est.’”” 
which may be rendered — 
« «pis, tis, from t h ‘’tis’ 
My master dead ‘is.’” 
* Sicily produces wine in great abundance; the best red 
wine grows on Mount Etna: also Syracuse produces, over its 
smouldering remains, a red Muscadine, equal if not superior 
to any other. Messina furnishes much wine for exportation, 
and Marsala, when obtained without the admixture of bad 
Sicilian brandy, is an agreeable dinner wine, something like 
second class Madeira. 
‘¢ Hungary, whose wines enjoy a well merited fame, pro- 
duces the fine Tokay and others. ‘The making of wine is very 
coarsely carried on by the peasantry. When the grapes are 
too abundant for the operation of pressing, they put them into 
sacks and tread them out, and the contents of the sacks are 
put by for distillation. The Hungarians reckon sixty varie- 
ties of grapes, and make thirty varieties of wine, the most 
celebrated of which is Tokay, called the king of wines, the 
