CHAPTER XLIV 



WINE-MAKING 



'\\ THEN wine is heated, there is first an escape 

 V V of an inflammable vapor that burns with a 

 bluish flame. A person needs only to have seen 

 once this preparation of hot wine to recall that 

 curious flame flickering over the boiling liquid and 

 darting up little blue tongues. Now, this inflam- 

 mable vapor comes from alcohol, a fluid substance 

 that gives to wine its peculiar properties and is 

 hence sometimes called spirits of wine. There are, 

 then, in wine two distinct liquids, one easily redu- 

 cible to vapor and called alcohol, the other slower 

 to vaporize and recognizable as water. This does 

 not mean that the wine has been watered : the water 

 in question is not there as the result of fraud; it 

 belongs naturally to the wine and comes from grapes 

 just as alcohol does. Wine is therefore a natural 

 mixture of a small proportion of alcohol with a 

 great quantity of water. In our ordinary wines 

 the proportion of alcohol for each hundred quarts 

 of liquid varies from nine to fourteen quarts. 



"Wine is made from the juice of grapes. This 

 juice, as it is pressed out of the sweet grapes, has 

 none of the taste or smell peculiar to wine, for it 

 does not yet contain any alcohol ; but it does have an 



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