406 
If the vessel is too large to conveniently fill with water, use a 
more concentrated solution, and wash the sides every now and again 
by using a broom; this will extract much colour and resinous 
matter from the wood. 
To season new oak casks for export, pour into them a bucket 
of hot water, with a handful of washing soda, and turn about for 
four days; then run this out and wash twice with fresh water; 
then pour some good sound lees into them and sulphur heavily, and 
after two days wash again and sulphur, and the cask is ready to 
receive the most delicate wine. 
CLEAN CASKS. 
It may be said that wine making commences at the moment 
the ripe grapes reach the cellar and the berries are crushed and 
separated from their stalks. Preparatory to vintage, and before the 
first bunch of grapes is picked, the wine grower should have all his 
casks thoroughly overhauled, examined, scraped, rinsed out, brushed, 
and sulphured. 
Of the several diseases that affect wine, mouldiness and aceti- 
fication can, in almost every instance, be traced back to dirty and 
tainted casks, and acetification, lactic fermentation, or the mannitic 
disease, ropiness, etc., to defective fermentation. In every case of 
disease of wine, it may be said prevention is easy, and cure very 
often beyond practicable reach. 
For that reason it is absolutely necessary to secure the utmost 
cleanliness of all vessels—grape-mill, press, hose and pumps—used 
for handling the juice of the grape at the various stages of wine 
making. 
Casks and tubs may be deeply tainted with the most trouble- 
some germs of maladies of wine and at the same time appear clean 
on the surface. 
A mere scrubbing with a hard brush and water will often clean 
a cask superficially, but the meshwork of mycelial threads of moulds, 
which are in reality its growing roots, and which have penetrated 
more or less deeply into the pores of the wood, have not by that 
simple method of serubbing been destroyed, and a few days after 
such a superficial cleaning the mould will creep out of the wood 
as bad as ever before. 
When breaking some old cask down, we often notice on the 
inside of the staves some hollow blisters caused during the process 
of bending the staves; behind these lurk the germs of lactie or 
acetic fermentation as well as that of other diseases destructive to 
wine, and the best way of getting at them is by steaming. That 
part of the cask immediately around the bunghole should receive 
