On Colonial Wines. 59 
wines, which I wish to bring before this Society. These have 
very little or nothing to do with the awards of the jurors. 
It was the circumstance of my position as chairman of the 
jury, and of my having a large and commodious private 
oftice as Special Commissioner for Juries, thatfurnished me with 
a favourable opportunity of watching and experimenting on 
the very numerous and varied specimens of wines placed at 
my disposal. 
The experiments which I made, and the inferences drawn 
from them, do not properly belong to the general report of 
‘the Section, because they were made privately by mysellt, 
and primarily to satisfy my own curiosity, and as such, I 
now respectfully bring them before you, and request you 
to consider them as belonging to the class of objects embraced 
by the Society. 
The reason of my instituting the inquiries I am about to 
detail at some length, was this. J know that however well 
satisfied individuals may be’ of the durability of our wines, 
the public mind is full of the notion that they will not keep, 
that if you draw a cork out of a bottle, you must either 
drink the contents at once, or lose them ; especially in the 
case of white wines, for one of two things, it used to be said, 
will certainly occur ; either it will turn to vinegar in a day 
in hot weather, or will become thick and discoloured and 
“nasty.” A little more favourable opinion used to be enter- 
tained of the ved varieties; but even they were some way 
implicated with the white, and both colours shared the same 
judgment from the ladies, viz, if you open a bottle you 
must at once drink it or lose it. It was then to this wide- 
spread and most injurious opinion (and to my mind most 
ill-founded) of the perishable nature of our native wines, 
that I addressed myself under circumstances which were 
calculated either to establish it, or utterly destroy it in the 
minds of the intelligent and unprejudiced. 
The jury commenced examining wines in the latter weeks 
of December, and by the end of January had completed the 
main body of the white samples, amounting to more than 
one hundred, from various parts of Victoria, New South 
Wales, a few from Graften and Queensland, - South Australia, 
and Western Australia. Obviously these samples stood high 
in the estimation of their owners, or they would not have 
been sent for exhibition. Presumably, objects are not ex- 
hibited for the purpose of bringing discredit on the owner 
or producer. I therefore take the liberty of assuming that 
these exhibits were the very best their owners possessed. 
