101 



lu the Southeast departments it remains 25, 30 and 40 days; at Narbonnt: 

 it is sometimes left 70 days. If you ask why, when the fermentation in 

 over, and the wine is made, it is thus left upon the lees to clarify in 

 the vat, the answer is, it is the custom ; if you say that there will be 

 great loss, that the head will grow dry and sour, the answer is still 

 the same. 



When the fermentation has gone through the necessary degrees, 

 and the suspended residuum has been expelled to the surface of the 

 fluid, forming the chaplet or head, as it is called ; if there is heat 

 enough in the vat to harden the upper part of the head, and procure 

 a certain siccity which makes it like a crust or solid substance, and 

 if some oily or resinous particles float upwards and make the head 

 compact and closely adhering to the sides of the vat, there is no rea- 

 son why the wine may not be left untouched. So long then as the 

 wine is covered from the air, and there are no openings to favour the 

 evaporation of the alcohol, the thick head serves as v/ell as any lid to 

 protect the fluid beneath. And if the head is so firm as to remain 

 in its place notwithstanding the falling of the wine from the slo70 

 fermentation, the mne beneath will be better than any of the same 

 crop that has been exposed to immediate racking off. However, no 

 wine can remain without injury 30, 40, or 70 days in the vat, without 

 being a bad wine, and the vat too warm. I say a bad wine, because 

 it must be wanting in the saccharine phlegm that holds in solution, 

 or serves to incorporate, the aqueous part with the oily and resinous 

 ones. When this tract or mucilage is plentiful, it will absorb and 

 keep back those oily and resinous particles which must rise and cling 

 to the scum to preserve the latter from mould, and make it fit to pro- 

 tect the liquor from the air. If the warmth of the vat is great, it 

 attenuates these oily particles and the head becomes porous or filmy, 

 unfit to shelter the wine, and acetous f-rmentation begins. On the 

 other hand, when the phlegm and spirit are in an uncommon propor- 

 tion, they make the insensible perspiration so brisk and tumultuou?., 

 that the heat evolved draws from the head a carbonic gas with whicii 

 the wine becomes charged, and is in consequence, harsh, hard and 

 heady, as dangerous for use as it is unpleasant to the palate. 



But wine in France is mostly fermented exposed to the air. The 

 custom is rendered respectable by experience, and by the wisest culti- 

 vators and farmers who reason on all their customs and all the tradi- 

 tions that guide them. I have therefore no great idea of the new 

 method known by the name of the Elizabeth Gervais' Patent, and 



