240 
ON COLONIAL WINES. 
malic acid, sugar, oxide of iron, and potash, with 
generally a small quantity of lime. These are the 
principal, but by no means the only, ingredients of 
pure wine. The bouquet, as it is called, is a true 
aether, and is formed by the action of the acids on the 
alcohol in a nascent state, and the flavouring principle 
of the grape, from which each distinctive bouquet is 
derived. The iron, potash, phosphoric acid, and the 
lime are taken up from the earth ; the elements of the 
other acids, sugar, alcohol, &c, from the air and water. 
A glass of genuine wine contains a varying quantity, 
generally about one -fifth or a little more of its bulk, 
of proof spirit and four-fifths water, when not 
fortified. 
WINE IN EELATION TO THE HUMAN SYSTEM. 
Wine, not must*, fortified to any considerable ex- 
tent, say 5 per cent, or upwards, produces in its action 
on the human system an effect somewhere between 
that of pure wine, and brandy, or some less pure spirit, 
diluted with water. Hence the headiness of fortified 
wines. The Portuguese, and probably the general 
Spanish, practice of adding 2 or 3 per cent, of proof spirit 
to the fermenting musts, in order to arrest a too great 
production of spirit and waste of body, is a totally 
different affair; because the added spirit merely 
destroys the albumen and other nitrogenous matters, and 
along with them is itself deposited as an almost insoluble 
compound, the murk ; thus leaving the wine with a 
material to feed upon — a little of the natural sugar of 
the grape — and less spirit than it would otherwise 
* Must, the unfermented, or only partially fermented, and new 
juice of the grape. 
