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WHAT IS WINE 
BY A. DUPRE, Ph.D., 
Lecturer on Chemistry, Westminster Hospital. 
H AYING* in two former communications confined our atten- 
tion to the subject of wine in general, we may now proceed 
to examine some of its many varieties, employing the knowledge 
previously gained to obtain some insight into their more pro- 
minent chemical characteristics. 
We will select for the purpose the principal varieties imported 
into England, and as one wine must necessarily be placed first, 
Rhine wine may perhaps most fitly occupy this post of honour, 
since its finest growths are almost universally admitted to be of 
unrivalled excellence. 
Rhine wine (Rhenish wine). — This name was originally con- 
fined to wines grown in the Rhine-gau, but as several of the 
wines produced in surrounding districts were found to possess a 
very similar character, they have been included in the above 
general term. Such is, for example, the case with the wines 
grown near the town of Hochheim, lying a little to the south 
of the Rhine-gau on the right bank of the Main, which rank 
among the best Rhine wines, and have, indeed, supplied us with 
the generic term of Hock by which we designate all better 
sorts of Rhine wine. 
The Rhine-gau stretches along the right bank of the Rhine 
from Biberich to a little below Riidesheim. It is about twelve 
miles long by six miles broad, and its inhabitants are almost 
exclusively engaged in the cultivation of the vine. The 
average annual production of the Rhine-gau, including, how- 
ever, Hochheim, may be taken at about 3,000,000 gallons. The 
quantity produced on the whole German part of the river rises 
to something like 26,000,000 gallons. 
All Rhine wines are white, or rather pale yellow, with, 
perhaps, the single important exception of that grown near 
Asmannshausen, which is red. The most celebrated are those 
of Schloss Johannisberg, Steinberg, Marcobrun, Riidesheimer 
