■4jS8 
On the Cultivation of the Vine } 
the wine a little. Sulphuring is attended with the very 
valuable advantage of preventing it becoming acetous. 
Though it be difficult to explain this effect, it appears to 
me that it cannot be conceived but by considering it under 
two points of view : 
1st, By the help of the sulphurous gas the atmospheric 
air is displaced, which otherwise would become mixed 
with the wine, and determine acid fermentation. 
2d, Some atoms of a violent acid, which opposes and 
overcomes the development of a weaker acid, are pro- 
duced. 
The antients composed a kind of mastic with pitch, a 
fiftieth part of wax, and a little salt and incense, which 
they employed for burning in their casks. This opera- 
tion was denoted by the words jncare dolia , and the wines 
thus prepared were known under the names of vinajoica- 
ta. They are mentioned by Plutarch and Hippocrates. 
It was, perhaps, in consequence of this custom, that the 
fir was consecrated by the antients to Bacchus : at pre- 
sent, an agreeable perfume is communicated to weakened 
red wine by making it remain over a stratum of the shav- 
ings of fir. Baccins says that the casks ought to be pitch- 
^ed ( picare dolia) during the dog days. 
On the Clarification of Wines . 
2d, Besides the operation of sulphuring wines, there 
is another, no less essential, called clarification. It con- 
sists, in the first place, in drawing off the wine from the 
lees, which requires certain precautions, and in then dis- 
engaging it from all the principles suspended or weakly 
dissolved in it; so that nothing may be retained but the 
spiritous and incorruptible principles alone. These opera- 
tions are even performed before that of sulphuring, which 
is only a continuation of them. 
The first of these operations is called drawing off, 
