486 
®n Wine. 
med milk, beat up with the white of one egg, and then gradually 
with a pint of the wine, for a quarter cask. 
No wine should be bottled, till it has been fined, and till it has 
remained four or five years in the cask. If the high flavoured 
red wines stay longer in the cask, they lose colour and flavour. 
The change the wine undergoes in the bottle (called sickness, 
which continues in newly bottled port wine from four to six 
months according to the fullness of the bottle) depends, if the 
bottle be well corked, on the space between the cork and the 
wine ; for this is all the air the wine has to act upon. If the bottle 
be filled nearly up to the cork, little change will be made in the 
wine : hence if wine be bottled, that space ought to be left greater 
in new than in old wine. By thus acting upon the included air, 
a gradual mellowing of the wine takes place, and the tartar with 
a small quantity of the colouring matter subsides. In red wines, 
the peculiar flavour is contained chiefly in the colouring matter, 
which exposure to cold precipitates i- that colouring matter, de- 
pends usually, not always, on the skin of the grape. 
No cork should be used, till its soundness be examined ; till 
it be well boiled in clean water ; it should be driven by a ma- 
chine under the direction of a man who is by trade a bottler of 
liquors ; the bottle should be placed on its side. Never bottle your 
own wine or leave it to your servants, if you can help it. Remem- 
ber, they who make it their business to do any thing, do it better 
than others who have but occasional practice. 
Having thusmade en passant, some general, and I hope useful 
observations, I return to Malmsey, which the Trench (who have 
no wine so good) call Malvoisie. 
It is too rich to drink alone. From one twentieth part to 
one tenth part of old. Malmsey, very greatly improves the com- 
mon Madeira wine. The vinotihnto, a coloured wine, a Tent 
wine of Madeira, is I believe , a species of Malmsey not old 
enough to have yet lost its colour. I consider this as the old 
sacramental wine of the church of England. 
Common Madeira may be greatly improved, and is so when 
wanted for immediate drinking, by a small quantity, (a desert 
spoonful to a bottle) of well clarified syrup of the finest loaf su- 
gar. I believe in addition to this, it is not unusual to put a tea- 
spoonful of a filtered vinous solution of isinglass in good Madeira. 
These give a fullness, a richness,' and a silkiness to the wine* 
that to my palate is very grateful. But the isinglass is apt to 
precipitate on standing and exposure to the air. 
