490 
On Wine . 
is well worth drinking alone ; and when bottled at a proper age, 
is a fine wine ; equal if not superior to the best red Port. 
Bourdeaux wine : Claret. This last is the English name : the 
French call it Bourdeaux wine. Thirty years ago, when what 
would be called passable Claret was bought at Bourdeaux for 800 
livres the Barique, the London purchasers gave 2500 livres. 
The best qualities of Claret, are La Fitte, Chateau-margo, St. Emi- 
lien and St. Julien, vineyards within the district of Medoc, near 
Bourdeaux. 
Good Claret, (seldom imported here) is a fine wine. It is among 
the best wines to sit down to, as a bottle of it may be drank without 
intoxication, and the odour and the flavour of the finest kinds, are 
both extremely agreeable. But even good Claret will bring on a 
fit of the gout, with persons liable to that disorder sooner than al- 
most any other wine. The better the wine, the less apt is it to 
produce this effect. 
For the continental market, Claret is mixed with juice of fresh 
violets and hermitage : for the English market, Brandy is added 
to it ; and the wine is the better for the addition. 
Young men, that is, men on the right side of forty, may drink. 
Claret with impunity, if they attend to moderation, and have n© 
disposition to gout or stone. Otherwise, they had better keep 
close to Madeira and Sherry. 
Claret should be kept in a cellar, on the side ; in the tempera- 
lure of about 50°. The flavour, will gradually dissipate from the 
cask, and too much warmth, will be apt to sour the wine. 
Burgundy . I consider this when good, which is a rare quality 
here, as the best of the French wines. It is of good body, but ex- 
tremely delicate and hard to be kept. The flavour is higher than 
either Hermitage or Claret. I have kept it in bottles three 
years in wet sand in a good cellar of temperature 55°. For want 
of care in bringing it over here — from the corks being permitted 
to grow dry — and probably also from the inferiority of the wine 
imported, it is generally 44 pricked,** or with a tendency to acid de- 
composition, in which state, it is not easy to find a more unwhole- 
some beverage. 
Champagne. This is either tinted ( oeil de perdrix') or colour- 
less : either mousseux sparkling, or non mousseux , still Cham- 
pain. It is a thin wine of delicate flavour. The sparkling Cham- 
pain, is made so, by closing it up in very strong tight casks, be- 
fore the fermentation is fully over. In this state, it is made to 
