311 
PRACTICAL PAPERS—VINE CULTURE, ETC. 
FERMENTATION. 
The crushed mass, with or without the stems, is next thrown 
into vats and allowed to ferment. The vats are large casks, 
generally without bulge, the largest at the bottom and open at 
the top. In some of the large houses they are covered with 
loose boards; in others the boards are jointed and made her¬ 
metically close by plastering with cement or clay ; in others 
there is merely a floating mass of stems; and in others there is 
no covering at all except the scum of stems, skins, seeds, etc., 
which rise to the surface. 
After the fermentation has ceased and the wune becomes 
clear, it is drawn off and put away in close casks, which in 
France are almost uniformly of the size called “barrique,” 
holding about fifty gallons. In Burgundy these are kept above 
ground and in the light until spring, and then put into cellars, 
while in the Bordeaux country they remain in the light in 
storehouses above ground until one or two years old, and then 
removed to dark rooms on the same level. A careful way of 
making red wine out of grapes not fully ripened is to allow it 
to remain in the vats for a sufficiently long time after fermen¬ 
tation to let the greenness held. in suspense settle to the 
bottom. 
At La Tour, in the vintage of eighteen hundred and sixty- 
six, they allowed the wine to remain in the vat a whole month, 
though the fermentation.was probably complete in half of the 
time. After drawing off the remaining undissolved pomace it is 
pressed and made into a wine of inferior quality. It is com¬ 
mon in France, and it would be sometimes necessary in some 
parts of America, to provide means of warming the wine 
house up to at least twenty degrees of centigrade, or 
about forty-nine degrees Fahrenheit, as well as to introduce 
steam heat into the vats themselves, which is done by means 
of a tin pipe, entering to the right of the faucet and a little 
above the bottom of the vat, bending to the bottom and ris¬ 
ing again in the form of a letter U, and then passing out at 
the other side of the faucet, at the same distance from it, the 
