1 June, 1899.] QUEENSLAND AGRICULTURAL JOURNAL. 459 
The defects to be found in our light wines are coarseness, want of bouquet, 
presence of “twang,” and, occasionally, signs of unsoundness, which in all 
probability arises from an after-fermentation or chemical decomposition in the 
bottle from the wine haying been improperly prepared. Coarseness is almost 
invariably due, especially in red wines, to too long vatting with the husks 
and stalks; the latter are seldom, i ever, eliminated in the crushing, and 
‘communicate a coarseness and roughness materially affecting the quality. 
The wines should be fermented with the husks only, unless an astringent 
porty wine is required. The vatting should continue just long enough 
to draw sufficient colour from the skins, and then be stopped. It is 
true that in some districts in France the vatting continues until the 
saccharometer marks zero with good results, but this procedure cannot be 
adopted in this colony with production of clean fresh wines. A Mataro or 
Hermitage grown in Queensland is quite different to the same grapes grown 
in France; they are coarser, and the litsks contain a larger amount of tannin 
and extractive matter, and they must be treated accordingly. In South 
Australia the system of stalking the grapes is now almost universal, the benefit 
of doing so having been recognised, and machines are now cheaply sold which 
crush the berries and remove the stalks in one operation. Must intended for 
Chablis should never be vatted; on the contrary, it should be run into casks 
without loss of time to obtain as colourless, clean, and limpid a wine as possible. 
The want of bouquet may be due to several causes—insuflficient acidity of 
the must, fermentation at too high a temperature giving rise to bacterial 
products affecting the bouquet; using inferior varieties of grapes, and addition 
of sugar to the must. Deficient acidity is easily proved and remedied, and 
the temperature of the fermenting vat can also be regulated. Advice on 
these points has already been given in this Journal. Inferior grapes should 
be grafted or replanted. The use of cane sugar in the must materially influences 
the bouquet of wine. The addition is made for the purpose of increasing the 
saccharine density of poor musts in greater or less quantity, as the wine is 
destined to be claret, port, &c. The bouquet of wine is due to ethers developed 
during fermentation, and fermenting cane sugar develops a bouquet peculiar to 
itself, and not too agreeable, which masks more or less the natural bouquet 
developed by fermenting grape sugar, according as more or less cane sugar has 
been added ; hence the sameness of smell in so many Queensland wines. That 
the must is so deficient in density as to require the addition of cane sugar to 
make light wines points either to inferior varieties of vines having been planted, 
too humid a subsoil, or to what is far more likely, a mistaken system of pruning, 
forcing a large crop of grapes, with consequent low saccharine density. A must 
with 18 t020 per cent. density requires no addition to make/a claret or a Chablis, - 
or with 22 per cent. for a Burgundy the resultant wines would only require a 
cool cellar and careful supervision. “If the must has naturally a higher density, 
the wines will be fuller bodied, but they will all, if the must had_ sufficient 
acidity, develop a finer bouquet and be cleaner to the palate than wines made 
from sugared musts. es; 
The presence of “twang” may be due to the use of American. varieties of 
grapes, to the addition of large quantities of cane sugar to a very acid must, or 
to the wine having been fermented at too high a temperature and. containing 
volatile acids. F 
With regard to the Queensland sweet and fortified wines, there is also 
room for improvement, and our vignerons must not think that, because they 
are largely consumed, they are perfect. Ifa better article at the same price is 
offered by southern vignerons, it will find a sale, and the South Australians make 
some excellent sweet and fortified wines. The same faults are apparent in this 
class of wine, generally speaking, as in the light wines—viz.: twang and want 
of bouquet, both arising from too free a use of cane sugar in the fermenting 
vat. A great improvement in wines of this class could be made by using, as a 
blend, a wine made by artificially checking the fermentation of a high-quality 
must. ‘This is the practice universally followed in Spain, Portugal, Greece, and 
