1930 The Savoy Cocktail Book

little thing to have learnt contempt, at an early age, both for those who drink no wine and those who drink too much. The Vineyard and Wine are great mysteries. Alone in the vegetable kingdom, the vine gives us a true understanding of the savour of the earth. And how faithfully it is translated ! It partakes of, and reveajs, all the secrets of the soil. Through it we realise that even flint can be living, yielding, nourish ing. Even the unemotional chalk weeps, in wine, golden tears. If you transplant a vine to a distant country, it struggles to retain its personality and sometimes triumphs over powerful mineral chemicals. Gathered near Algiers, the white wines remember perfectly, for many years, the noble Bordeaux scion which sweetened them just sufRciently, softened them and gave them gaiety. It is Madeira that colours and warms the heavy dry wine which ripens at Chateau-Chalon, on the ridge of a narrow rocky plateau. From the grapes flourishing on the twisted vine- plant, heavy, of a transparent dull agate colour, or blue and powdered with silver, the eye falls to the bare wood, like a wooden snake, wedged in between two boulders ; with what, then, does this southern land feed itself, where there is no rain and which is- only kept together by a network of roots ? The dews of the night and the sunshine of the day are enough for it—the fire of a star, the life-sweat of another star—marvels. What single cloudless day, what soft late rainfall decide that a vintage shall be great among the others ?