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THE !IIIXICOLOGIST.
95
WINE.
The word " wine," in its w ildest sense, includes
all alcoholic b everages derived from sacchariferous
vegetable juices b y spontaneous fermentation. In
the nar rower sense of its ordina ry acceptance, it
designat es the fermented product of grape juice,
with which alone the present article proposes to
deal. Wine making is an easy art where there is a
sufficient supply of perfectly ripe grapes. In Italy,
Spain , Greece, and other countries of Southern
Europe, nature takes care of this. · In the more
northern districts o f France, and especially on the
Rhine in German y, the culture of the v ine means
h ard work from one end of the year to the other,
which only ex ceptionally finds its full reward. And
yet it is in those n aturally less favored districts that
the most generous wines are produced. Southern
\vines excel in body and streng th, but even the best
of them lack the beautiful aroma or bouquet ch::i.rac–
t eristic of high-class Rhine ·wine. The large propor–
tion of sugar in southern g rape juice would appear
t o be inimical t o the development of that superior
fl avor. T o secure the highest attainable degree of
maturity in the g rape , the v intage on the Rhine is
postponed nutil the grapes almost begin to wither,
and the white g rapes on the sunny side of the