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BRITISH WINES
The name covers all manner of alcoholic beverages
produced in Great Britain, where they are known to the
Excise authorities under the name of Sweets, and taxed
as such. The oldest British Wines were the Home-made
Wines,which,in olden days,were the pride of the still-room
in all great, and even modest, households. Home-made
Wines, when they were made on a commercial scale, were
first offered for sale under the name of English Wines.
Both were madefrom the same materials, mostly the fruits,
leaves, flowers, seeds and roots of English-grown plants,
such as elderberry, apples and pears, cowslips and goose
berries ; but also from overseas produce, such as oranges
and ginger, which were imported on a commercial scale
into England from an early date. All such wines were
mostly known under the names of the fruit or plant which
formed their basis, but it was not at all uncommon to call
some of them by the better-known or better-sounding name
ofsomeimported wine which they were intended to approxi
mate. Thus was the Gooseberry Wine called English
Champagne, and Elderberry Wine English Port.
At present, however, the name British Wines, although
it still covers Home-made Wines and English Wines,apphes
chiefly to more modern types of alcoholic beverages made
in England on more scientific lines, since the early part of
the twentieth century. These, the latest form of British
Wines, are made from either grapes, raisins, grape-juice or
grape-sugar, imported in various forms—solid, Hquid or
semi-liquid—to which water is added, then some form of
yeast to secure the fermentation of the sugar content of
the brew:. the resulting alcoholic hquid is then coloured
and flavoured to taste with much skill.
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