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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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