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THE FLOWING BOWL
disgoi'gers. And when it is added that there are
usually upwards of 15,000,000 bottles in the
cellars at one time, the old heresy as to the
district being unable to supply sufficient wine
save for Russian consumption is at onceexploded.
In fact some twenty-five millions of gallons of
champagne are produced, annually, in the district.
Of course not all of it is of the finest growth, and
some of it a connoisseur would reject with scorn.
In order to smash another old fallacy it is,
perhaps, hardly necessary to add that champagne
is not made from gooseberries—at all events in
countries where grapes grow. And the reason
for this is that gooseberry juice is far scarcer,
and therefore more expensive than grape juice.
Some few dozens may be made in England, but
to make sufficient gooseberry champagne to be
profitable would require more berries than are
grown in the country. It would, in fact,
require hundreds of tons of the fruit to pay the
manufacturer.
Lest my readers should be wearied of the
subject of French wines, I shall not particularize
as to the burgundies, but confine myself to the
clarets of the country which are by far the more
popular wines in England—even when they are
artificially manufactured, in Spain, and elsewhere.
"The wines that be made in Bordeaux,"
wrote Gervase Markham, in the middle of the
seventeenth century, " are called Gascoyne wines,
and you shall know them by their hazel hoopes,
and the most be full gadge, and sound wines."
Evidently adulteration's artful aid was but
little employed in those days.