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"THE BOY"
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" See that in your choice of Gascoine wines,"
continues Gervase, in his minute direction to the
overwrought " housewife," " that your Clarret
wines be faire coloured, and bright as a Rubie,
not deepe as anAmetist; for though it mayshew
strength, yet it wants neatnesse. If your Clarret
wine be faint, and have lost his color, then
take a fresh hogshead with his fresh lees which
was very good wine, and draw your wine into
the same, then stop it close and tight, and lay it
a foretake for two or three daies that the lees
may run through it, then lay it up till it be fine,
and if the colour be not perfit, draw it into a red
wine hogshead . . . and if your Clarret wine
have lost his colour, take a pennyworth of
Damsens
" ha I what is this ?
" Or else blacke Bullesses, as you see cause,
and stew them with some red wine of the deepest
colour, and make thereof a pound or more of
sirrup, and put it into a cleane glasse, and after
into the hogshead of Clarret wine ; and the same
you may likewise doe unto red wine if you
please."
Ahem ! Evidently they did know something
about adulteration in the seventeenth century.
It is a common idea that only a very few
clarets areentitled to the prefix " Chateau." The
truth is very different. The district on the
south bank of the Gironde simply teems with
chateaux, of a kind. For miles you cannot go
a few hundred yards in any direction without
seeing or passing two or three ; each with its
vineyards and cellars and special labels, and more
or less unblemished reputation. There isChateau