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the flowing BOWL
Latour, and there is (or may be) the Chateau
Smith. Did I choose to buy a cottage in that
district, grow my own grapes, andmake my own
wines, I should be fully entitled to label them
" Chateau Gubbins," and incur no penalty by so
doing.
But please do not pick the ripe grapes,
although you may be sorely tempted the
sight of dozens of bunches separated from the
vines by their sheer weight, and lying in the
furrows. Plenty of people do commit this sort
of theft, for there be hundreds of the rough
element who visit the Medoc country. The
"Hooligans" and gamins of Bordeaux drift here
at picking-time just as the poor of London
drift into the county of Kent during the hopping
season. They are not loved, but they have to
be endured.
Somebody must pick the grapes,
and after all a few depredations will not ruin the
grower any more than do the strawberry-pickers
in the south of England "break" the growers,
by adopting their usual plan; " three in the
mouth, one in the basket."
The claret-cellars are not nearly as far
beneath the earth as are those in the region
about Rheims. Nor are theyas amusing. There
isno " pop, pop" down here, no danger ofwounds
and lacerations from flying splinters of glass.
The principal objects of interest are the cobwebs
which are piled up all over the place like dusky
curtains. It is not well to sample too many
glasses which may be offered you of the wine of
the country. For the samples are taken from
the new, immature wine, and are suggestive of