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A SPIRITUOUS DISCOURSE
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dust is used in the Fatherland for the manufacture
of lager beer, Rhine wine, and—but 'tis a saw
subject.
The pure brandy at Cognac is divided into
two principalclasses—"champagne " brandy, from
grapes grown on the plains, and " hois" brandy,
the product of wooded districts—I am not allud
ing now to sawdust—and the last-named variety
is subdivided into many different names. It
takes eight and a half gallons of wine to furnish
one gallon of spirits ; and the ravages of the vine-
louse have made a terrible difference in the
supply. In fact, the amount produced in 1897
was about one-tenth of the amount produced
twenty years previously. But thanks to beet
root, potatoes, and—other things, the distiller
manages to " get" there just the same. But the
man who wrote in 1889, prophesying the speedy
disappearance of pure eau de vie from the market,
was probably not far wrong. " It would seem
on the whole," he wrote, " that unless the
phylloxera be stamped out, pure brandy will soon
be a thing of the past." But they do not tell
you this in saloon-bars, and places where they
drink.
It was stated by Mr. Dewar last year (1898)
that there were 89,000,000 gallons of whisky
lying idle in bond because sufficient suitable
water to dilute it to the orthodox strength could
not be found.
This statement is calculated to
give a moderate drinker the gapes ; whilst Sir
Wilfrid Lawson and others must have longed for
permission to set fire to every bonded warehouse
in the Kingdom. But the same great authority