WINE, a brisk, agreeable, spirituous, and cordial liquor, drawn from vegetable bodies, and fermented.
All sorts of vegetables, fruits, seeds, roots, &c. afford wine; as grapes, currants, mulberries, alder-berries, cherries, apples, pulse, beans, peas, turneps, radishes, and even grass itself. Hence under the class of wines, or vinous liquors, come not only wines absolutely so called, but also ale, cyder, &c.
Wine in France is distinguished, from the several degrees and steps of its preparation, into, 1. Mere goutte, mother-drop, which is the virgin wine, or that which runs of itself out at the top of the vat wherein the grapes are laid, before the vintager enters to tread or stamp the grapes. 2. Must, surmust, or flum, which is the wine or liquor in the vat, after the grapes have been trod or stamped. 3. Pressed wine, being that squeezed with a press out of the grapes half bruised by the treading. The husks left of the grapes are called rope, murk, or mark; by throwing water upon which, and pressing them afresh, they make a liquor for servants use, answerable to our cyderkin, and called boisson. 4. Sweet wine, is that which has not yet worked nor fermented. 5. Bouru, that which has been prevented working by casting in cold water. 6. Worked wine, that which has been let work in the vat, to give it a colour. 7. Boiled wine, that which has had a boiling before it worked, and which by that means still retains its native sweetness. 8. Strained wine, that made by steeping dry grapes in water, and letting it ferment of itself. Wines are also distinguished with regard to their colour into white wine, red wine, claret wine, pale wine, rose, or black wine; and with regard to their country, or the soil that produces them, into French wines, Spanish wines, Rhénish wines, Hungarian wines, Greek wines, Canary wines, &c, and more particularly into Port wine, Madeira wine, Burgundy wine, Champain wine, Falerian wine, Tockay wine, Schiras wine, &c.
Method of Making, Fining, &c. WINE. In the southern parts of France, their way is with red wines to tread or squeeze the grapes between the hands, and to let the whole stand, juice and husks, till the tincture be
be to their liking; after which they press it. But for white wines, they press the grapes immediately; when pressed, they run the must and stop up the vessel, only leaving the depth of a foot or more to give room for it to work. At the end of ten days they fill this space with some other proper wine, that will not provoke it to work again. This they repeat from time to time, new wine spending itself a little before it comes to perfection.
The usual method of fining down wines, so as to render them expeditiously bright, clear, and fit for use, is this: Take an ounce of isinglass, beat it into thin shreds with a hammer, and dissolve it, by boiling, in a pint of water; this when cold becomes a stiff jelly. Whisk up some of this jelly into a froth with a little of the wine intended to be fined, then stir it well among the rest in the cask, and bung it down tight; by this means the wine will become bright in eight or ten days. This method, however, is found to be best suited to the white wines; for the red ones, the wine-coopers commonly use the whites of eggs beat up to a froth, and mixed in the same manner with their wines.
They fine it down also by putting the shavings of green beech into the vessel, having first taken off all the rind, and boiled them an hour in water to extract their rankness, and afterwards dried them in the sun, or in an oven. A bushel of these serve for a tun of wine; and being mashed, they serve again and again, till almost quite consumed.
For English wine, the method recommended by Mortimer, is first to gather the grapes when very dry, to pick them from the stalks, then to press them, and let the juice stand 24 hours in a vat covered. Afterwards to draw it off from the gross lees, and then put it up in a cask, and to add a pint or quart of strong red or white port to every gallon of juice, and let the whole work, bunging it up close, and letting it stand till January; then bottle it in dry weather. Bradley chooses to have the liquor when pressed, stand with the husks and stalks in the vat, to ferment for 15 days. The method of converting white-wine into red, so much practised by the modern wine-coopers, Dr Shaw observes is this: Put four ounces of turnsole rags into an earthen vessel, and pour upon them a pint of boiling water; cover the vessel close, and leave it to cool; strain off the liquor, which will be of a fine deep red, inclining to purple. A small portion of this colours a large quantity of wine. This tincture might be either made in brandy, or mixed with it, or else made into a syrup, with sugar, for keeping. A common way with the wine-coopers is to infuse the rags cold in wine for a night or more, and then wring them out with their hands; but the inconvenience of this method is, that it gives the wine a disagreeable taste, or what is commonly called the taste of the rags; whence the wines thus coloured usually pass among judges for pressed wines, which have all this taste from the canvas rags in which the lees are pressed. The way of extracting the tincture, as here directed, is not attended with this inconvenience, but it loads the wine with water; and if made into a syrup, or mixed in brandy, it would load the wine with things not wanted, since the colour alone is required. Hence the colouring of wines has always its inconveniences. In those countries which do not produce the tinging grape, which affords a blood-red
juice, wherewith the wines of France are often stained, in defect of this, the juice of alder-berrics is used, and sometimes logwood is used at Oporto.
The colour afforded by the method here proposed, gives wine the tinge of the Bourdeaux red, not the port; whence the foreign coopers are often distressed for want of a proper colouring for red wines in bad years. This might perhaps be supplied by an extract made by boiling stick-lack in water. The skins of tinging grapes might also be used, and the matter of the turnsole procured in a solid form, not imbibed in rags.
Stahl observes, that it is a common accident, and a disease in wines, to be kept too hot; which is not easy to cure when it has been of any long continuance, otherwise it may be cured by introducing a small artificial fermentation, that new ranges the parts of the wine, or rather recovers their former texture: but the actual exposing of wine to the fire, or the sun, presently disposes it to turn easter; and the making it boiling hot, is one of the quickest ways of expediting the process of making of vinegar.
On the other hand, wine kept in a cool vault, and well secured from the external air, will preserve its texture entire in all the constituent parts, and sufficiently strong for many years, as appears not only from old wines, but other foreign fermented liquors, particularly those of China, prepared from a decoction of rice; which being well closed down in a vessel, and buried deep under ground, will continue for a long series of years rich, generous, and good, as the histories of that country universally agree in assuring us.
The most general remedy hitherto known for all the diseases of wines, is a prudent use of tartarized spirit of wine, which not only enriches, but disposes all ordinary wines to grow fine.
If either by fraud or accident a larger portion of water is mixed with wine than is proper for its consistence, and no way necessary or essential, this superfluous water does not only deprave the taste, and spoil the excellence of the wine, but also renders it less durable; for humidity in general, and much more a superfluous aqueous humidity, is the primary and restless instrument of all the changes that are brought on by fermentation. It may doubtless therefore be useful, and sometimes absolutely necessary, to take away this superfluous water from the other part which strictly and properly constitutes the wine. This has been agreed upon all hands as a thing proper, but the manner of doing it has not been well agreed on: some have proposed the effecting it by means of heat and evaporation, others by percolation, and others by various other methods, all found unsuccessful when brought to the trial; but the way proposed by Dr Shaw from Stahl, is the most certain and commodious; this is done by a concentration of the wine, not by means of heat, but of cold.
If any kind of wine, but particularly such as has never been adulterated, be in a sufficient quantity, as that of a gallon or more, exposed to a sufficient degree of cold in frosty weather, or be put into any place where ice continues all the year, as in our ice-houses, and there suffered to freeze, the superfluous water that was originally contained in the wine will be frozen into ice, and will leave the proper and truly essential part of the wine unfrozen, unless the degree of cold should
Wine. should be very intense, or the wine but weak and poor. This is the principle on which Stahl found his whole system of condensing wines by cold. When the frost is moderate, the experiment has no difficulty, because not above a third or a fourth part of the superfluous water will be frozen in a whole night; but if the cold be very intense, the best way is, at the end of a few hours when a tolerable quantity of ice is formed, to pour out the remaining fluid liquor, and set it in another vessel to freeze again by itself. If the vessel, that thus by degrees receives the several parcels of the condensed wine, be suffered to stand in the cold freezing place where the operation is performed, the quantity lying thin in the pouring out, or otherwise, will be very apt to freeze anew; and if it be set in a warm place, some of this aqueous part thaws again, and so weakens the rest. The condensed wine therefore should be emptied in some place of a moderate degree as to cold or heat, where neither the ice may dissolve, nor the vinous substance mixed among it be congealed. But the best expedient of all is to perform the operation with a large quantity of wine, or that of several gallons, where the utmost exactness, or the danger of a trifling waste, need not be regarded.
By this method, when properly performed, there first freezes about one third part of the whole liquor; and this is properly the more purely aqueous part of it, inasmuch that when all the vinous fluid is poured off to be again exposed to a concentration, the ice remaining behind from this first freezing being set to thaw in a warm place, dissolves into a pure and tasteless water. The frozen part, or ice, consists only of the watery part of the wine, and may be thrown away, and the liquid part retains all the strength, and is to be preserved. This will never grow sour, muly, or mouldy afterwards, and may at any time be reduced to wine of the common kind again, by adding to it as much water as will make it up to the quantity that it was before.
Wines in general may by this method be reduced to any degree of vinosity or perfection.
The benefit and advantage of this method of congelation, if reduced to practice in the large way in the wine countries, must be evident to every body. Concentrated wines in this manner might be sent into foreign countries instead of wine and water, which is what is usually now sent, the wines they export being loaded, and in danger of being spoiled by three or four times their own quantity of unnecessary, superfluous, and prejudicial water.
An easy method of recovering pricked wines may be learned from the following experiment: Take a bottle of red port that is pricked, add to it half an ounce of tartarized spirit of wine, shake the liquor well together, and set it by for a few days, and it will be found very remarkably altered for the better.
This experiment depends upon the useful doctrine of acids and alkalies. All perfect wines have naturally some acidity, and when this acidity prevails too much, the wine is said to be pricked, which is truly a state of the wine tending to vinegar: but the introduction of a fine alkaline salt, such as that of tartar, imbibed by spirit of wine, has a direct power of taking off the acidity, and the spirit of wine also contributes to this, as a great preservative in general of wines. If this operation
be dexterously performed, pricked wines may be absolutely recovered by it, and remain saleable for some time; and the same method may be used to malt liquors just turned sour.
The age of wine is properly reckoned by leaves; thus they say wine of two, four, or six leaves, to signify wine of two, four, or six years old; taking each new leaf put forth by the vine since the wine was made for a year.
Wine is also a denomination applied in medicine and pharmacy to divers mixtures and compositions, wherein the juice of the grape is a principal ingredient. See the article VINUM.
With regard to the medical uses of wines, it is observed, that among the great variety of wines in common use among us, five are employed in the shops as menstrua for medicinal simples; that is, the vinum album hispanicum, or Mountain wine; the vinum album gallicum, or French white wine; the Canary wine, or sack, the Rhenish wine, and the red port. The effects of these liquors on the human body are, to clear the spirits, warm the habit, promote perspiration, render the vessels full and turgid, raise the pulse, and quicken the circulation. The effects of the full bodied wines are much more durable than those of the thinner: all sweet wines, as Canary, abound with a glutinous, nutritious substance, whilst the others are not nutrimental, or only accidentally so, by strengthening the organs employed in digestion. Sweet wines, in general, do not pass off freely by urine; and they heat the constitution more than an equal quantity of any other, though containing full as much spirit: red port, and most of the red wines, have an astringent quality, by which they strengthen the tone of the stomach, and thus prove serviceable for restraining immoderate secretions; those which are of an acid nature, as Rhenish, pass freely by the kidneys, and gently loosen the belly. It is supposed that these last exacerbate and occasion gouty calculous disorders, and that new wines of every kind have this effect.
Wine Spirit, a term used by our distillers, and which may seem to mean the same thing with the phrase of spirit of wine: but they are taken in very different senses in the trade.
Spirit of Wine is the name given to the common malt spirit when reduced to an alcohol or totally inflammable state; but the phrase wine-spirit is used to express a very clean and fine spirit, of the ordinary proof strength, and made in England from wines of foreign growth.
The way of producing it is by simple distillation, and it is never rectified any higher than common bubble proof. The several wines of different natures yield very different proportions of spirit; but, in general, the strongest yield one fourth, the weakest in spirits one eighth, part of proof spirit; that is, they contain from a sixteenth to an eighth part of their quantity of pure alcohol.
Wines that are a little sour serve not at all the worse for the purposes of the distiller; they rather give a greater vinosity to the produce. This vinosity is a thing of great use in the wine-spirit, whose principal use is to mix with another that is tartarized, or with a malt-spirit, rendered alkaline by the method of rectification. All the wine-spirits made in England, even
even those from the French wines, appear very greatly different from the common French brandy; and this has given our distillers a notion that there is some secret art practised in France, for the giving the agreeable flavour to that spirit: but this is without foundation.