a spirituous or alcoholic liquor, extracted from wine by distillation. When pure it is perfectly colourless, but it soon acquires a yellow tinge from the cask. The deep colour of common brandy is generally given by the addition of burnt sugar, caramel. The wine-brandy of France is esteemed the best in Europe. The chief brandies for foreign trade, and those accounted best, are those of Cognac, Bordeaux, Rochelle, Claretton, the Isle of Rhône, Orleans, the county of Blasois, Poitou, Touraine, Anjou, Nantes, Burgundy, and Champagne. The best brandy is distilled from wine of any kind, but is generally made from wine that has become too acid for the market, or what is technically called pricked wine. An inferior sort is made from the husks of the pressed grapes; but this contains an acrid oil, which exists in the skin of the fruit and injures its flavour. (Annales de Chimie, tom. 64.) The flavour of brandy is said to be sometimes imitated by adding to grain spirit a small proportion of nitrous ether.

The import of brandy to the United Kingdom in 1853 was 1,876,567 gallons. The amount of duty paid was £1,402,932, the rate being 15s. per gallon.