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+    <title>
+      Bacchus, or, wine to-day and to-morrow | Project Gutenberg
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+<body>
+<div style='text-align:center'>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 77340 ***</div>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_1">[1]</span></p>
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h1>BACCHUS<br>
+<span class="smaller">OR<br>
+WINE TO-DAY AND TO-MORROW</span></h1>
+
+</div>
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_2">[2]</span></p>
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p class="center mid">TO-DAY AND TO-MORROW</p>
+
+<p class="series"><i>A List of the Contents of<br>
+this Series will be found<br>
+at the end of this volume</i></p>
+
+</div>
+
+<p class="center"><span class="transnote">Transcriber’s Note: in fact,
+this was omitted.</span></p>
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_3">[3]</span></p>
+
+<p class="titlepage larger">BACCHUS<br>
+<span class="smaller">OR<br>
+WINE TO-DAY AND TO-MORROW</span></p>
+
+<p class="titlepage"><span class="smaller">BY</span><br>
+P. MORTON SHAND<br>
+<span class="smaller">Author of <i>A Book of Wine</i>, <i>A Book of French Wines</i>,<br>
+etc.</span></p>
+
+<p class="titlepage"><span class="smcap">London<br>
+KEGAN PAUL, TRENCH, TRUBNER &amp; Co., Ltd.<br>
+New York: E. P. Dutton &amp; Co.</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_4">[4]</span></p>
+
+<p class="titlepage smaller"><i>Printed in Great Britain by</i><br>
+MACKAYS LTD., CHATHAM</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_5">[5]</span></p>
+
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="BACCHUS">BACCHUS<br>
+<span class="smaller">OR<br>
+WINE TO-DAY AND TO-MORROW</span></h2>
+
+</div>
+
+<blockquote>
+
+<p>“Put a cup of wine into my hand that I may
+cast off from me the cloak of hypocrisy.”—<span class="smcap">Hafiz.</span></p>
+
+</blockquote>
+
+<p>The bush which none but the poorest
+wine ever needed has been hung out
+alluringly as a tavern’s thirst-provoking
+sign-board to entice the pleasure-seekers
+of those lands where the grape will not,
+or may not, ripen for the wine-press, over
+all wines good and bad, true and false,
+provided only they be duly intoxicating,
+by that hysterical piece of amateur
+legislation known as the Volstead Act.
+Every people, we know, has the government
+and laws it deserves. It is only
+when the citizens of a state are so overcome
+by enthusiasm for the perfection of
+their own institutions as to organise
+propaganda for the conversion of other
+countries to conformity with the sovereign
+panaceas they have invented, as in the
+case of Soviet Russia or the republic
+which recently substituted a camel
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_6">[6]</span>rampant and three golden orbs for an
+eagle as its national emblem, that the
+domestic policy of such a state ceases to
+be exclusively its own concern. Not that
+respect for its privacy is desired by either
+nation: the one broadcasts its sanguinary
+social reforms, the other its strident social
+vulgarities. The war that was to end
+war was also to end wine. The crusaders
+of the United States, too proud to fight
+for any other cause, were to make the
+world as safe for teetotalism as for
+democracy, so that for the Utopian future
+the latter shibboleth should imply the
+former. The Latin nations, however,
+were deaf to all material inducements,
+such as increased industrial efficiency, and
+obstinately refused to have the “running
+sore” of viticulture cauterised by the
+same Fiery Cross as had desiccated
+California’s wine-grapes into seedless
+raisins. Ultimately, America, still
+inspired by the loftiest moral motives,
+consented to forgo the forcible conversion
+of Europe to the one generally known
+commandment of the Koran in exchange
+for an enormous monetary tribute to
+indemnify its bankers and munition-manufacturers
+for the grievous losses in
+ethical prestige which they had sustained
+by this unparalleled act of renunciation.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_7">[7]</span></p>
+
+<p>Thanks to the magnificent advertisement
+given to the inimitable properties
+of wine by the School-Marms Government
+which imposed Prohibition on a nation
+ever whoring after righteousness, its
+future existence may be deemed assured
+until the next Puritan revival, or the
+advent of the New Matriarchy. In spite
+of the fact that their aims are championed
+by a titled lady, who, though British
+neither by birth nor blood, was, appropriately
+enough, the first woman Member
+of Parliament to take her seat at Westminster,
+our “Temperance Reformers”
+are no more likely to catch us unawares
+in the course of the next few decades than
+those other eugenic despots, the vegetarians
+and the anti-tobacco fanatics.
+Humanity reacts swiftly and brutally
+against Puritanism in any form. Every
+lenten cycle of Praise-God-Bare-Bones
+theocracy is invariably followed by the
+reign of a Merry Monarch, if not of a
+Heliogabalus. In few ages of the past
+has the will to deny itself no single
+pleasure of the flesh been more manifest
+in mankind than in the vandal and
+hedonist era of transition in which we
+crudely live.</p>
+
+<p>For a moment it seemed that the “to
+be, or not to be” of wine-drinking might
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_8">[8]</span>threaten to become a permanent and
+burning political question among non-viticultural
+nations, just as certain
+practical problems of wine-growing have
+for long been the paramount agricultural-political
+issues in viticultural countries.
+Already, however, the tide of an inevitable
+revolt against tyrannically “uplifting,”
+but quite unworkable, enactments has
+swept over Scandinavia, the nursery of all
+“progressive” movements. Soviet
+Russia, which began by abolishing Vodka
+in favour of a tolerance of light wines and
+beer, has been constrained to add distillation
+to other nationalised industries on
+the cynical pretext that the state needs
+additional revenue only to be found in
+exploiting drunkenness. Forewarned, as
+much by the gruesome Bacchanalia of
+Prohibition in operation as by the quality
+of Bootleggers’ “Hootch,” British wine-drinkers
+are determined to fight to the
+last in defence of their liberties as their
+forefathers fought the Excisemen and the
+Revenue-Cutters before them. The
+Labour Party, theoretically committed to
+“an ambitious programme of temperance
+legislation” (including the back-door
+policy of Prohibition known as Local
+Option), dares not lift a finger to put its
+academic articles of faith into practice on
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_9">[9]</span>pain of seeing the working class vote
+against it to a man. The only sign of
+alarm is in the trade, and can be discounted
+as a not altogether disinterested
+manœuvre. Nonconformity, the standard-bearer
+of Teetotalism, is as defunct as
+Liberalism, which has now won the right
+to replace “Brandy Nan” as the alternative
+proverbial metaphor for something as
+dead beyond recall as that extinct and
+fabulous bird the dodo.</p>
+
+<p>Thus wine has now begun to acquire
+an added, and most unenviable, lustre for
+no better reason than that it used to be
+denounced by the zealots in their wrath
+as “a wile of Satan.” By a biased application
+of the doctrine of Justification by
+Works, the Calvinists were able to find
+in wine, rather than in the unchanging
+heart of man, the source of that insidious
+“temptation” inseparable from every
+gradation of its use that lies between the
+equally “sinful” extremes of moderate
+digestive enjoyment at meals and the
+abuse provocative of delirium tremens.
+Indeed, no honest discrimination between
+natural wine or beer and fortified wine
+or spirits was ever made by these impassioned
+casuists. The drinkers of claret,
+stout, cider, port or proof gin, the men
+who would have felt themselves for ever
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_10">[10]</span>dishonoured had they once exceeded the
+strictest sobriety, as the habitual drunkards,
+were one and all outlawed impartially
+as profligate “wine-bibbers.” In
+parts of New England to say of a man that
+he “drank wine” constituted an inexpugnable
+gravamen against his character only
+comparable with accusing him of living in
+open adultery. It is worth noticing how
+it was only after mankind had refused to
+be any longer very much interested in
+dogmas one way or the other, and had
+ceased to damn or bless a neighbour
+off-hand for holding a certain selection of
+them, that the Puritan conscience began
+to envisage the possibility of preaching
+less purely doctrinal abnegations, such
+as “Taking the Pledge,” to a considerably
+greater extent than had hitherto seemed
+consonant with the furtherance of “the
+Lord’s Work.” From that moment all
+biblical precepts endorsing the sanction of
+wine were as resolutely put aside as the
+love, pity and forgiveness of Christ’s
+teachings had been by the original wine-drinking
+founder of these austere sects
+some three centuries before. Nor was
+their awakened interest in “Total Abstinence”
+due to any weak human compassion
+for the appalling effects of
+alcoholism in heredity, such as those
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_11">[11]</span>infant maladies which are the direct
+results of “the sins of the fathers”—the
+hideous tenet of Predestination could be
+relied upon to eliminate any such motive—but
+simply and solely to the cold zest
+of robbing life of one more pleasant thing,
+one more “snare of the flesh.”</p>
+
+<p>The proper place for a man to drink
+wine, or even spirits, is in his own, or
+someone else’s, home, among his family
+or friends, not in the nauseating
+atmosphere of a night-club, the squalor of
+a saloon-bar, or ensconced in a high-backed
+church pew, his eyes riveted on
+the text “Lord, give me strength,” furtively
+draining it from a flask, so as to
+sustain the onslaught of those serried
+battalions of theological syllogisms which
+reinforce the “prayerfulness” of the
+average Scottish sermon. Indeed, it is
+probable that the peculiarly sordid type
+of our taverns is a direct result, even to
+some extent the expression, of that harsh
+Puritan condemnation of all “strong
+liquors.” For long the Righteous consistently
+refused to co-operate in any
+movement designed to ameliorate the
+conditions, or curtail the licensing hours,
+of public houses on the pharisaical pretext
+that what was needed was their abolition
+pure and simple, the felling of the whole
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_12">[12]</span>tree, not the lopping off of a rotten branch.
+No alliance, they declared, could be contemplated
+with those “Sons of Belial”
+and “workers of iniquity” who were
+striving in and out of Parliament, usually
+amidst general obloquy, to bring about
+sane temperance and render the inn a
+place which a self-respecting working-man
+might no longer be ashamed to frequent
+in company with his wife or sweetheart.
+Towards the end of the last century the
+intransigeance of this attitude became
+sensibly modified. Many prominent Nonconformists
+quietly abandoned the
+practice, and even the profession, of
+teetotalism after reaching that degree of
+affluence which impelled them to forsake
+the “true word” of the little Bethels for
+the flesh-pots of the parish church. None
+the less the outbreak of the War found
+many of the more uncompromising
+Puritans exulting in their Bands of Hope,
+because a golden opportunity was now
+presented of forcing total abstinence on
+the nation under cover of the specious
+argument that a sober man is able to
+make shells faster than a drunken, and a
+Blue-Ribbon soldier can kill far more of
+his foes in the Lord’s name than one
+whose physique has been undermined by
+dalliance with the flower of the hop or the
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_13">[13]</span>fruits of the vine and the juniper-bush.
+Now that the voice of the Unco’ Guid no
+longer carries much weight in the nation’s
+counsels, it is reasonably certain that the
+public-house, as we know it, will be profoundly
+changed for the better, both
+structurally and as regards its general
+ambiance. The lessons of direct state
+control at Carlisle, and the experiments
+with restricted licences and indirect
+regulation of the management so wisely
+instituted in some of garden suburbs and
+municipal housing-estates, have proved a
+valuable stimulus to the enlightenment of
+public opinion. Sooner or later, too, we
+shall learn that in spite of the grandmotherly
+assurances of County Councillors
+to the contrary, the drinking of a glass of
+beer in the open air at a table adjacent
+to the street pavement is no more bound
+to encourage immorality than when the
+same beverage is consumed between four
+walls.</p>
+
+<p>Wine, then, if less of a necessity of life
+than it was for our forefathers, or even
+our immediate fathers, is strangely enough
+regarded to-day more as something of a
+luxury, or a minor depravity, than as a
+natural taste inherent in the human race.
+We have grown so accustomed to quoting
+the hackneyed and hypocritical “Wine
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_14">[14]</span>and Women” in explanation of our neighbours’
+failings, that our smug and sniggering
+satisfaction makes us apt to forget
+“Song,” or merriment, the third person
+of this ageless trinity, which ennobles the
+abdiction to both. The three together
+can transmute the foul fumes of the gin-palace
+and the defiling ignominy of the
+brothel into the genial fireside haven of a
+man’s own home, offering the licit enjoyment
+of the wife of his bosom and the
+wine of his cellar. The abiding verity of
+Martin Luther’s familiar couplet of <i>Gay
+Sçavoir</i>, “<i>Wer nicht liebt Wein, Weib,
+und Gesang, der bleibt ein Narr sein Leben
+lang</i>” has outlived all the rancorous
+interdictions of the misanthropic Calvin.
+Teetotalism and castration are analogous
+abnegations, just as drunkenness and
+vicarious venery are analogous abuses, of
+the purest carnal joys that are our earthly
+inheritance by the exercise of our own
+Free Will and God’s good Grace of Election.</p>
+
+<p>But if the more immediate future of
+wine, as that of meat and tobacco, may
+be considered assured, the same degree of
+confidence cannot be expressed in its permanent
+quality. Prohibition being temporarily
+eliminated as a potential menace,
+there remain three serious and growing
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_15">[15]</span>dangers to the survival of wine in that
+state of purity and excellence in which
+it is now obtainable, though by no means
+necessarily always obtained. These are
+its mass-production; its adulteration;
+and its prostitution so as to flatter vulgar
+but expensive palates, or the exactions
+of clamant and rapidly expanding congeries
+of faddists—typified by the mania
+for rendering all wines sparkling on the
+one hand, and that contradiction in terms,
+dealcoholised wine, or pasteurised, non-alcoholic
+grape-juice, on the other. To
+these must be added the devastating
+epidemics to which the vine is peculiarly
+subject, such as the Oidium and the
+Phylloxera.</p>
+
+<p>The first of these dangers, that of mass-production,
+is by far the gravest. The
+world’s output of wine is steadily increasing,
+particularly in Australia, North and
+South Africa and South America, and to a
+less, but still perceptible, extent in Europe
+itself. Indeed, there might soon be
+enough to meet all potential demands of
+viticultural and non-viticultural countries
+alike, but for such factors as continually
+rising costs of production and freight, the
+increase of customs’ barriers, the world’s
+diminished purchasing power and the
+growing greed of middlemen. None the
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_16">[16]</span>less, France, still the largest producer and
+consumer, though followed ever more
+closely by Italy, is forced to buy some
+millions of hectolitres annually from
+Algeria, Tunis, Spain, Italy and Greece
+in order to meet her domestic needs. Nor
+does she export in <i>vins fins</i> a quarter of
+what she imports in the form of common
+blending wines. The proportion of fine
+wines to ordinary wines grown in France is
+very small.</p>
+
+<p>The more wine you grow from the same
+plot of land the poorer will be its quality.
+There is a strong temptation for the
+French peasant-proprietors of those
+regions where the most famous wines are
+grown to use the “<i>taille haute</i>” (the form
+of pruning which removes less of the
+young shoots year by year and so produces
+a larger number of bunches of grapes)
+instead of the traditional “<i>taille basse</i>”
+(which leaves the minimum amount of
+new wood on the pollarded vine, thereby
+entailing many fewer bunches of grapes,
+but the highest, because the most concentrated,
+quality in the wine). The
+incentive to ignore this, perhaps the most
+sacrosanct of all the honourable traditions
+of vine-dressing—a tradition which may
+be compared to the enormity of shooting
+foxes in England—is particularly strong
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_17">[17]</span>in the Côte d’Or, where the demand is
+always out of all proportion to the supply.
+Another temptation for the <i>vigneron</i>,
+especially in the less-renowned viticultural
+districts, is to grow an excess of what are
+called “<i>plants communs</i>.” Some, but
+not all, of these species are hybrid or
+ungrafted American vines (“<i>producteurs-directs</i>”),
+while others are the commonest
+but most prolific native vines (“<i>gros-producteurs</i>”)
+grafted on to Phylloxera-resisting
+“<i>portes-greffes</i>” as in the case
+of the fine vines which produce the finer
+wines. The <i>producteurs-directs</i> have been
+planted in response to the insistent
+demand for more and cheaper wine that
+has arisen since the War.&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_1" href="#Footnote_1" class="fnanchor">[1]</a> They give an
+enormous return per hectare of a coarse,
+neutral sort of wine of a quality that can
+only be described as parlous, instead of
+the small yield of excellent wine furnished
+by one or other of the delicate “<i>plants
+nobles</i>,” or blue-blooded vines, which are
+the pride of, and often peculiar to, each
+particular district. At present the
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_18">[18]</span><i>producteurs-directs</i>, but not the <i>gros-producteurs</i>,
+are denied all right to a
+local name, or “<i>appellation d’origine</i>,”
+wherever they may be planted. Notwithstanding,
+their growers, now a considerable
+body, are redoubling their efforts to
+obtain this coveted privilege on the plea
+that the quality of these wines is rapidly
+improving; and they may ultimately
+succeed for political reasons.</p>
+
+<p>The world wants more and more wine,
+and always of the kinds it thinks the best.
+The vineyards of Bordeaux, Burgundy
+and the Rhine are already producing all
+but their maximum yield. Already, too,
+many plots of ground in these famous
+regions are under vines which, from the
+nature of their soil, their altitude or
+exposure, ought never to have been
+planted with them. The temptation to
+indulge in over-production is continually
+increasing. The average wine-drinker
+persists in asking for about ten names
+among wines, and will not look at anything
+else, however excellent and reasonable
+in price, because Mr Everyman has
+no longer much individual palate, and
+will not trust such as he has, but buys
+imitatively and gregariously as he buys
+most other things. There is not enough
+of these particular wines to go round;
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_19">[19]</span>indeed there has not been enough for
+some decades past. Unfortunately, the
+public prefers to be bamboozled rather
+than have to exercise its own discrimination
+in choosing from amongst the
+immense variety of other growths, many
+of them admirable and a few superb,
+which the earth has to offer in addition
+to Bordeaux, Burgundy, Chablis, Sauternes,
+White Graves, Hock and Moselle
+among natural wines, and Port, Sherry
+and Madeira among fortified ones. In
+England we have grown so accustomed to
+cynical impertinences with “appellation
+of origin” that we are neither shocked
+nor surprised that bacon can be sold
+called “Danish Wiltshire,” or that
+Canadian soft-soap should be described
+in commerce as “Cheddar Cheese.” Thus
+we have no idea what indignation and
+contempt such titles as “Australian
+Burgundy,” “Algerian Chablis,” “Spanish
+Graves,” “South African Hock,” or
+the now happily defunct “Californian
+Moselle,” excite among Frenchmen and
+Germans, for whom these preposterous
+and fraudulent titles are the taking of
+sacred names in vain. The following
+verses, taken from the ballad of Raoul
+Ponchon, called “<i>Bourgogne d’Australie</i>,”
+which used to be popular in purely French
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_20">[20]</span>cabarets—anyhow until the Australians
+showed their magnificent qualities as
+attacking troops by the side of their
+French brothers-in-arms—is a typical
+example of the burning resentment felt by
+the whole French people at what is to
+them an act of the most cynical piracy,
+almost the theft of an historic part of
+their national patrimony.</p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+  <div class="poetry">
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <div class="verse indent0">“<i>Vous êtes par trop rigolos,</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent2"><i>Australiens immenses!</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>Mettez bien dans vos ciboulots</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent2"><i>Où règnent les démences,</i></div>
+    </div>
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>Qu’il n’est d’autre vin bourguignon</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent2"><i>—Croyez-en un ivrogne—</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>Que celui que nous bourgognons</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent2"><i>Aux coteaux de Bourgogne.</i></div>
+    </div>
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>Et la Bourgogne, elle est ici,</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent2"><i>Et non en Australie!</i></div>
+    </div>
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <div class="center">...</div>
+    </div>
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>Il faut avoir un fier toupet</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent2"><i>Pour mettre une étiquette</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>Semblable à votre vin suspect,</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent2"><i>Véritable piquette!</i>&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_2" href="#Footnote_2" class="fnanchor">[2]</a></div>
+    </div>
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>Il n’est, chez nous, maigre pinard,</i>&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_3" href="#Footnote_3" class="fnanchor">[3]</a></div>
+      <div class="verse indent2"><i>Qui ne soit cent fois brave</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>Comme le vin le plus gaillard</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent2"><i>De vos meilleures caves.</i></div>
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_21">[21]</span>    </div>
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>Vous planteriez, ô Melbournois!</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent2"><i>Sur vos coteaux barbares,</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>Les plus fins de nos ceps gaulois,</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent2"><i>Nos Pinots&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_4" href="#Footnote_4" class="fnanchor">[4]</a> les plus rares,</i></div>
+    </div>
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>En vain! Car à ces gaillards-là,</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent2"><i>A ces vrais gentilshommes,</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>Il faut ce terroir de gala,</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent2"><i>Dont, Dieu merci! nous sommes.</i>”</div>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+
+<p>The future of the purity and authenticity
+of wine—for though wine is far
+better made to-day than it was fifty years
+ago, thanks chiefly to Pasteur, it is also
+far more skilfully doctored—is wrapped
+up in the question of how far it may be
+possible to afford as adequate legal protection
+for recognised territorial appellations
+of origin outside, as already exists
+inside, the frontiers of those states in
+which they are found. If an imitation
+“Burgundy,” say Australian, really
+resembled true Burgundy, which it does
+not because it cannot, there would,
+perhaps, be less cause to deny its right
+to a stolen title. The same excuse might
+be proffered, though with an even smaller
+show of logic, if, apart from any question
+of resemblance, it was of an equal, or
+merely comparable, quality.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_22">[22]</span></p>
+
+<p>The problem of to what extent the
+wines of other countries can be improved,
+above all in keeping qualities, without
+sacrificing their own individual characteristics,
+so as to make it possible to mention
+them in the same breath as the more
+famous growths of France and Germany,
+is an arduous, but, in the long run, not
+necessarily an insuperable one. Every
+year we are learning more about the
+natural history of the vine and the
+chemistry of wine.</p>
+
+<p>It is useless for the wines of other
+countries to seek to imitate the essential
+flavours and other peculiarities of the
+most famous French and German wines
+to which they may most nearly approximate
+in colour or alcoholic strength as it
+would be for these French and German
+wines to seek to imitate their imitators.
+In the case of the commoner fortified
+wines of Portugal and Spain imitation of
+a kind is not altogether impossible owing
+to the very nature of their preparation
+by brandying the only partially fermented
+must. The imitation of one wine by
+another, it cannot be too strongly emphasised,
+is impossible by natural means.
+Though every red and white natural wine
+has something in common with all other
+natural red and white wines, no two
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_23">[23]</span>growths ever really resemble each other,
+and rarely two vintages of one and the
+same growth.</p>
+
+<p>That large tracts of the earth’s surface
+are eminently suitable for viticulture,
+though still virginal of the vine, such as—excluding
+the British Empire for the
+moment—parts of central China and
+Morocco, and possibly Abyssinia and
+Arabia as well, to say nothing of those
+considerable regions of Asia Minor and
+the United States where it was formerly
+cultivated, there can be little doubt.
+Moreover, such countries as Southern
+Russia, the Balkan States, Greece, Persia,
+Japan and many of the South American
+republics are undoubtedly capable of a
+much larger production of wine than they
+actually grow. The trouble is that the
+vine, once planted in a strange land, takes
+many decades, if not centuries, before it
+begins to yield wine that has any real
+quality. A successful wine-growing
+industry cannot be created in much less
+than half a century. True, we are told
+by a certain Brother Benedictus in his
+“<i>Chronicques Vivaroises</i>,” as Mrs G. B.
+Stern reminds us, that the “<i>belle ordonnance
+de seps, pères de gros savoureux
+raisins</i>” on the famed Hill of Hermitage,
+the juice of which is “<i>une rosée paradisiaque</i>”
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_24">[24]</span>rather than mere man-made
+wine, was planted, pruned and tended
+ready for the vintage in a single night by
+a host of ex-vigneron angels (for all
+vignerons, the worthy monk assures us,
+go straight to heaven, just as no single
+miscreant of the ungodly company of
+water-drinkers has ever passed St Peter’s
+scrutiny at the Golden Gate), so that the
+grapes were hanging ripe to bursting from
+these “<i>vignes séraphiques</i>” on the
+morrow, waiting only on the poor, Saracen-hunted
+hermit, perishing of thirst, to
+pluck and press them. What an impious
+irony of fate that Hermitage should be
+one of the slowest wines to mature! But
+this is, perhaps, rather an exceptional case
+even among legends concerning the
+origins of famous vineyards, most of
+which claim, with wearisome monotony,
+to have been planted by the pious legionaries
+of the benign Emperor Probus, by
+Charlemagne himself, or various unfamiliar
+though duly authenticated
+saints; and raised to fame in the inexhaustible
+goblets of the <i>Vert Galant</i> or the
+immortal Rabelais. The vine thrives
+best and most luxuriantly and yields the
+largest, coarsest and most regular harvests
+in very hot, sub-tropical climates
+to which it is not indigenous and where it
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_25">[25]</span>is often necessary to irrigate the vineyards.
+Only in comparatively cold
+regions, within measurable distance of the
+northern limit of the vine (an imaginary
+line passing approximately from Nantes,
+through Paris, Compiègne, Coblentz,
+Dresden, a little east of Prague, along the
+southern slopes of the Carpathians and
+to the north of the Crimea and Caucasia
+in Europe; bisecting Turkestan, Cashmere,
+the Chinese Province of Shantung and
+Central Japan in Asia; and running from
+south of Puget Sound, north of the Great
+Lakes and across part of Canada, to the
+Atlantic seaboard in the State of New
+York, on the American continent), and
+from soil long familiar with its roots, will
+the Vitis Vinifera yield a vintage of fine
+and delicate wine; and then only in very
+small quantities, with an infinity of painful
+labour, at great expense and seldom
+more than two or three times in a decade,
+if, indeed, so often. The world’s most
+classic vineyards are planted on poor,
+stoney soil, often on rugged slopes, little
+suitable for other forms of cultivation.</p>
+
+<p>The world, then, is threatened with the
+extinction of the few hallowed acres of
+its very finest and most renowned vineyards
+within a measurable space of time
+by the ever-growing threat of
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_26">[26]</span>over-production—the inclusion not only of
+just those additional adjacent rods, poles
+and perches which past generations in
+their probity and wisdom resolutely
+refused to annex to them; but also of
+whole square miles of outlying meadowlands,
+arable plain or bleak and insufficiently
+sheltered hill-tops beyond their
+immediate limits—no less than by a
+menacing invasion of baser and insufficiently
+acclimatised sub-species of the
+parent vine.</p>
+
+<p>Other perils besetting the continuity of
+the finer wines are the spread of the
+so-called Type-Wines, in the form of
+standardised qualities for certain districts
+(a development that originated in California
+where wine used to be grown, as
+long as it could be grown at all, from vineyards
+vast as cattle-ranches, equipped with
+all the typically American resources of
+plant and capital for dealing with vintages
+on a Ford scale of output), which is being
+steadily fostered by wine-growers’ co-operatives
+in many parts of France,
+Italy and other wine-lands; and the
+wholesale manufacture by the large
+French wine-shippers of those vinous
+mixtures known as “<i>Monopoles</i>” and
+“<i>Marques Personnelles</i>.”</p>
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_27">[27]</span></p>
+
+
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="TYPE-WINES">TYPE-WINES</h2>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>The impulse that has called the Type-Wines
+into being was the necessity of
+finding some expedient that would enable
+the proprietors of the less famous growths
+of well-known regions to sell their wines
+remuneratively, which was becoming
+more and more difficult. There was also
+a strong desire on their part to profit by
+the recently established <i>appellations
+d’origine</i> for even the most lowly and
+inferior wines grown within these areas,
+and the ambition to compete in foreign
+markets with the cheap wines of countries
+such as Algeria and Australia, that are
+all of them inevitably Type-Wines, sold as
+often as not under the titles of one or
+other of the most famous viticultural
+regions of France (<i>e.g.</i>, Algerian “Chablis”
+and South Australian “Hermitage”).
+True, these descriptions would be illegal
+in France and those countries which,
+under recent commercial treaties, now
+admit yearly quotas of French wines and
+thereby assure the authenticity of their
+appellations; but in England the International
+Convention for the Protection
+of Industrial Property, which nominally
+secures respect for these same appellations
+in all signatory states, seems to be
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_28">[28]</span>a dead letter, if indeed it was not stillborn.</p>
+
+<p>These Type-Wines, already familiar in
+France, are not easily explained without
+giving a concrete and somewhat detailed
+example. For many decades wines have
+been available in commerce which bore
+the names of one or other of the great sub-divisions
+of the Bordelais, such as St
+Estèphe, Pauillac or Margaux in the
+Médoc, and Graves, St Emilion and
+Pomerol as representatives of the other
+districts entitled to be sold as “Bordeaux.”
+It was notorious that these
+wines, which were not always genuine,
+differed enormously in quality according
+to the standing of the firms which selected
+them and the vintages to which they
+belonged: vintages that were often passed
+over in silence because the wines in
+question were a blend of two or more.
+Nevertheless, wines sold under these
+labels, that made no claim to have been
+grown on any territorially defined plot of
+ground within the borders of their several
+districts—a particular Château or Cru—represented
+the cheapest authentic, or
+putatively authentic, kinds of Bordeaux
+with which the general public was
+familiar. The Co-operative Movement
+among French wine-growers, which had
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_29">[29]</span>started in the Midi, a region devoted to
+the production of cheap wines on a vast
+scale, without much pretension to quality,
+where it was decidedly beneficial to the
+interests of the growers and the public
+alike, eventually spread to certain of the
+less-known districts of the Bordelais.
+One of the latest recruits is the Commune
+of Margaux.</p>
+
+<p>The Commune of Margaux, one of the
+two most famous in the Médoc, has for
+centuries been reputed for producing some
+of the very finest Bordeaux wines there
+are; its supreme glory being the First
+Growth of Château Margaux itself. In
+addition, the Commune boasts four Second
+Growths, four Third Growths, one Fourth
+Growth, about a dozen recognised superior
+Bourgeois and ordinary Bourgeois
+Growths and something like thirty <i>Crus
+Artisans</i> and <i>Crus Paysans</i>, which represent
+the tail of the Bordelais hierarchy in
+point of reputation. There are besides
+some half-a-dozen large growths planted
+in <i>Palu</i> soil (rich, alluvial clay) on the
+foreshore of the Gironde and on certain
+low-lying islands in the stream. Palus
+vineyards give a very much larger yield
+of appreciably coarser wines than those
+planted on the gravel soil further inland,
+which is geologically typical of the Médoc
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_30">[30]</span>proper. In point of production the ten
+<i>Crus Classés</i> of Margaux yield about 650
+<i>tonneaux</i>&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_5" href="#Footnote_5" class="fnanchor">[5]</a> of wine a year, which is easily
+sold at high prices; the Superior Bourgeois,
+Bourgeois, Artisan and Peasant
+Growths account for another 550 between
+them, the best of which finds a fairly
+ready market in good years, but much of
+which has nearly always to be sold at
+unsatisfactory prices; while the Palus
+growths produce some 1,100, the sale of
+which, though prices are relatively low,
+is on the whole more remunerative because
+the vintage is much heavier and the cost
+of cultivation much less. Yet each of
+these growths, high as humble, every
+litre of the total average yield of 20,700
+hectolitres, has an identical right to the
+common appellation of “Margaux.” Anyone
+who lives in the Commune of Margaux
+and has a strip of garden in which there
+is room to grow a row of a dozen vines
+of sorts, tended, perhaps, little and carelessly,
+can sell his wine as “Margaux”
+with the same legality as his neighbour
+who may cultivate a considerable and
+reputed vineyard in the most approved
+scientific manner.</p>
+
+<p>Formerly the <i>Crus Bourgeois Supérieurs</i>
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_31">[31]</span>and the <i>Crus Bourgeois</i> commanded a
+ready sale at prices not utterly disproportionate
+to those attained by the <i>Crus
+Classés</i>, while the ratio between the two
+orders of growths was nearly always the
+same, whatever the prices realised for the
+First Growths, which always set the tone
+of the market. Nowadays the public
+knows far less about wines, and a predominantly
+<i>parvenu</i> generation wants to
+buy the best, and nothing but the best,
+and is guided almost entirely by names
+and labels and very little by vintages or
+careful tasting. Moreover there is no
+longer the same prejudice against consuming
+comparatively new wines in this
+hasty age, and, as a consequence, the laying
+down of wines that are slow to mature is
+the exception rather than the rule. The
+result is that it has become so difficult
+to sell some of the best and most ancient
+in fame of the <i>Crus Bourgeois</i> at a reasonable
+profit—to say nothing of the <i>Crus
+Artisans et Paysans</i>—that vines are being
+grubbed up wholesale. It was to meet
+this state of affairs that a Co-operative
+Communal Cellar was founded in Margaux.
+The avowed object is to utilise all
+wines made in the territory of the
+commune, excepting only those that sell
+readily on their own names and merits,
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_32">[32]</span>so as to produce year in and year out,
+irrespective of good or bad vintages
+because blended from both, a uniform
+wine with a flavour as typical of the best
+Margaux growths as the nature of a single
+composite mixture may allow. It is
+needless to say that such a Type-Wine
+“Margaux,” bearing full guarantees of
+territorial authenticity though it would,
+must be a hollow parody of a real wine,
+because it is a synthesis, a standardisation,
+of many, blended to the taste of the
+uncritical majority of the public. Should
+this experiment prove commercially successful,
+and the example of Margaux
+prevail, there would soon be an end to all
+individuality, to all those finer shades of
+years and growths that are the delight of
+the true wine-lover; and the ambition
+of Margaux and its emulators would be
+to produce an ever-greater quantity,
+trading on an ancient and no longer
+justifiable local renown for quality that
+was only attained in the past by a deliberate
+and consistent sacrifice of any idea of
+securing bumper vintages.</p>
+
+<p>It is the rapid rise of the “<i>Monopoles</i>,”
+the very existence of which is an impious
+challenge to the fair name of wine, that
+has stimulated the wholesale vatting of
+these standardised regional growths.</p>
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_33">[33]</span></p>
+
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="MONOPOLES">MONOPOLES</h2>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>The French word “<i>monopole</i>,” as
+applied to wines, really means a firm’s
+trade-mark, a proprietary brand: in fact
+very much the same sort of thing as the
+popular blends of Scotch Whisky advertised
+by the leading distillers. At present
+these Monopoles are chiefly confined to the
+Côte d’Or and the Bordelais, though
+specimens have already made their
+appearance in the lists of certain Beaujolais,
+Côtes du Rhône, Touraine and
+Anjou wine-merchants who specialise in
+these particular growths. To explain
+what these Monopoles really are—an
+authority of the eminence of M. Raymond
+Baudouin has not hesitated to stigmatise
+them as “pharmacy, but not wine”—the
+French law concerning appellations of
+origin, which the Monopoles have been
+devised to circumvent, must first be
+briefly examined. A wine may now no
+longer be sold under a territorial designation
+unless it is territorially entitled to its
+use: that is to say only when it has been
+grown exclusively within territory having
+an identical geographical (but not necessarily
+administrative) appellation, or
+within the area of such adjacent communes
+as may enjoy a recognised and
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_34">[34]</span>long-established right to the better-known
+name of their neighbour. For instance,
+a red wine sold as “Pommard” in France
+must have been grown within the Commune
+of Pommard, Département de la
+Côte d’Or, and none other; a white wine
+sold as Pouilly (not to be confused with
+the white wine of Pouilly-sur-Loir from
+the common border of the Départements
+of the Cher and the Nièvre), which is the
+name of a tiny hamlet in the Mâconnais
+and not of any one commune, must have
+been grown either in the Commune of
+Solutré (in which this hamlet actually
+lies), the Commune of Fuissé, the Commune
+of Vergisson and a cadastrally
+delimited part of the Commune of
+Chaintré, in the Département of Saône-et-Loire,
+and nowhere else.</p>
+
+<p>In the Côte d’Or there are two kinds of
+red vines: one the proud “<i>plant noble</i>,”
+called the Pinot of Pineau, which alone
+has made the wine of Burgundy the
+nectar that it is, that will grow in few
+places and then only on the lower slope—a
+niggardly beggar so delicate as to be
+prone to practically every malady that
+the vine is heir to; and the Gamay,&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_6" href="#Footnote_6" class="fnanchor">[6]</a> a
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_35">[35]</span>“<i>plant commun</i>,” which will thrive anywhere,
+especially where the Pinot will not—a
+hardy vine that is a heavy bearer
+and causes little anxiety or expense to
+the vigneron.</p>
+
+<p>As there is very little slope with the
+right exposure in each commune, it follows
+that there is a considerable extent of
+Gamay plantations, since the wine of the
+Gamay vineyards has just as much right
+to be sold as “Pommard,” if it is grown in
+that commune, as wine grown in the most
+famous of the historic “<i>climats</i>” which
+have been planted exclusively with
+Pinot vines since time immemorial. (In
+England, in so far as our “Pommard”
+ever comes from that Commune, or the
+Burgundy region at all, it is nearly
+always Gamay wine, French growers and
+shippers having long ago discovered that
+most English wine-drinkers, and many
+English wine-merchants, cannot distinguish
+it from a Pinot growth, though
+these respective flavours, once they
+become familiar, are as dissimilar as chalk
+and cheese.) An amendment to the <i>Loi
+des Appellations d’Origine</i>, called the
+<i>Amendment Capus</i> after the name of the
+Senator who introduced it, is now before
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_36">[36]</span>the French Chambers, the object of which,
+should it, as seems probable, be ratified,
+is to limit any given “<i>appellation
+d’origine</i>” ampelographically as well as
+territorially: that is, to confine it to
+wines grown from those auguster vines
+that are historically as much an integral
+part of the wine itself as the traditional
+area of ground and the geological nature
+of the soil it has always been grown on.
+The first important effect of this amendment
+to the existing state of the law would
+be that Gamay wines grown in Côte d’Or
+communes would no longer be entitled to
+any local appellation of origin (such as
+“Pommard”), unless it were the generic
+name “Bourgogne,” the lowest, because
+the most general, qualification of all for
+any Burgundy, red or white. A given
+wine, enjoying the right to a special
+secondary appellation, can always be
+made to descend the scale from the particular
+to the general in bad years, or for
+any other cause that may have marred its
+quality; but a wine can never be promoted
+to a higher category than that in
+which it was born and bred. A simple
+instance for exemplifying this point is
+afforded by the official grouping in the
+Beaujolais. The local appellations of
+origin here recognised as “<i>pouvant
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_37">[37]</span>revendiquer les usages loyaux, locaux et
+constants</i>,” are Moulin-à-Vent, Fleurie,
+Morgon, Juliénas, Brouilly, Thorins, and
+Chénas. Now none of these wines can
+under any circumstances appropriate to
+itself the name of one of its fellows.
+Chénas may not style itself Moulin-à-Vent;
+nor, for that matter, though there
+is no sort of temptation to do so,
+may Moulin-à-Vent style itself Chénas.
+Yet all are Beaujolais and “Beaujolais”
+is the common name to which every other
+wine grown in that region has an equal
+right. Thus any of these seven “named”
+wines may call itself simply “Beaujolais,”
+and being a Beaujolais has a clear title
+to the seemingly magnificent, but in
+reality exceedingly common and unassuming,
+patronymic of “Bourgogne.”
+There is only one Mackintosh of Mackintosh,
+but Andrew Mackintosh, gillie to
+THE Mackintosh, is as much a “Mackintosh”
+as the exalted Chief of the
+Clan.</p>
+
+<p>None the less any wine-merchant has
+the right to sell a wine, or blend of wines,
+French or foreign, called by some fantastic
+name, or whatever title of his own invention
+he chooses to employ, provided it
+is not identical with an existing appellation
+of origin. More often than not the
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_38">[38]</span>bottler selects a name nicely calculated
+to seem a genuine territorial appellation
+to the unwary, such as Château This or
+Clos That, Roc d’Or or Monvalloir; or,
+keeping within the law, slightly adapts
+the spelling of some classic growth with
+fraudulent intent: Romani for Romanée,
+etc. Several of the more important
+Bordeaux and Beaune firms sell Monopoles
+purely on the strength of their own
+names and previous reputations as Chose’s
+Blue and Green Labels, or Red and Yellow
+Capsules, much as English grocers sell
+different qualities of well-known brands of
+tea. Where Saints’ names are invoked
+because of their prevalence in Bordelais
+communes, the wines they consecrate are
+no more catholic for the doubtful compliment
+of a spurious, or impersonated,
+canonisation. Certainly good St Vincent
+would have none of these imposters either
+as brother saints or tipplers.</p>
+
+<p>According to M. Raymond Baudouin, a
+typical recipe adopted by the Côte d’Or
+alchemists is</p>
+
+<blockquote>
+
+<p class="hanging">25% genuine Côte d’Or Burgundy for flavouring.</p>
+
+<p class="hanging">30% good Côtes du Rhône wine to eke out this
+flavouring.</p>
+
+<p class="hanging">20% ordinary Algerian wine to reduce the
+cost.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_39">[39]</span></p>
+
+<p class="hanging">25% natural wine (<i>i.e.</i>, wine with no special
+flavour or other salient characteristic)
+to drown the taste of the hot
+Algerian blending wine and still
+further reduce the cost of production.</p>
+
+</blockquote>
+
+<p class="noindent">The Bordeaux houses are said to employ</p>
+
+<blockquote>
+
+<p class="hanging">25% genuine Bordeaux.</p>
+
+<p class="hanging">30% good Midi wine.</p>
+
+<p class="hanging">20% ordinary Algerian wine.</p>
+
+<p class="hanging">25% neutral wine.</p>
+
+</blockquote>
+
+<p class="noindent">It is perhaps hardly necessary to add that
+these formulas are only approximate, and
+that the actual ingredients of each Monopole
+vary in nature and ratio with the
+firm of wine-cooks concerned. Indeed,
+there are some Côte d’Or houses which
+claim that their Monopoles are blended
+exclusively from pure, territorially
+genuine, Burgundies: a claim which,
+whether justifiable or not in fact, is best
+rejected on principle, because there is
+seldom any inducement to blend a wine
+good enough to be sold unblended.</p>
+
+<p>A widely organised conspiracy now
+exists to foist these vinous compounds,
+which may conceivably be wine and even
+French wine, but are certainly neither
+Bordeaux nor Burgundy according to any
+legal or loyal interpretation of those
+terms, on purchasers of single bottles
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_40">[40]</span>and diners at restaurants because they
+yield much bigger profits than ordinary
+wines. Thanks to our national ignorance
+of wines, Monopole brands of White
+Graves (one boasts that it is supplied to
+the House of Lords), and other so-called
+“Oyster-Wines,” have already gained a
+certain footing on the English market
+because they are supposed to offer “more
+regular and uniform quality” than wines
+bearing straightforward territorial designations,
+together with a sustained standard
+of flavour, independent of vintage vagaries:
+a thing which it is simplicity itself
+to produce once “<i>coupage</i>,” or scientific
+blending, is resorted to. In the Côte
+d’Or, where the demand for authentic
+Côte de Nuits and Côte de Beaune
+Burgundies is anything up to five times
+as much as can be genuinely produced,
+while bad vintages are much more frequent
+than good, the evil of the “<i>Marques
+Personnelles</i>” has made such rapid progress
+that already more Monopole wines
+than territorial growths are sold and the
+integrity of the sacred name of Burgundy
+is definitely compromised. Many of these
+mixtures are quite agreeable to drink,
+provided always that they are taken for
+what they really are and not for what
+they pretend to be, but to offer them to
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_41">[41]</span>one’s friends is an unpardonable insult,
+however merited the insult may sometimes
+be. The proper sphere for these beverages—if,
+indeed, they can be said to have
+any proper sphere other than the hoodwinking
+of the credulous and ignorant for
+whom they are lavishly and alluringly
+labelled in regulation Burgundy and
+Bordeaux bottles—is for splashing down
+a hustled and jolted meal in a dining-car.
+A Monopole may be defined as the <i>Train
+Bleu</i> wine par excellence, since it can
+always be relied upon to be none the worse
+for the most violent shaking before
+taking.</p>
+
+<p>A word of caution is, however, necessary
+because in French commercial usage this
+dangerous word “<i>monopole</i>” can have
+two very different interpretations. The
+first, which is infinitely the more common,
+as we have just seen, applies to blended
+wines sold as proprietary brands under
+the euphemism which the law requires to
+be printed in the wine-merchant’s price-list
+but not on the label of the bottle:
+“<i>exclusif de toute considération d’origine
+et de cépage</i>” (<i>cépage</i> means in this context
+the types of vine traditionally
+associated with particular growths of
+wine). The second, and entirely respectable
+sense, which the same term may have,
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_42">[42]</span>is in the case where a certain firm may
+own or lease the whole of a particular
+vineyard and can thus claim that it
+possesses a “monopoly” of its wine. An
+outstanding instance is provided by
+Romanée-Conti of Vosne, perhaps the
+most famous vineyard in the whole world,
+which is “<i>Monopole de la Maison De
+Villaine et Cambon</i>” for the very good
+and sufficient reason that this old and
+honourable firm owns the freehold of the
+hallowed hectare and a half and bottles
+every drop of its priceless wine in its
+own cellars.</p>
+
+<p>Strictly speaking, Champagne (where
+the term originated and where it is still
+extensively used), practically all other
+sparkling wines and most Ports, Sherries,
+Madeiras and Marsalas are likewise Monopoles,
+because they are sold under the
+names of different makers—each separate
+shipper representing one or more proprietary
+brands—instead of under the
+names of particular vineyards or communes.
+In each of these cases, however,
+the blending formula, which has made the
+reputation and constitutes the most
+jealously guarded secret of each firm,
+relies wholly on wines enjoying co-equal
+local appellations. Every drop of Première
+Zone Champagne is territorially
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_43">[43]</span>genuine “Champagne,” although as many
+as six separate communes, each with its
+own appellation of origin, may have
+contributed to its composition. The only
+way to avoid pitfalls is to know your
+Côte d’Or communes and “<i>climats</i>” and
+your Bordeaux districts, with their constituent
+communes and satellite <i>Crus</i>,
+<i>Clos</i> and <i>Châteaux</i> (the latter is almost the
+work of a lifetime), more or less by heart,
+and to apply the cold test of geography
+to every bottle you are invited to buy.
+Even then you have no real guarantee in
+England, for English wine-merchants
+seem to be able to label wines, or other
+vinous mixtures, with more or less any
+names that suit their fancies, and yet enjoy
+virtual immunity from prosecution, so
+long as they do not describe as “Port”
+or “Madeira” wines that were not
+originally shipped from Oporto and
+Funchal with the appropriate Portuguese
+Certificate of Origin.</p>
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="ADULTERATION">ADULTERATION</h2>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>The increasing resources of sophistication
+in their various legal and illegal
+aspects keep pace with the progress of
+chemical research. Attempts to level up
+the irregular work of the sun by artificial
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_44">[44]</span>means, so as to overcome the lack of any
+uniform degree of maturity in the grape,
+caused by the alternating clemency and
+inclemency of the vintage season, is
+becoming more and more common. The
+commonest form of adulteration is blending,
+whether of separate growths or
+vintages. To-day an unnamed, or
+vaguely named, wine, gives rise to the
+suspicion of being the former, just as an
+undated wine carries a strong presumption
+of being the latter. Happily the practice
+of indicating the vintages of wines has
+now become much more general, and is
+being adopted by countries, such as Italy,
+where the custom was formerly unknown.
+The consumer’s best safeguard against
+blended wine is an estate-bottled growth.&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_7" href="#Footnote_7" class="fnanchor">[7]</a>
+The use of chemical aids in wine-making
+is to some extent sanctioned by the law.
+In France wine may now be sugared
+(<i>chaptalisation</i>), sterilised (<i>pasteurisation</i>),
+fortified (<i>vinage</i>), watered (<i>mouillage</i>),
+plastered (<i>plâtrage</i>), muted (<i>mutage</i>) and,
+in the case of white wines, sulphured
+(<i>sulfitage</i>), within certain defined limits
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_45">[45]</span>and subject of formal declaration. The
+illegal adulterants of wine have been too
+frequently catalogued to need any recapitulation.
+Synthetic scents and
+flavourings are always adding to their
+number, but it is doubtful whether
+any synthetic bouquet or taste will
+ever be able to deceive an experienced
+palate.</p>
+
+<p><i>Chaptalisation</i> means supplying the
+percentage of natural grape-sugar which
+the most of wet or cold vintage years is
+deficient in by the same amount of cane
+or beet sugar. This added sugar is converted
+into alcohol at the same time, and
+in precisely the same way, as the natural
+sugar of the fruit; thanks to this addition
+the wine is assured of sufficient alcoholic
+body to keep, which might not otherwise
+be possible. Only experts can detect a
+<i>vin chaptalisé</i> from an unsugared wine.
+This practice is fairly common in the
+northernmost vineyards, such as Champagne,
+the Côte d’Or and the Moselle. The
+German law permits sugaring in certain
+cases, but no sugared wine may be
+labelled “<i>Natur</i>,” or “<i>Naturrein</i>.”
+Chaptalisation saved the 1925 vintage in
+the Bordelais, where this expedient had
+hitherto been held up to execration as a
+typically Burgundian falsification.
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_46">[46]</span><i>Pasteurisation</i> is resorted to so as to preserve
+young wines of poor vintages against
+attacks of wine-maladies after they have
+been bottled. It allows wine to be
+bottled almost as soon as made, and
+though it brings the wine well forward in
+the process, it arrests most of its subsequent
+natural development. <i>Vinage</i> is
+simply, as in the case of Port, the brandying
+of sweet wines with extraneous spirit.
+<i>Mouillage</i> is resorted to for reducing the
+alcoholic strength of common wines,
+which are taxed and priced at so much the
+alcoholic degree. <i>Plâtrage</i> is the sprinkling
+of the grapes with plaster of paris
+while they are being pressed. It is
+supposed to be a safeguard against the
+danger of secondary, or acetous, fermentation
+in hot climates during the first
+summer following the vintage. <i>Mutage</i>
+is a means of arresting fermentation
+chemically, so as to permit of one wine
+being blended with another before allowing
+a joint fermentation of the two to
+proceed to completion. <i>Sulfitage</i> is used
+to preserve the bright golden colour of
+white wines, that are apt to turn brown
+when exposed to the air, and to prevent
+<i>vins liquoreux</i>, like Sauternes, alcoholising
+a certain degree of unconverted grape-sugar,
+or <i>liqueur</i>, which they are intended
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_47">[47]</span>to retain. The old method of sulphuring
+was to smoke the empty casks with
+sulphur matches before filling them, which
+resulted in the fumes becoming amalgamated
+with the wine. The newer, and more
+dangerous, practice is to add a small
+percentage of suitably diluted Sulphur
+Dioxide. The French tolerance of this
+chemical is 450 parts per million: a proportion
+identical with that adopted under
+the new British regulations, which define
+this “improver” as the only extraneous
+substance that wine imported into the
+United Kingdom may contain.</p>
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="PROSTITUTION">PROSTITUTION</h2>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>The outstanding example of the menace
+to the survival of wine in its natural form
+is the wholesale demand for what the
+French call the “<i>champagnisation</i>” of
+all kinds of wine, great and humble, good,
+bad and indifferent, red, white and <i>rosé</i>,
+quite irrespective of their suitability for
+gaseous treatment, which tends more and
+more to absorb choicer and rarer, rather
+than poorer and more abundant, qualities.
+This insatiable public appetite for
+effervescence ignores the amount of those
+surplus qualities that are available and,
+in certain cases, readily adaptable, for
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_48">[48]</span>the purpose and so degrades fine still
+wines from their lawful sphere by constraining
+them to pop, froth and bubble
+in indignant and impotent protest instead
+of gurgling majestically into the glass of
+honour in a tranquil and limpid stream.
+Our spendthrift generation is convinced
+that the sparkling variety of any given
+wine must needs be its highest, because
+its costliest, expression. Even to-day,
+few growths have remained wholly
+immune to this vandalism, while the
+commercial pressure brought to bear on
+the few conscientious recalcitrants is
+increasing yearly. It would seem that
+in the United States, where the real
+meaning of simple words is even more
+often misunderstood than in England,
+wine, in common parlance, always implies
+a sparkling wine of sorts, whether genuine
+or spurious Champagne. The youth of
+Europe, hypnotised by jazz strains, convulsions
+and idioms, is doing its best to
+make the word have the same ignorantly
+exclusive and inglorious significance in
+lands that have spontaneously evolved
+their own languages and ancestral wassailing
+traditions. It is arguable whether
+sparkling wine is really wine at all. What
+admits of no sort of cavil is that its name
+needs qualifying by some such admonitory
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_49">[49]</span>adjective so as to distinguish it from the
+natural wine from which it is, or purports
+to be, manufactured.</p>
+
+<p>Happily there is yet no sign of a vogue
+in fortified “qualities” of famous natural
+wines, but with Port dearer and stronger
+than ever owing to the new schedule of
+wine-duties, there is no reason to be over-sanguine.
+Thanks to the spirited competition
+of Australian sweet wines, made
+possible by the considerable preference
+accorded to Empire wines in this country
+and an export bounty of 3s. to 4s. the
+gallon granted by the Commonwealth
+Government, Portugal and Spain are not
+likely to have a monopoly of this market
+for the future. Already, too, a home
+industry has sprung up for the manufacture
+of fortified “British Wines”—the
+unfermented must being imported
+from abroad in a muted state and
+“worked up” in this country into a
+liquid on which the courtesy title of
+“wine” has been bestowed. Mr Churchill,
+in the course of his speech on the Budget
+for 1927, tempered the unwelcome compliment
+of rendering these concoctions
+liable to duty by promising to taste them
+before that measure had the force of law.
+A less fearless man in his position might
+well have preferred to renounce the project
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_50">[50]</span>of raising revenue from such an
+unpalatable source.</p>
+
+<p>The transformation of various wines
+(Chablis, Vouvray, Anjou, Mercurey, Cap
+Corse, etc.) into “tonic wines” or
+<i>apéritifs</i> (the different proprietary brands
+of Vermouth, French and Italian, together
+with the numerous “Quinas,” “Quinquinas,”
+“Kinas,” and the like, to say
+nothing of those combined with meat-extract
+sold by English apothecaries) by
+an admixture of quinine and other
+“appetising” herbs and “restorative”
+drugs, is another barbarism that is now
+assuming considerable proportions. This
+heinous practice is at all events of more
+respectable antiquity than “<i>champagnisation</i>,”
+having been familiar in classical
+times, with rather different but no more
+inviting ingredients, in the guise of “wine
+tempered by the nymphs.” As it is,
+Great Britain imports more Italian Vermouth
+than Italian wine. Non-alcoholic
+wine, or sterilised grape-juice, which is
+now prepared in France, Germany,
+Switzerland and the United States, is the
+most recent fad in the way of <i>Weinersatz</i>.
+It has been claimed that this emasculated
+beverage has considerable medicinal value.
+Doubtless it will soon be advertised in
+this country under some such slogan as
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_51">[51]</span>“Take the Modish Grape-Cure of Meran
+at Merriest Margate (or in your own home)
+with Vincent’s Vitamined Verjuice.”
+These parodies of wine, it is hardly necessary
+to add, belong to the same school of
+“refreshing pick-me-ups” as Cydrax,
+Kop’s Ale, Herb-Beer, Kola Champagne,
+Raspberry Sherbet and other mineral-water
+and Soda-Fountain eruptions.
+The survival of these dismal and sickly
+tipples depends on the survival of the
+Teetotal Dogma which ordains the purging
+of the pride of the palate with
+one or other of these potable Puritan
+penitences.</p>
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="MALADIES_OF_THE_VINE">MALADIES OF THE VINE</h2>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>It is too often forgotten that the vinelands
+of Europe, and the majority of the
+Australian, North and South African vineyards
+planted with European vines, came
+within an ace of total destruction by
+those terrible scourges the Oidium (first
+noted in 1845) and the Phylloxera (which
+appeared in 1868), which devastated the
+viticultural world only a decade or two
+apart in the middle of the last century.
+Both came from America, and pious
+French vignerons see in Prohibition a
+divine visitation on a country so hardened
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_52">[52]</span>in iniquity as to have wantonly disseminated,
+if not deliberately incubated, these
+frightful pestilences, in despair of ever
+equalling the quality of European wines.
+Of the two, the latter, because it was
+recurrent and seems to be endemic to the
+vine, was by far the more catastrophic.
+Chemical means, such as sulphur-spraying,
+were eventually devised for coping with
+the former, so that it could be, if not
+eradicated, at least held in check. The
+Phylloxera, on the other hand, for long
+defied the concerted efforts of the world’s
+most skilful chemists and agriculturists,
+traversing Europe from Portugal to the
+Crimea like a forest fire, and even passing
+mysteriously beyond the seas to infest the
+young vineyards of other continents. The
+havoc wrought was inestimable, particularly
+in France, where a million hectares of
+vineyards, which have never since been
+replanted, were swept out of existence.
+Indeed, when this murrain was at its
+zenith, there was for some time grave
+doubt whether the French peasantry
+could ever be induced to replant their
+perished vines. In the magnitude of its
+destructiveness and the swiftness and
+universality of its contagion, the Phylloxera
+can only be compared to the dreaded
+Pink Bol-Worm parasite of the cotton-plant.
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_53">[53]</span>Ultimately salvation was found
+in wholesale replanting with grafted
+vines. The peculiarity of this pest was
+that it attacked the roots, but not the
+foliage, of the European vines, while the
+roots of the indigenous American species
+were as inured against its infection as
+their foliage was susceptible to it. Thus
+by grafting picked European vine-shoots
+on to suitable American vine-stocks, a
+hardy plant could be evolved, both roots
+and foliage of which were sufficiently
+resistent to the cryptogam. There are, of
+course, plenty of other blights and distempers
+that afflict the vine in greater or
+less degree according to the species concerned
+and the nature of the soil and
+climate it is grown in. The vigneron’s
+life is one unceasing round of watch and
+ward, toil and prayer. Not for a single
+week in the year can the smallest vineyard
+go untended. A new and more dreadful
+Phylloxera might appear at any moment,
+though the viticulturist is now much
+better equipped to resist fresh parasitic
+invasions.</p>
+
+<p>A word may be said in connection with
+the maladies peculiar to the vine on the
+vexed question of the relative merits of
+the wines grown from grafted and ungrafted
+vines. It is usually claimed that
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_54">[54]</span>the quality of the pre-phylloxera wines,
+grown from old French ungrafted vines,
+was infinitely superior to anything that
+the best grafted vines can ever hope to
+produce. This contention is not supported
+by the consensus of opinion
+among wine-growers and wine-merchants,
+though some make a reservation in favour
+of the old <i>vieilles souches</i> Burgundies.
+The new vines show no “yellow streak.”
+They have acquired none of the primitive
+characteristics of native American vines,
+such as their foxy flavour, except their
+New-World vigour. The wines they yield
+mature more rapidly and are certainly,
+like the grafted vines themselves, shorter-lived,
+but they give an equal quality with
+a slightly larger yield per acre. Fifty or
+a hundred years hence it will be possible
+to pass a more definite and dispassionate
+judgment on this controversy. It should,
+however, be remembered that those who
+insistently decry all wines grown from
+grafted vines are generally old gentlemen
+who have already reached that age when,
+like the Señor d’Asumar, in “Gil Blas,”
+the peaches of their youth seem infinitely
+larger, juicier and more luscious than any
+that are grown to-day.</p>
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_55">[55]</span></p>
+
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="THE_FUTURE_OF_EMPIRE_WINES">THE FUTURE OF EMPIRE WINES</h2>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>During the South African War we were
+urged to think imperially. After the
+World War, the nation, in spite of saturation
+with American films, was considered
+to have pondered sufficiently in an
+imperial sense for the time to be ripe to
+ask it to eat, drink and clothe itself
+imperially as well. The dogma of Free
+Trade was definitely abandoned and
+several minor Empire preferences were
+offered us as grist for mental stimulus.
+To food for the mind we were exhorted
+to add food for the body, though the
+reverse process might have made a
+stronger appeal with a more logical nation,
+besides simplifying the necessary change
+in purchasing habits which had survived
+the outworn doctrines of Bright and
+Cobden who had been instrumental in
+moulding them.</p>
+
+<p>To smoke and drink imperially is rather
+a different matter to eating and dressing
+imperially. Most of us would gladly
+smoke and drink what our fellow-Britons
+grow if the question of quality did not
+persist in intruding itself between the cup
+and the lip. Even when we are prepared
+to ignore this aspect of practical patriotism,
+imperial flattery of the palate has a
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_56">[56]</span>way of forcing itself on our attention at
+the very first puff or sip. Nor are we
+always quite honest with ourselves when
+we make a resolution to eat, drink, smoke
+or dress imperially for the future, because
+on these occasions we often refrain from
+making an inventory of the mental
+reservations which, consciously or unconsciously,
+we bring to the list. Not even
+the most ardent patriot, until at least he
+loses his palate, can pretend that Borneo
+Cigars or Burmah Cheroots are superior
+to Havana Cigars and Manilla Cheroots.
+So it is with Empire Wines. Australian
+“Burgundy” and South African “Hock”
+could not pass muster for the French and
+German wines they so unblushingly
+pretend to be with the wine-waiter of the
+National Liberal Club.</p>
+
+<p>It is an axiom in wine that quality can
+only be forthcoming in countries where
+viticulture depends primarily on the home
+market, and even then it is less often
+attained than otherwise. For all practical
+purposes there are only four provenances
+of Empire wines: South Africa,
+Australia, Palestine and Cyprus, which
+already produce more than they can
+readily dispose of, as only the first and
+last are in any real sense wine-drinking
+countries. A little wine is grown in
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_57">[57]</span>Cashmere, Canada and Malta as well, but
+the quantity is negligible. From climatic
+and geological deductions it seems
+probable that vineyards could be successfully
+planted in parts of New Zealand,
+Kenya, Rhodesia and the middle slopes of
+the Himalayas, Ghats and Nilgherry
+Hills in India, but there is no potential
+demand for fresh sources of supply unless
+their produce is of a vastly superior
+quality to anything now grown on British
+soil. The Cyprian Commanderia wine
+of Paphos is historically one of the world’s
+most famous growths, but it is doubtful
+whether its peculiar flavour will ever
+make any strong appeal to the British
+palate. Little of the ordinary wine of the
+island is now exported to England, the
+bulk of such as is being absorbed by the
+manufacturers of a well-known brand of
+“Tonic Wine,” which is very popular
+with rigid teetotalers and connoisseurs of
+patent medicines. Quantitatively, there
+is little hope for Empire wines, even when
+protected by substantial preferential
+tariffs. Algerian common wines, to say
+nothing of the most ordinary French,
+Spanish and Italian growths, will always
+be cheaper and more abundant than any
+similar wines grown in Australia or the
+Cape, which have to pay far higher freight
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_58">[58]</span>and are cultivated by vine-dressers that
+are far more highly paid. Even should
+the Algerian supply fail for any cause,
+and at present it is increasing steadily
+every year, larger and larger quantities
+of Argentine and Chilian wines are
+becoming available for export. Algerian
+wines are not particularly choice—they
+have only been cultivated for about sixty
+years—but some of them are superior to
+anything produced within the Empire.
+Moreover, except in England, they are
+sold under their local Algerian name as
+Médéa, Miliana, Mascara, and Coteaux de
+l’Harach, etc., and not as Algerian
+“Claret,” “Burgundy,” “Chablis,”
+“Graves,” and “Sauternes”; though
+our own wine-merchants, save when,
+as is not infrequent, they use them
+anonymously, do not hesitate to give
+them these absurd and mendacious
+titles.</p>
+
+<p>All other Empire wines, with one or
+two honourable exceptions, such as the
+South African Riebeeck Kastel and the
+Australian Highercombe Amber, produce,
+on their own label avowals, nothing but
+self-styled imitations of the leading
+European wines, prefixed by the safeguarding
+qualification Australian, South
+African or Palestine, as the case may be,
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_59">[59]</span>which reduces these fraudulent claims to
+nonsense. Even where local names are
+adopted, such as Schoongezicht, Paarl and
+Drakenstein, they are used to qualify the
+meaningless title “Hock.” It is a lie.
+The wines of these three districts—and
+they are about the best which the Empire
+has to offer—are, and always will be,
+nothing but Schoongezicht, Paarl and
+Drakenstein respectively. They are not,
+and cannot be, “Hocks,” even though
+grown from the choicest Rhenish Riesling
+vines, because Hock is a purely German
+wine to which the Rhineside town of
+Hochheim-am-Main has given its name.
+Hochheim is in the Regierungsbezirk
+Wiesbaden of Prussia, and not in the Cape
+Province of the Union of South Africa.
+Nearly all Australian, and a great many
+South African, red wines describe themselves
+as “Burgundies” (there are, to be
+sure, a few “Clarets” and “Hermitages”
+as well) and often perpetrate a further,
+and yet more laughable, contradiction in
+terms by claiming that they are grown
+from Cabernet or Malbec vines: classic
+French vines, it is true, but native to the
+Bordelais and not Burgundy, where their
+cultivation is quite unknown. Burgundy
+is the product of a certain type of vine
+grown from time immemorial on a particular
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_60">[60]</span>kind of soil with a particular exposure,
+at a particular altitude, in a particular
+climate prevailing between a particular
+longitude and a particular latitude that
+coincide in eastern France: a concatenation
+of elements and circumstances which
+cannot possibly be reproduced in Australia,
+South Africa or anywhere else. Nor
+does “Burgundy,” as is sometimes
+supposed, denote a certain strength of red
+wine, a full-bodied growth, in contradistinction
+to “Claret” (which by the
+accident of a name, that should rightly be
+Bordeaux, is not the fraud it sounds,
+since “Claret” really means no more
+than a light-red wine) as a term used to
+imply a lighter-bodied and much less
+alcoholic type. The alcoholic contents of
+good Bordeaux and Burgundy, quality for
+quality, are usually more or less identical.
+The strength of wines is calculated in
+alcoholic degrees and not by appropriating
+names filched from certain representative
+growths. The essential vinous ethers of
+these spurious “Hocks” and “Burgundies,”
+scanty and not very subtle though
+they are, would, like the rose’s perfume,
+exhale bouquets just as bland under their
+own, or any other, names. If a single
+swallow does not of itself herald an
+English summer, all the Emus in the
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_61">[61]</span>Commonwealth cannot transmute a South
+Australian vintage into the <i>Grande Année</i>
+of a Côte d’Or <i>Tête de Cuvée</i>.</p>
+
+<p>Even if it be true that vigorous and
+psychologically intelligent advertising can
+increase the sales of any article, irrespective
+of its worth or utility, this would
+scarcely seem to apply to that particular
+brand, notable among “Burgundies”
+which are “generous but not spirity, soft
+but not sugary” for being sold under the
+device “Every Meal a Banquet.” That
+slogan “Every Meal a Banquet” is nicely
+calculated to deter any normal person
+from buying this particular brand—and
+that without even tasting it. Banquets
+are usually heavy and singularly depressing
+functions which people like Lord-Lieutenants,
+princes of the blood, mayors,
+chairmen of companies, politicians, public
+officials and diplomats accept with a
+heavy heart, and only because such
+occasions are part of their regular duties.
+Secretly they dread these orgies of ceremonious
+and oratorical eating as a
+pernicious waste of time, nefarious to
+their digestions. Thus we surmise that
+a wine capable of transforming every
+meal, however simple, intimate and unpretentious,
+into that portentously aldermanic
+and dyspeptic thing, a banquet,
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_62">[62]</span>must be singularly heavy and soporific in
+its effects.</p>
+
+<p>If real quality in Empire Wines is to be
+attained at all, it can only be by abandoning
+the existing methods of mass-production
+of Type-Wines and deliberately
+fostering the particularisation of certain
+small, but promising, local growths. South
+Africa, where irrigation of the vineyards
+is not as common as in Australia—irrigation
+more than doubles the yield
+and more than halves the quality—has
+already made some progress in this
+direction. As has already been noticed,
+wines are grown in the Cape at certain
+localities called Schoongezicht, Paarl and
+Drakenstein, which we assume, just
+because they are named, are probably of
+far better quality than the unnamed South
+African growths. The Australian Type-Wines,
+on the other hand, are apparently
+not even regional specimens of their kind.
+The average consumer of flagon wines
+knows nothing whatever about them
+except that they are grown somewhere in
+a vast Dominion which is a continent in
+itself. Keystone, Tintara, Ophir and
+Harvest are registered trademarks, not
+places on the map.</p>
+
+<p>That these Australian and South
+African masqueraders under French and
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_63">[63]</span>German colours can be sold in Great
+Britain has been amply proved. In 1926
+the consumption of Australian wines
+increased by over a million gallons. That
+their sale would fall away by nearly as
+much—drinking imperially is a habit
+that, to be abiding, requires some
+little time to form—were the preference
+and bounty removed there can be little
+doubt.</p>
+
+<p>Palestine, the latest recruit to the wine-lands
+of the Empire, produces imitations—very
+bad imitations, too, though the
+wines to which these illustrious and
+illusory resemblances are attributed by
+their Zionist growers are, in their rough
+and humble way, sometimes quite passable
+wines—of all the classical growths of
+France, Germany, Spain, Portugal,
+Hungary and Greece: everything, in fact,
+except an honest and avowedly Palestine
+wine <i>tel quel</i>. That some of these vineyards
+are now being turned over to the
+cultivation of table-grapes, or transformed
+into orange-groves, for lack of a market
+for their plagiarising wines, cannot be
+regretted as long as the Holy Land, of all
+regions of the earth, has not the proper
+pride to say of its first-fruits, “a poor
+thing, but mine own,” rather than “these
+are extremely fine reproductions, made
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_64">[64]</span>purposely to resemble the best-known
+growths of other countries in all respects,
+and sold under their names at a very
+reasonable price.”</p>
+
+<p>Thus it is all the more discouraging and
+humiliating to find that, according to the
+“<i>Times</i> Trade Supplement,” the British
+Empire Producers’ Organisation counsels
+Empire wine-growers “to give more study
+to questions of bottles and labels, using
+accepted shapes and designs <i>and leaving
+alone certificates of purity</i>.” The circular
+which recommends the expedient of
+putting new wine into old bottles, a
+practice recognised as disastrous even in
+biblical days, closes with the extraordinary
+statement that “Empire wines are
+sounder than most foreign wines at similar
+price, and are only prejudiced by devices
+(perhaps just the absence of these superfluous
+certificates of purity?) not usually
+associated with good wines.” This
+advice does scant justice to the commercial
+probity and intelligence of a nation of
+shopkeepers. It is clear that the very
+reverse is desirable. Empire Wines should
+evolve their own shapes of bottles and
+designs for their labels, just as much as
+they ought to develop their own individual
+flavours and other inherent characteristics,
+to say nothing of discovering their
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_65">[65]</span>own names. Several of the smaller
+French growths (notably Anjou and
+Frontignan), which have recently experienced
+some difficulty in disposing of their
+wines remuneratively, have adopted
+individual types of bottle, and find this
+policy promotes interest on the part of
+the public and undoubtedly helps to
+increase their sales.</p>
+
+<p>If Britons do not have a little more
+proper pride in their own husbandry,
+“Empire Produce” will soon come to
+have something of the purely imitative
+significance formerly associated with that
+familiar hall-mark for cheapness and
+shoddiness: “Made in Germany.” German
+wines, however, are neither of these
+<i>péjoratif</i> things, for in German vineyards,
+which are far from extensive,
+quantity has always been subordinated to
+quality. The result is that the yield is
+very small indeed, while growths like
+Steinberger and Schloss Johannisberger
+fetch prices more than double those of the
+finest French wines, white as red, which
+are in no wise inferior to them. The
+reason once again is that German wines
+do not imitate any others and are content
+to be unique of their kind. The very
+considerable difference in price, fine vintage
+for fine vintage, prevailing between
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_66">[66]</span>them and the choicest French growths is
+in ratio to the much larger production of
+the latter. The royal road to an enhanced
+quality in Empire Wines is in imitating
+the painstaking methods and local pride
+of French and German wine-growers
+instead of aping the names of their
+inimitable wines. Empire Wines, even if
+they are only ordinary beverage wines,
+must dare to be themselves and brave the
+risk of standing on their own merits and
+being sold under their own, and nothing
+but their own, names. The industry of
+no nation can take the same pride in
+slavishly copying the wares of another
+country as in developing the particular
+indigenous excellencies of its own. Less
+than a century ago the Cape produced one
+wine which became world-famous. That
+Constantia has disappeared from the
+tables of European epicures need occasion
+no surprise. The reason was a simple one.
+The demand for this wine, which became
+as fashionable as Madeira, soon exceeded
+the supply. Constantia was grown in a
+single vineyard. Increasing popularity
+led to over-production of its vines, and
+the growing of much spurious “Constantia,”
+that was really bad imitation
+Port, from hastily planted and badly
+tended vineyards in the surrounding
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_67">[67]</span>countryside. To-day Constantia, like the
+Maronean and Pramnian of the Classics,
+is no more than a memory, though the
+vineyard still survives and produces, I
+believe, a “Constantia Claret” (it might
+have been yet another “Burgundy” but
+for the irresistible appeal of alliteration)
+in its stead. The moral is a clear one.
+Constantia, a fortified red wine, was sold
+as Constantia and not as Cape “Port,”
+or Cape “Alicant.” True, it was often
+referred to as “Cape Constantia,” but
+this was evidence not of a specious fraud
+but of a certain local pride in its unusual
+origin, since no European wine existed of
+the same name.</p>
+
+<p>The vine has now been acclimatised in
+South Africa for nearly three hundred
+years, thus giving the older vineyards
+time to work out some of that virgin
+rankness of soil which is a serious handicap
+to the attainment of fine quality. What
+South African and Australian viticulture
+most needs are poorer and more worn
+soils, more carefully chosen exposures and
+altitudes for vineyards; and sterner
+pruning of the vines so as to ensure a far
+smaller yield per acre.</p>
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_68">[68]</span></p>
+
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="LEGISLATIVE_RESTRICTIONS">LEGISLATIVE RESTRICTIONS<br>
+ON THE SALE OF WINES AND SPIRITS</h2>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>Wine-drinkers are nearly always temperate
+in their opinions. That is why
+they are not “Temperance” advocates,
+the word having become debased into
+meaning the most intolerant teetotalism
+and the vilification of that essentially
+temperate beverage wine. Wine-drinkers,
+as temperate persons, are as much
+opposed to alcoholism as to teetotalism.
+Teetotalers, as intemperate fanatics, are
+opposed not so much to alcoholism as to
+alcohol itself—and their dour Puritan
+hearts are virtuously indignant that those
+who like it should continue to enjoy the
+liberty of drinking it. Wine-drinkers do not
+drink between meals, which is one of the
+first rules of health. They drink at their
+meals, just as teetotalers, who are every
+whit as thirsty as inveterate beer-drinkers,
+quaff their gaseous dill-waters at all sorts
+of times and in all sorts of places—preferably
+opposite ancient ruins: perhaps
+because they suggest to them the inexorable
+decline and fall of the brewing barons
+and the imminent decay of the fortunes
+of distillery magnates. To own a cellar
+of one’s own is to be independent of
+vexatious curtailments of drinking hours.
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_69">[69]</span>Just and proper as these restrictions are in
+theory, at all events until human nature
+can be relied upon to resist obviously
+harmful temptations more stoically than
+hitherto, they inevitably penalise those
+whose time is not their own. A poor man,
+however, cannot afford a cellar, which is
+supposed to imply a degree of affluence
+that is far from being borne out by the
+actual cost of laying down a few moderately
+good and varied bins. It is the
+wine-merchant who keeps up the idea that
+a cellar is an expensive luxury, because
+it is far more profitable for him to sell his
+customers fully matured wine than to
+encourage them to buy the same wine
+from him as soon as bottled and let it
+mature for nothing in their own cellars.
+When the interests of true temperance
+prevail in Parliament, light natural wines
+will be taxed so lightly that anyone who
+could afford to order a dozen bottles of
+Bass or Guinness at a time from the grocer’s
+could afford to stock a modest cellar.
+Spirits, on the other hand, will be taxed
+still more highly, and fortified wines proportionately
+to the added spirit they
+contain. The heavier incidence of duty
+on sparkling wines is not likely to be
+removed, because there is no valid reason
+why it should be. The consumption of
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_70">[70]</span>sparkling wines, as we have already seen,
+needs to be discouraged in the higher
+interests of natural wines. A proper
+purity standard for beer is not likely to
+be enforced as long as the public remains
+apathetic on the subject: that is to say
+until the time comes for the whole attitude
+of the state to the liquor question to be
+reviewed, not at the behest of a handful
+of teetotal fanatics, or the trade, but in
+response to the insistent demand of the
+consumer himself.</p>
+
+<p>The question may be asked, “Should
+the sale of wines and spirits be a state
+monopoly, and is this likely to become
+general in the near future?” Leaving
+aside all academic arguments for and
+against socialism, the answer would seem
+to be, as in the case of railway ownership
+and operation, “It depends on the
+country concerned and the particular
+genius of that nation; its administrative
+efficiency and its attitude towards the
+state and state institutions.” It is, however,
+unthinkable that in the future any
+state will consent to abdicate that degree
+of control of the liquor trade and public
+health and order afforded by levying
+discriminatory duties on the consumption
+of spirits. Even in France Absinthe has
+had to be made illegal. In Sweden a
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_71">[71]</span>compromise between state and commercial
+exploitation has been adopted. A
+single company, the <i>Aktiebolaget Vin och
+Spritcentralen</i>, farms the Government’s
+monopoly and hands over all surplus
+profits to the state after paying a small
+fixed dividend to its shareholders. This
+company also owns all the distilleries and
+wine-merchants’ shops in the country.
+It issues a sort of pass-book to consumers,
+showing the holder’s name, address, profession
+and taxation assessment and the
+number of bottles of wine and spirits he
+is entitled to monthly on this basis. This
+is certainly not socialism, for it substitutes
+the ratio of taxation for the doctrine of
+equality of opportunity; but if it denies
+the poor man the right to buy as much as
+the rich, it prevents the rich man buying
+as much as he likes, or devoting more
+than a certain percentage of his income to
+laying down a fine cellar of wine. Reminiscent
+of Food Control and Food Cards as
+these regulations sound, they seem to
+work well enough in practice. If a man
+may not himself import the sort of wines
+with which he would prefer to fill his
+cellar, the company, according to Mr
+Hedges Butler, gives him at very reasonable
+prices a choice of 862 varieties of
+wines and 263 of spirits and liqueurs: a
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_72">[72]</span>much wider selection than the score of
+most prominent London wine-merchants
+stock between them. From a variety of
+causes, of which inertia and chronic
+conservatism are the principal, British
+wine-merchants, still nominally competitive
+with one another, are coming more
+and more to resemble a number of
+branches of one and the same company,
+offering their customers an ever smaller
+selection of stereotyped growths. The
+invariable answer to this criticism is
+“Few but choice,” which is liable to
+provoke a slightly incredulous smile.
+“Few but choice,” faithfully echo the
+licensed grocers and the restaurants.
+The most prominent wine-merchant in
+Regent Street displays a wine-list so brief
+that it could be put to shame by any
+French provincial <i>épicerie</i>. Indeed
+British vintners of the present day seem
+to have taken as their device Sancho
+Panza’s words, “I come from my vineyard
+and know nothing”—except that
+very few of them have ever seen a vineyard
+or a wine-press. The public must
+be educated in wine, if its sale is to
+increase; a greater sale implies greater
+variety and cheapness and better average
+quality. Our prosperous wine-merchants,
+supinely content in the main to make
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_73">[73]</span>quick and easy profits by the sale of
+proprietary brands of Port and Champagne,
+are much too easy-going to give
+themselves the trouble of undertaking any
+more intelligent propaganda than editing
+crude circulars extolling those “very
+nice wines—not <i>too</i> dry” at bankrupt
+stock prices (“cost double”), the curious
+style of which is so unchanging as to seem
+traditional. In fact in nine cases out of
+ten they no longer know enough about
+the commodity they deal in to be able
+to do more than sell bottles containing it,
+much as a barman replenishes beer-mugs
+at the tap. There is an urgent need of a
+better-educated and more enterprising
+generation of wine-merchants, knowing
+their honourable profession at least as
+well as their grandfathers did. True, the
+last word in advertising wine was said
+many centuries ago. “Good wine (unlike
+the Monopoles and the sham “Hocks”
+and “Burgundies”) needs no bush”;
+but this presupposes that good wine
+should not be conspicuous by its absence.</p>
+
+<p>Prohibition in Norway, which I believe
+actually antedates the celebrated Volstead
+Act, was expounded to me on the
+bridge of a collier hove to in a thick sea-fog
+off Copenhagen by one of the finest
+navigators, drunk or sober, but particularly
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_74">[74]</span>drunk, that it has ever been my good
+fortune to encounter.</p>
+
+<p>This Danish skipper gave me to understand
+(I cannot, of course, vouch for the
+accuracy of his information) that in the
+long night of the Norwegian winter there
+was absolutely nothing else to do but to
+take to theology or get drunk. When
+drunk, the Norwegian crofter or fisherman,
+however theological his bent, readily
+finds a second source of distraction in
+beating his wife. The women of Norway
+seem to have got tired of being beaten
+even before the outbreak of the War.
+When the War restricted fishing, they
+began to take counsel together. Reflecting
+that the Fiend Alcohol was at the
+root of all their troubles and the immediate
+cause of all their bruises, they decided
+that he must be exorcised in due legal
+form. To bring this about all that was
+necessary was the power and exercise
+of the vote. The granting of the suffrage
+to women does not appear to have aroused
+any sort of opposition in a “progressive”
+country like Norway, and the right seems
+no sooner to have been demanded than
+accorded. Once Norwegian womanhood
+was armed with the franchise, the first
+measure insisted on was that imposing
+Prohibition on Norwegian manhood. Their
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_75">[75]</span>husbands do not seem to have been aware
+of the danger, or perhaps they were
+encouraged to get rather exceptionally
+drunk during the week devoted to a
+plebiscite on this purely feminine issue.
+Alas, the plight of these energetic and
+resourceful Viking ladies, once their
+husbands were deprived of Aqavit, was
+in no wise ameliorated; their last state
+was decidedly worse than their first!
+Having now no earthly distraction whatever,
+their husbands beat them from
+morning to night, and, being involuntarily
+sober, very much more efficiently
+than they had ever done before. Thereupon
+the united voice of the Norse women
+clamoured for the abrogation of Prohibition
+even as they had but recently
+clamoured for its ratification. Once
+again they had their way, and the country
+returned peaceably to the <i>status quo ante</i>
+of a moderate degree of drunkenness and
+a moderate, because quasi-inebriated,
+prevalence of wife-beating.</p>
+
+<p>At this point the skipper’s account left
+off, and we may perhaps supplement his
+graphic statement by some rather colder
+data. However much bruised Norwegian
+women may have expressed the desire to
+see Prohibition abolished, the chief motive
+force in securing it was the economic
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_76">[76]</span>pressure exercised by foreign countries.
+Norway is neither an agricultural nor an
+industrial country. The nation lives on
+what statisticians are fond of calling
+“invisible exports”—in this case carrying
+other nations’ goods in its bottoms—and
+in exporting the produce of its
+fisheries, mostly in the form of dried
+split-cod, known variously as <i>Stokfisk</i>,
+<i>Morue</i> and <i>Bacalão</i>. This is shipped in
+enormous quantities to Roman Catholic
+countries for Fridays’ dinners. Now, split-cod,
+though a foodstuff, is not a prime
+necessity of life, like corn and meat, and
+the countries that buy it find no difficulty
+in putting an embargo on it at
+need. Also Norway is a small and pacific,
+and therefore impotent, nation, which
+can be defied or penalised with impunity,
+not a great power backed by a large fleet
+and the power of manipulating higher
+finance. For the sake of its shipping and
+the export of its <i>Stokfisk</i>, Norway was
+forced in 1921 to accept an annual contingent
+of 4,000 hectolitres of French wine,
+5,000 of Spanish and 8,500 of Portuguese:
+or a total of some 385,000 gallons, a very
+considerable amount for a poor country
+of well under three million inhabitants.
+Thus Norway is now wetter than ever. A
+state <i>Vin Monopolet</i> conducts the liquor
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_77">[77]</span>trade and distils corn-brandy. Wine
+may be freely bought, but spirits can only
+be obtained at a chemist’s shop on a
+doctor’s prescription: a regulation the
+enforcement of which used in former days
+to coincide with an alarming increase in
+such maladies as snake-bite, anæmia,
+vertigo, melancholia, personal bereavement,
+bankruptcy, religious mania,
+debility and old age in certain “dry”
+states of the American Union.</p>
+
+<p>At present our bejazzed manhood
+cannot summon to its aid enough of our
+old Viking virility to countenance wife-beating
+in any form, even when the
+chastisement is clearly justified. But
+when our masterful womenkind seek to
+impose Prohibition on us, who knows but
+that the long-suffering worm may not
+turn at last? Perhaps the experience of
+a short term of this ban might be the cause
+of curing half our domestic troubles.</p>
+
+<p>Much the same sort of system of placing
+few or no restrictions on the sale of wine,
+and investing the purchase of spirits with
+considerable formalities, has been adopted
+by certain Canadian provinces. In
+Quebec, possibly as a legacy of French
+blood, the sale of wine vastly exceeds
+that of spirits, in spite of a continuous
+invasion of this hospitable territory by
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_78">[78]</span>thirst-maddened tourists from the freest
+of all countries at its gates. In Belgium,
+too, there are restrictions on the sale of
+spirits, liqueurs and <i>apéritifs</i>, but none
+on that of beer and wine.</p>
+
+<p>The vicissitudes of Norway lead us to
+the consideration of modern international
+commercial treaties in their relation to
+wine. The old trade agreements between
+nations in pre-war days were usually
+rather amateur, almost altruistic, affairs.
+The industrial struggle for existence had
+not, as then, become acute, because there
+were more rich and fewer poor states in
+the relatively happy family of the nations.
+To-day quotas, contingents and categories
+of goods are carefully scheduled
+and obstinately bargained for, each high
+contracting party putting forward its
+irreducible demands, together with certain
+other claims advanced as camouflage,
+which are quietly abandoned once the
+acceptance of the former is conceded.
+Germany produces fine white wines and
+but little red. Her new commercial
+treaty with France, now being negotiated,
+stipulates, within the agreed annual
+contingent of French wine which she
+agrees to accept, for a minimum of white
+and a maximum of red. But this is not
+all. Germany was a pioneer in strict
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_79">[79]</span>application of the doctrine of Appellation
+of Origin as applied to wine, and
+Bethmann-Hollweg’s <i>Reichsweingesetz</i> of
+1909 preceded similar legislation in any
+other country, with the possible exception
+of Hungary. Thus it is not surprising to
+find that Germany should insist on
+stringent <i>appellations d’origine</i> for the
+French wines she pledges herself to buy.
+Going further still in this direction, the
+German Ministry of Commerce has
+divided the annual quota into fixed ratios
+between the several viticultural regions
+of France: not so much in proportion to
+their importance as in accordance with
+German domestic needs and tastes. It is
+left to the French Government to draw
+up a list of recognised <i>local</i> appellations
+within each of these regions (that is to say
+the names of separate communes and
+smaller, but more famous, growths) and
+submit it to the approval of the competent
+German authorities before the
+treaty enters into vigour. The Belgian
+Government was the real precursor in
+this direction, for the recently concluded
+Belgo-French Commercial Treaty names
+over two hundred appellations of French
+wines, the authenticity of which is guaranteed
+by the French state, as being alone
+entitled to be admitted into Belgian
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_80">[80]</span>territory. The only appellations of wine
+which enjoy protection under any commercial
+agreement concluded with this
+country are Port and Madeira. Wine
+sold as “Port” or “Madeira” in Great
+Britain and Northern Ireland must be the
+authentic produce of the Alto Douro or
+the Island of Madeira, fortified, as required
+by Portuguese law, to a given alcoholic
+strength: that is a “<i>vinho surdo</i>” or
+“<i>vinho muito</i>.” The first of these
+exclusive appellations is very distasteful
+to Australian manufacturers of sweet
+wines, who are anxious to call their more
+spirituous wares “Australian Port.” All
+other wines in this country are still very
+much what their vendors choose to label
+them. Fortunately nations are as imitative
+as persons. It is to be hoped, therefore,
+that when the time comes for the
+existing Anglo-French Commercial Treaty
+to be renewed—which is sure to entail long
+and pertinacious haggling on both sides
+on account of the recent French embargo
+on British coal—this state of affairs will
+be remedied in so far as French, or <i>soi-disant</i>
+French, wines are concerned. This
+hope is not so naïve as it may sound. It
+will be as much in the interests of our
+negociators to see that the fixed minimum
+quota of French wines, which we shall
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_81">[81]</span>probably have to agree to admit annually,
+shall be the best, instead of among the
+worst, of their kinds, as it will be in that
+of the French to stipulate that henceforward
+no wines sold in the United
+Kingdom as French shall be anything but
+French, and that they must correspond
+in the strictest territorial sense with the
+names printed on their labels. Thus,
+granted a reasonable degree of skill in our
+politicians and public officials, the further
+we deviate from Free Trade the better
+should be the quality of the goods we
+receive from other countries: an idea
+altogether too simple to have ruffled the
+brains of the Manchester School mandarins.</p>
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="FASHION_AND_FEMINISM_IN_WINE">FASHION AND FEMINISM IN WINE</h2>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>The undying snob in man reveals himself
+as much in the choice of the wines he
+drinks as in the clothes he wears or the
+conversation he affects. Waves of fashion
+that depend on the praise or blame of
+someone in authority—a king, a beau, a
+singer, a sportsman, a politician or an
+actor—sweep in a wine and sweep it out
+again. Some have their brief spell and
+are no more seen; others return at almost
+fixed intervals like solar eclipses. Port
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_82">[82]</span>we owe to anti-French bias and a long-forgotten
+political treaty concluded in the
+heat of this same rancour; but heavily
+reinforced Port will be with us till the
+threat of Prohibition assumes proportions
+menacing enough to make us confine
+ourselves to natural wines as the most
+logical defence against the misrepresentations
+of the teetotalers. Sherry, on the
+other hand, has been coming in and going
+out ever since its name was Sack.
+Madeira’s eclipse has a more rational
+explanation, for the quality of that wine
+has never recovered from the scourge of
+the Oidium, which all but exterminated
+its vineyards in the Fifties. The fate of
+Madeira was the ordinary fate of things
+that are out of sight. The vines of the
+island were not in normal bearing again
+till some decades afterwards, when the
+old John Company, the largest buyer of
+Madeira wines, had already ceased to
+exist. Claret and Burgundy, long
+eschewed as French growths and penalised
+by prohibitive duties to the profit of
+an ever more alcoholic Port, blossomed
+for us anew when Gladstone accomplished
+the revolutionary step of lowering the
+duties on light wines to a shilling the
+gallon in 1861. Hermitage has disappeared
+in England, as Arbois has in
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_83">[83]</span>France. Hock and Moselle were patriotically,
+even, considering the absence of
+supply, a little ostentatiously, renounced
+during the War as Hunnish and unhallowed
+things—so much so, indeed,
+that our greatest living authority on
+wines passed them over in silence in a
+book, which is a classic, written during
+that period of passionate professorial
+denunciation of everything German. Yet
+long before Locarno they had returned in
+triumph to their old popularity in the
+Houses of Parliament, as advertising
+circulars were careful to inform us. Greek
+wines, like Byron’s verse, have had their
+day. Tokay, now a memory and almost
+no more made, was hallowed by the prefix
+“Imperial” and the knowledge that it
+was the gift, more precious than jewelled
+orders or honorary colonelcies, which
+kings exchanged in the family circle.
+Italian wines have lately enjoyed a good
+deal of popularity among artistic persons,
+explicable by the charm of a Chianti
+flask rather than by the average quality
+of its contents. Marsala, now usually
+despised as a cheap and common wine,
+should be dear to us always as a memory
+of Nelson. It is still piously esteemed in
+the Navy, where Rum has long since
+passed out of fashion. Balkan wines may
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_84">[84]</span>yet enjoy a vogue if Ruritanian princesses
+prove as good business women as they are
+beautiful. Algerian and Tunisian wines
+we know well, but more often under
+Europeanised titles. The Anglo-Catholic
+and Jewish communities make much of
+Palestine wines, which have little but
+scriptural geography in their favour.
+Champagne, costliest of all wines in the
+popular imagination, has always held its
+own for this very reason. Just as Sherry,
+decade by decade, had to be paler or
+darker in colour and lighter or heavier in
+body, so Champagne, which began by
+being very sweet, has now become dry as
+a bone. Yet “dry” Champagne only
+dates from the Sixties. Sweet it may yet
+become again, as sweet as the Russians
+liked it, when women become sovereign
+arbiters of food and drink. A decade or
+two ago <i>Carte Anglaise</i> was the most
+expensive and fashionable degree of
+“liqueuring” in Champagne. To-day
+it is <i>Drapeau Américain</i> (why not
+“Volstead Bone-Dry Monopole”?) for
+the Dollar is at a premium over the
+Sovereign. Whisky, formerly an ostler’s
+dram in the Scottish Highlands, was introduced
+by golfers, with the hearty
+support of the medical profession, and
+became popular simultaneously with that
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_85">[85]</span>now universal game. Irish Whisky,
+though extensively drunk, has, for some
+curious reason, never been fashionable.
+There are few brandy-drunkards to-day.
+Cognac seems to enjoy most esteem in
+England as a medicinal restorative.
+Gin was rescued from Mrs Gamp’s tea-pot
+by the sudden popularity during the War
+of those American barbarisms, cocktails:
+a popularity largely due to their requiring
+elaborate paraphernalia and the fact
+that they were illegal in their native land.
+Every millionairess who could boast a
+Diamond Sunburst, we were given to
+understand, had her own portable illicit
+still and a marble gin-fountain in her
+platinum-tapped bathroom. Liqueurs,
+chiefly because they are sweet and many-hued,
+have been steadily growing in
+favour with ladies ever since dining out in
+restaurants became an integral part of our
+national habits.</p>
+
+<p>Let no man lull himself into a sense of
+false security by imagining that the day
+is still far distant when women will rule
+the cellar as well as rocking Baby—and
+the bottle—in the cradle. A book on
+wine which appeared last year addressed
+all its advice, as though this was the most
+natural thing in the world, to “the good
+hostess,” “the mistress of the house,”
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_86">[86]</span>who in these days “can afford to smile”
+at Dr Middleton’s “ungracious behaviour”
+in defining her sex as “Creation’s
+glory, but anticlimax following a wine of a
+century old.” Another male supremacy
+lies low! Man is lord of the cobwebbed
+bins no more; the cellar-key,
+even as the ballot-paper, has been
+snatched from him by a stronger hand.</p>
+
+<p>Now women’s real taste in wine is
+notoriously for such as are sweet. Fielding,
+who knew the sex better than most,
+and was far from ungallant, was not the
+first to remark on it. In one of his now
+forgotten plays, as Mr André Simon
+reminds us, the hero, or some kindly male
+character, after making the same observation,
+sends out for a pint of “Mountain”
+(the luscious, honey-sweet Muscat wine
+now known as Malaga, but no longer
+obtainable in an age vowed to a cult of
+dry wines except in the humbler public-houses)
+to comfort a lady’s vapours or
+soothe her alarums. Of course, many
+men also secretly prefer sweet wines to
+dry. Our national wine, Port, is decidedly
+sweet, and could not possibly be called
+“dry” in the sense that Sherry often is.
+But Vintage Port, the feminist authority
+declares, “is not a woman’s taste in
+wine,” though it must surely be a nearer
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_87">[87]</span>approach to it than either Vintage Claret
+or Vintage Burgundy. Anyhow, Port, as
+the classic monologue “My fust ’usbing
+was a Guardsman” clearly shows, is the
+most popular wine among women in
+the saloon-bars of public-houses. At
+present all women are exclaiming with a
+single voice that they execrate sweet
+wines and have always preferred dry, the
+very driest in fact, even in those dim and
+distant days when they were not as yet
+fashionable. This is only a parrot cry
+catching up the echo of the vogue of the
+moment—“Tell me what is being drunk
+and I will tell you that I like it best”—which
+need deceive nobody. It is like
+those terrible headaches, unknown to
+their grandmothers, which have induced
+them one and all to shear off their tresses
+and shave their napes. M. Daret, the
+distinguished <i>Maître de Chaix</i> at Château
+Yquem, perhaps the greatest authority on
+<i>vins liquoreux</i>, knows better and is far
+from being dismayed. Sauternes was
+never dearer than it is to-day. It can
+only be assumed that drinking it in secret
+enhances its price. Mrs G. B. Stern in
+“Bouquet” furiously denounces Sauternes
+and claims that it is as monstrous
+to suppose that women are incapable of
+sharing “men’s” taste for dry wines, or
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_88">[88]</span>Cognac, as any other hereditary “male”
+passion, preference, proclivity or prowess.
+This delightful, if unconvincing, book ends
+on a note of wistful nostalgia for the first
+properly mixed icy-cold cocktail waiting
+to reward her for a strenuous and rather
+hustled tour of <i>dégustation</i> through the
+principal French viticultural districts. I
+very much suspect that during the course
+of this pilgrimage “A Deputy was King.”
+The real G. B. Stern was probably in
+spiritual residence at that “Palace” in
+Nice or Monte Carlo all the time. Even
+Mr, Mrs or Miss Chaloner owns that on
+this topic “we are brought up against
+the very objection that many women have
+to Claret, since they find its lack of
+sweetness distasteful.... Most women
+begin with a marked preference for wines
+that are frankly sweet (so do boys), or
+perhaps <i>demi-sec</i>, and there is a touch of
+austerity about Claret that makes them
+long frankly, or privately, to add a little
+sugar to the glass.” Quite so; the
+feminine education up to dry wines is
+purely a question of following the prevailing
+mode and a fresh manifestation of
+the eternal and servile imitation of man.
+This is indirectly confirmed by the
+authoress herself (I will plump for authoress
+and a hundred to one against author)
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_89">[89]</span>when she adds: “Though the vine
+flourished long before mankind, and man
+is believed to have enjoyed its produce as
+a beverage as long ago as the neolithic
+period, women are only just beginning to
+give it their serious attention.” “The
+fault of their ignorance” (an ignorance
+which is not found in wine-growing
+countries) is naturally placed “partly at
+the door of the opposite sex, who in
+bygone days were only too well pleased
+with it.” Similar reproaches have been
+levelled against man for his former
+tyrannical exclusivity in such domains as
+higher mathematics, marine zoology, coal-mining,
+boiler-stoking, Rugby football
+and legislative procedure. It is doubtless
+theoretically arguable that “women
+should possess finer palates than men”
+and be able to detect and eliminate corked
+bottles when decanted—what time their
+husbands are presumably peeling potatoes
+or scolding the cook. But this is by no
+means the only preliminary to wining
+claimed for them. “Where the hostess, or
+even women-servants, take over the
+duties of cork-drawing, it is of real help
+to use a mechanical cork-screw.” At
+first blush one feels inclined to say
+“amen” to this, but on second thoughts
+it seems brutally unfair that, if men are
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_90">[90]</span>allowed to draw corks with ordinary
+corkscrews (which being far simpler and
+more satisfactory are usually preferred
+by them), women should be debarred from
+the same male privilege. To provide
+women with patent corkscrews is clearly
+to treat them as inferiors. Sex equality
+is no better than a hollow mockery if
+such unsporting handicaps are to be
+allowed to remain, or the hostess’s anxious
+concentration in studying the grammar of
+“the international language” of the wine-list
+is to be flurried by idle male gossip.</p>
+
+<p>There is a singular propriety in women
+arrogating to themselves the right to
+choose wines and lay down cellars “like
+men” in an age in which so many of
+them lack the ability to boil an egg. Yet
+“venturing into her cellar without a
+candle” the mistress of the house is told
+that she ought to know how to distinguish
+Bordeaux from Burgundy or Hock bottles
+by the exercise of that very tactile sense
+which now so often fails her in sewing on
+a button. “In a well-known women’s
+club” Miss Chaloner was recently
+scandalised to find that the head-waitress,
+when asked for some Beaune, had not
+“even the vaguest notion whether to
+look for Claret or Burgundy, or even
+whether the wine asked for was white or
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_91">[91]</span>red.” This pained surprise I am not
+polite enough to pretend to share.
+“However, a discreetly dropped hint that
+the contour of Burgundy and Bordeaux
+bottles was different ... began an
+interest and education that doubled the
+value of the maid to the members of the
+club.”—From which it might almost be
+conjectured that the education in question
+was imparted to the members by the maid.
+When so many prominent judges, divines,
+scientists, Cabinet Ministers, university
+professors and thoughtful clubmen eagerly
+follow every passing change in the design
+of “Camiknicks,” it is melancholy to be
+told that “wines ... are seldom appreciated
+or used to the best advantage in
+women’s clubs.”</p>
+
+<p>Is there a last lingering doubt in the
+heart of the vinously educated hostess as
+to the propriety of offering her guests
+wine—a moral, an æsthetic, not a social
+perplexity, of course—it is soon allayed.
+“In the hands of the discriminating
+hostess, wine has the charm, the kindly
+welcome of the hearth to which she invites
+her guests, and if possessing in careless,
+or stupid use, some dangers, that is not a
+reason for banishing HER cellar. The
+hostess who ... still hesitates over so
+grave a problem as the ethical values of
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_92">[92]</span>wine”—previously, no doubt, learnedly
+and exhaustively debated at her club:
+perhaps the very one where the head-waitress
+did not know Big Tree from
+Wonga-Wonga—“may yet take much
+comfort to heart.” But where does the
+model hostess’s husband dine on these
+occasions, since he has no longer a cellar
+of his own, or even a key to his wife’s?
+There is at least one occasion mentioned
+on which we may be quite sure that he
+would contrive to find a sufficient excuse
+for absenting himself to “the tyrant,”
+or even brave “the brute’s” wrath by
+taking French leave—when she “might
+desire to give her dinner a special character,
+reminiscent of a particular occasion,
+or holiday in Italy”; in which case,
+“she would have no difficulty in confining
+the choice of her wine-list to Italian
+wines.” Perhaps, too, the cigars (which
+in spite of the practical protests of
+Madame Hanska and George Sand have
+been allowed to remain a male monopoly
+for far too long) would be those delicious
+curling Minghettis? Italian wines are
+often excellent in Italy, when served with
+Italian cooking, but the prevailing quality
+of “what the vintners sell” in what
+ladies call “those funny little continental
+shops in Soho” (for Italian wines are not
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_93">[93]</span>generally obtainable elsewhere), under
+the fair names of Chianti, Barolo, Cortese,
+Orvieto, Asti Spumante, etc., is enough
+to make the most chicken-hearted Fabian
+husband rebel.</p>
+
+<p>In the future wine is likely once more
+to be considered, even in non-viticultural
+countries, as a FOOD essential to physical
+and moral well-being, rather than as a
+dangerous artificial stimulant, or the
+sybaritic indulgence of a few eccentric
+old epicures. In cultured epochs wine is
+sure to be held in honour as an integral
+part of taste, while spirits are certain to
+reign supreme in barbarous, philistine
+and sanctimonious centuries, whether
+permitted or proscribed by the law. The
+present renaissance of gastronomy in
+England, hesitant though it still is, is of
+happy augury for marking the eclipse of
+an age likely to be identified by future
+social historians with the perpetual swilling
+of whisky-and-soda by otherwise
+refined and self-respecting people; and
+as heralding the advent of an era in which
+wine will be purer, better, cheaper, more
+abundant and varied in its kinds, besides
+being more justly and intelligently appreciated
+by the nation at large. With the
+increasing shortage of cereals throughout
+the world, the making of grain-spirits
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_94">[94]</span>will soon become indefensible, and the
+same consideration may ultimately apply
+to beer as well.</p>
+
+<p>The survival of wine and male dominance,
+are, as Scandinavia has shown us,
+parallel issues. If wine survives feminism,
+which, in spite of the foregoing
+instances of its latest manifestation, is
+much more likely to be œnophobe than
+œnophil, there will be no place left for
+teetotal Puritanism in a wine-loving
+world.</p>
+
+<hr class="tb">
+
+<p>Bacchus, when yet a child, fared one
+day along an unfamiliar desert path
+strewn with the bleaching bones of all
+manner of birds and beasts that had
+perished there of drought. Wearied, he
+sat himself down to rest on a heap of
+stones amidst a solitary patch of verdure
+growing by the wayside. He found the
+rambling shrub, the tender leaves of
+which cooled and caressed his bruised
+and heated feet, so green and gracious
+that he pulled it up by the roots so as to
+take it home with him and plant it in his
+garden. Fearing lest it might wither
+under the scorching rays of the sun as he
+bore it in his hands, he picked up a bird’s
+skull and put the roots, with a little earth,
+into the hollow of the beak. The plant
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_95">[95]</span>grew so fast while he wended his way
+homewards that its roots soon outgrew
+the prison of their narrow sheath. Thereupon
+he imbedded the bird’s skull in the
+shoulder-blade of a lion. Nevertheless
+the roots began once again to overspread
+their allotted trough, so that he had
+recourse to the expedient of thrusting the
+lion’s shoulder-blade into the jaw-bone of
+an ass. When, at length, he reached
+home and went to plant the strange wild
+shrub in his garden, he found it impossible
+to extricate the knotted roots from the
+three bones incasing them; so he planted
+it just as it was, bones and all. The vine,
+for such was the name he gave this goodly
+creeping plant, throve luxuriantly and
+bore the young god, who tended and
+pruned the holy tree lovingly, tressing its
+branches into a shady arbour, an abundance
+of heavy bloom-dusted grape-clusters,
+both purple and golden: the
+juice of which he pressed and gave to the
+sons of men for their sustenance and
+comfort in sickness and adversity and to
+make glad their hearts on high festivals
+and days of family rejoicing. And,
+behold, as soon as the sons of men first
+tasted the blood of the grape—which they
+straightway called wine, meaning a
+sacred water—a prodigy came to pass!
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_96">[96]</span>For when they began to drink they sang
+as do the birds of the forest; when they
+drank more they became strong and
+courageous as lions; but when they
+drank yet more, they grew foolish as
+jackasses.</p>
+
+<p>Thus it was in the beginning, is now and
+ever shall be.</p>
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="footnotes">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="FOOTNOTES">FOOTNOTES</h2>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_1" href="#FNanchor_1" class="label">[1]</a> The main reason is that predominantly cider-
+and beer-drinking Départements of the north and
+north-east have now become large consumers of
+wine: an appetite whetted by the much appreciated
+Army wine-ration, nicknamed “Pinard,”
+during the long years of mobilisation.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_2" href="#FNanchor_2" class="label">[2]</a> <i>Piquette</i> means sour, thin wine; it is to wine
+what small-beer is to ale.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_3" href="#FNanchor_3" class="label">[3]</a> See note to page 17.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_4" href="#FNanchor_4" class="label">[4]</a> See page 34. The Pinot was tried in Australia,
+but did not prove a success in such a
+hot and arid climate.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_5" href="#FNanchor_5" class="label">[5]</a> The <i>Tonneau Bordelais</i> has a capacity of four
+<i>Barriques</i> of 22 litres each, or 900 litres in all.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_6" href="#FNanchor_6" class="label">[6]</a> The coarse and common Gamay of the Côte
+d’Or must not be identified with the Petit Gamay,
+the “<i>plant noble</i>” of the Beaujolais from which
+all the finest wines of the latter region have
+always been grown.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_7" href="#FNanchor_7" class="label">[7]</a> It is a significant fact that since the War the
+only French viticultural region that has increased
+its export of bottled wines is the Bordelais.
+This is the region in which estate-bottling is most
+widely adopted. Exports of Bordeaux wines
+in the wood have sensibly decreased.</p></div>
+
+</div>
+
+<div style='text-align:center'>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 77340 ***</div>
+</body>
+</html>
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author	www-data <www-data@mail.pglaf.org>	2025-11-26 14:42:52 -0800
committer	www-data <www-data@mail.pglaf.org>	2025-11-26 14:42:52 -0800
commit	b7b162be5fe8a69fa709f988b6ddc2b8a5a58a33 (patch)
tree	12183b4c011a75327b930d8eb6c2fc730cfc0302 /77340-h