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diff --git a/77340-0.txt b/77340-0.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..908fc8c --- /dev/null +++ b/77340-0.txt @@ -0,0 +1,1791 @@ +*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 77340 *** + + + + +BACCHUS + +OR + +WINE TO-DAY AND TO-MORROW + + + + +TO-DAY AND TO-MORROW + +_A List of the Contents of this Series will be found at the end of this +volume_ + +Transcriber’s Note: in fact, this was omitted. + + + + + BACCHUS + OR + WINE TO-DAY AND TO-MORROW + + BY + P. MORTON SHAND + Author of _A Book of Wine_, _A Book of French Wines_, + etc. + + LONDON + KEGAN PAUL, TRENCH, TRUBNER & CO., LTD. + NEW YORK: E. P. DUTTON & CO. + + _Printed in Great Britain by_ + MACKAYS LTD., CHATHAM + + + + +BACCHUS + +OR + +WINE TO-DAY AND TO-MORROW + + “Put a cup of wine into my hand that I may cast off from me the + cloak of hypocrisy.”—HAFIZ. + + +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 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. + +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. + +For a moment it seemed that the “to be, or not to be” of wine-drinking +might 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 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. + +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 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 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.” + +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 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 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. + +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 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 +_Gay Sçavoir_, “_Wer nicht liebt Wein, Weib, und Gesang, der bleibt ein +Narr sein Leben lang_” 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. + +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 +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. + +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 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 +_vins fins_ 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. + +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 +“_taille haute_” (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 “_taille basse_” (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 in the Côte d’Or, where the demand is always out +of all proportion to the supply. Another temptation for the _vigneron_, +especially in the less-renowned viticultural districts, is to grow an +excess of what are called “_plants communs_.” Some, but not all, of these +species are hybrid or ungrafted American vines (“_producteurs-directs_”), +while others are the commonest but most prolific native vines +(“_gros-producteurs_”) grafted on to Phylloxera-resisting +“_portes-greffes_” as in the case of the fine vines which produce the +finer wines. The _producteurs-directs_ have been planted in response to +the insistent demand for more and cheaper wine that has arisen since the +War.[1] 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 “_plants nobles_,” or blue-blooded vines, which are the pride +of, and often peculiar to, each particular district. At present the +_producteurs-directs_, but not the _gros-producteurs_, are denied all +right to a local name, or “_appellation d’origine_,” 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. + +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; 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 “_Bourgogne d’Australie_,” which used to be popular +in purely French 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. + + “_Vous êtes par trop rigolos,_ + _Australiens immenses!_ + _Mettez bien dans vos ciboulots_ + _Où règnent les démences,_ + + _Qu’il n’est d’autre vin bourguignon_ + _—Croyez-en un ivrogne—_ + _Que celui que nous bourgognons_ + _Aux coteaux de Bourgogne._ + + _Et la Bourgogne, elle est ici,_ + _Et non en Australie!_ + + ... + + _Il faut avoir un fier toupet_ + _Pour mettre une étiquette_ + _Semblable à votre vin suspect,_ + _Véritable piquette!_[2] + + _Il n’est, chez nous, maigre pinard,_[3] + _Qui ne soit cent fois brave_ + _Comme le vin le plus gaillard_ + _De vos meilleures caves._ + + _Vous planteriez, ô Melbournois!_ + _Sur vos coteaux barbares,_ + _Les plus fins de nos ceps gaulois,_ + _Nos Pinots[4] les plus rares,_ + + _En vain! Car à ces gaillards-là,_ + _A ces vrais gentilshommes,_ + _Il faut ce terroir de gala,_ + _Dont, Dieu merci! nous sommes._” + +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. + +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. + +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 growths ever really resemble each +other, and rarely two vintages of one and the same growth. + +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 “_Chronicques Vivaroises_,” as Mrs G. B. Stern reminds us, that the +“_belle ordonnance de seps, pères de gros savoureux raisins_” on the +famed Hill of Hermitage, the juice of which is “_une rosée paradisiaque_” +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 “_vignes séraphiques_” 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 _Vert +Galant_ 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 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. + +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 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. + +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 “_Monopoles_” and “_Marques Personnelles_.” + + + + +TYPE-WINES + + +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 _appellations +d’origine_ 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 (_e.g._, 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 a dead letter, if indeed it was not stillborn. + +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 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. + +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 _Crus +Artisans_ and _Crus Paysans_, which represent the tail of the Bordelais +hierarchy in point of reputation. There are besides some half-a-dozen +large growths planted in _Palu_ 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 proper. In point of production the ten +_Crus Classés_ of Margaux yield about 650 _tonneaux_[5] 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. + +Formerly the _Crus Bourgeois Supérieurs_ and the _Crus Bourgeois_ +commanded a ready sale at prices not utterly disproportionate to those +attained by the _Crus Classés_, 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 _parvenu_ +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 _Crus +Bourgeois_ at a reasonable profit—to say nothing of the _Crus Artisans +et Paysans_—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, 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. + +It is the rapid rise of the “_Monopoles_,” 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. + + + + +MONOPOLES + + +The French word “_monopole_,” 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 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. + +In the Côte d’Or there are two kinds of red vines: one the proud “_plant +noble_,” 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,[6] a +“_plant commun_,” 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. + +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 “_climats_” 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 _Loi des Appellations d’Origine_, +called the _Amendment Capus_ after the name of the Senator who introduced +it, is now before the French Chambers, the object of which, should it, +as seems probable, be ratified, is to limit any given “_appellation +d’origine_” 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 “_pouvant revendiquer les usages loyaux, +locaux et constants_,” 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. + +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 +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. + +According to M. Raymond Baudouin, a typical recipe adopted by the Côte +d’Or alchemists is + + 25% genuine Côte d’Or Burgundy for flavouring. + + 30% good Côtes du Rhône wine to eke out this flavouring. + + 20% ordinary Algerian wine to reduce the cost. + + 25% natural wine (_i.e._, 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. + +The Bordeaux houses are said to employ + + 25% genuine Bordeaux. + + 30% good Midi wine. + + 20% ordinary Algerian wine. + + 25% neutral wine. + +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. + +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 +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 “_coupage_,” 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 “_Marques Personnelles_” 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 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 _Train Bleu_ wine par excellence, since +it can always be relied upon to be none the worse for the most violent +shaking before taking. + +A word of caution is, however, necessary because in French commercial +usage this dangerous word “_monopole_” 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: “_exclusif de toute +considération d’origine et de cépage_” (_cépage_ 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, 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 “_Monopole de la Maison De Villaine et Cambon_” 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. + +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 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 “_climats_” and your Bordeaux districts, with their +constituent communes and satellite _Crus_, _Clos_ and _Châteaux_ (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. + + + + +ADULTERATION + + +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 +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.[7] The +use of chemical aids in wine-making is to some extent sanctioned by the +law. In France wine may now be sugared (_chaptalisation_), sterilised +(_pasteurisation_), fortified (_vinage_), watered (_mouillage_), +plastered (_plâtrage_), muted (_mutage_) and, in the case of white +wines, sulphured (_sulfitage_), within certain defined limits 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. + +_Chaptalisation_ 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 _vin chaptalisé_ 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 “_Natur_,” or +“_Naturrein_.” Chaptalisation saved the 1925 vintage in the Bordelais, +where this expedient had hitherto been held up to execration as a +typically Burgundian falsification. _Pasteurisation_ 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. +_Vinage_ is simply, as in the case of Port, the brandying of sweet wines +with extraneous spirit. _Mouillage_ is resorted to for reducing the +alcoholic strength of common wines, which are taxed and priced at so +much the alcoholic degree. _Plâtrage_ 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. _Mutage_ +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. _Sulfitage_ 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 _vins liquoreux_, like Sauternes, +alcoholising a certain degree of unconverted grape-sugar, or _liqueur_, +which they are intended 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. + + + + +PROSTITUTION + + +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 +“_champagnisation_” of all kinds of wine, great and humble, good, bad +and indifferent, red, white and _rosé_, 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 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 adjective so as to distinguish it from the natural wine +from which it is, or purports to be, manufactured. + +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 of raising revenue from such +an unpalatable source. + +The transformation of various wines (Chablis, Vouvray, Anjou, Mercurey, +Cap Corse, etc.) into “tonic wines” or _apéritifs_ (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 “_champagnisation_,” 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 +_Weinersatz_. 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 “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. + + + + +MALADIES OF THE VINE + + +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 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. 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. + +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 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 _vieilles souches_ 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. + + + + +THE FUTURE OF EMPIRE WINES + + +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. + +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 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. + +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 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 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. + +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, 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 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 Commonwealth cannot +transmute a South Australian vintage into the _Grande Année_ of a Côte +d’Or _Tête de Cuvée_. + +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, must be +singularly heavy and soporific in its effects. + +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. + +That these Australian and South African masqueraders under French and +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. + +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 _tel quel_. 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 +purposely to resemble the best-known growths of other countries in all +respects, and sold under their names at a very reasonable price.” + +Thus it is all the more discouraging and humiliating to find that, +according to the “_Times_ 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 _and leaving alone certificates of purity_.” 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 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. + +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 _péjoratif_ 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 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 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. + +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. + + + + +LEGISLATIVE RESTRICTIONS ON THE SALE OF WINES AND SPIRITS + + +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. 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 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. + +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 compromise between +state and commercial exploitation has been adopted. A single company, +the _Aktiebolaget Vin och Spritcentralen_, 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 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 +_épicerie_. 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 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 _too_ 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. + +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 drunk, that it has ever been my good fortune to +encounter. + +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 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 _status quo ante_ of a moderate degree +of drunkenness and a moderate, because quasi-inebriated, prevalence of +wife-beating. + +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 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 _Stokfisk_, _Morue_ and _Bacalão_. 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 _Stokfisk_, 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 _Vin +Monopolet_ conducts the liquor 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. + +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. + +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 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 _apéritifs_, but none on that of beer and wine. + +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 +application of the doctrine of Appellation of Origin as applied to +wine, and Bethmann-Hollweg’s _Reichsweingesetz_ 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 +_appellations d’origine_ 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 _local_ +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 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 “_vinho surdo_” or “_vinho +muito_.” 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 _soi-disant_ 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 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. + + + + +FASHION AND FEMINISM IN WINE + + +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 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 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 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 _Carte Anglaise_ was the most +expensive and fashionable degree of “liqueuring” in Champagne. To-day +it is _Drapeau Américain_ (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 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. + +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,” +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. + +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 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 _Maître de Chaix_ at Château Yquem, perhaps the +greatest authority on _vins liquoreux_, 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 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 _dégustation_ 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 _demi-sec_, +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) 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 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. + +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 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.” + +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 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 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. + +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 +will soon become indefensible, and the same consideration may ultimately +apply to beer as well. + +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. + + * * * * * + +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 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! +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. + +Thus it was in the beginning, is now and ever shall be. + + + + +FOOTNOTES + + +[1] 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. + +[2] _Piquette_ means sour, thin wine; it is to wine what small-beer is to +ale. + +[3] See note to page 17. + +[4] See page 34. The Pinot was tried in Australia, but did not prove a +success in such a hot and arid climate. + +[5] The _Tonneau Bordelais_ has a capacity of four _Barriques_ of 22 +litres each, or 900 litres in all. + +[6] The coarse and common Gamay of the Côte d’Or must not be identified +with the Petit Gamay, the “_plant noble_” of the Beaujolais from which +all the finest wines of the latter region have always been grown. + +[7] 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. + +*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 77340 *** |