Swift has given in his _Journal to Stella_ extensive information as to the wines in vogue in London in 1710-13. He seems for his own part to have been, as far as nature permitted him, an accommodating toper, indulging, in addition to Champagne, in Tokay, Portugal, Florence, Burgundy, Hermitage, 'Irish wine,' _i.e._ Claret, 'right French wine,' Congreve's 'nasty white wine' that gave him the heartburn, and Sir William Read's 'admirable punch.' He acknowledges that the more fashionable beverages of the day were not to his taste. 'I love,' writes he, 'white Portugal wine better than Claret, Champaign, or Burgundy. I have a sad vulgar appetite.'[314] Still, while observing due moderation, he did not entirely shun the lighter potations with which the table of the luxurious and licentious St. John was so freely supplied. On one occasion he writes: 'I dined to-day by appointment with Lord Bolingbroke; but they fell to drinking so many Spanish healths in Champaign, that I stole away to the ladies and drank tea till eight.'[315] And on another we find him refusing to allow his host to 'drink one drop of Champaign or Burgundy without water.'[316] Our countrymen do not appear to have taken heed of the controversy regarding the respective merits of Champagne and Burgundy, but thankfully accepted the goods that the gods and the sunny soil of France provided them. The accusation, however, banded about by the partisans of these rival vintages, of their tendency to produce gout, had apparently been accepted as gospel truth over here in the first decade of the century. Thus the Dean notes that he 'dined with Mr. Secretary St. John, and staid till seven, but would not drink his Champaign and Burgundy, for fear of the gout.'[317] When suffering from a rheumatic pain he displays commendable caution at dinner with Mr. Domville, only drinking 'three or four glasses of Champaign by perfect teasing,'[318] for fear of aggravating his suffering. He is prompt, however, to acknowledge himself mistaken: 'I find myself disordered with a pain all round the small of my back, which I imputed to Champaign I had drunk, but find it to have been only my new cold.'[319] The Dean does not appear to have been the only sufferer, for we find him writing: 'I called this evening to see Mr. Secretary, who had been very ill with the gravel and pains in his back, by Burgundy and Champaign, added to the sitting up all night at business; I found him drinking tea, while the rest were at Champaign, and was very glad of it.'[320] Even Pope, the perforcedly abstemious, was lured into similar excesses by the young Earl of Warwick and Colley Cibber, during his visits to London, whilst engaged on his translation of the _Iliad_, and writes to Congreve, 'I sit up till two o'clock over Burgundy and Champagne.'[321]