Hence, too, a partiality for weak sour growths for making _vin mousseux_, as, although science could give no reason, experience showed that with these the breakage would be less than with those of a saccharine nature.[201] Thus Bertin writes in 1744 that the vineyards of Avize, planted for the most part in 1715, and almost entirely with white grapes, only produced a thin wine, with a tartness that caused it to be one of the least esteemed in the district; but that 'since the mania for the _saute bouchon_, that abominable beverage, which has become yet more loathsome from an insupportable acidity,' the Avize wines had increased in value eightfold.[202] To this acidity the Abbé Bignon refers in a poem of 1741, in which, protesting against the partiality for violently effervescing wines, he says: 'Your palate is a cripple Worn out by fiery tipple, Or else it would prefer juice Of grapes to fizzing verjuice.'[203] This serves to explain the preference so long accorded by _gourmets_ to the finer _non mousseux_ wines, full of aroma and flavour, and often sugary and _liquoreux_, but looked upon by the general public up to the close of the eighteenth century as inferior to those which were sharp, strong, and even sourish, but which effervesced well.[204] Lingering relics of prejudice against sparkling wine existed as late as 1782, when that conscientious observer, Legrand d'Aussy, remarked that since it had been known that sparkling wines were green wines bottled in spring, when the universal revolution of Nature causes them to enter into fermentation, they had not been so much esteemed, the _gourmets_ of that day preferring those which did not sparkle.[205]