Chambers's Journal of Popular Literature, Science, and Art, No. 719: October 6, 1877Various
General
Chambers's Journal of Popular Literature, Science, and Art, No. 719: October 6, 1877
Various
Periodicals
Hamburg has long enjoyed a notoriety for the manufacture of sherry--a
merely fictitious article, in which no real sherry has any existence,
but which, imported to England, passes muster as genuine wine.
Latterly, to the discredit of France, false wines have been largely
fabricated and vended in that country; for it is as easy, if not
easier, to imitate French wines as the wines of Spain or Portugal. It
is well known to persons in France, that Nancy, the ancient capital
of Lorraine, bears a bad name as having been the first to set the
evil example of a systematic adulteration of French wines, white and
red. Lorraine, Alsace, and Luxembourg are notoriously the seat of
a very extensive manufacture of spurious wines, some of which owe
nothing whatever to the vine. Imitations of the most renowned brands
of champagne, such as Rœderer or Clicquot, are here concocted from
rhubarb-juice and carbonic acid, made cheap and sold dear. Light
clarets, strong St Georges, Macon, and the rough red Roussillon, can
be turned out to suit all tastes, merely by re-fermenting squeezed
grape-husks that have already done duty, in company with the coarse
sugar extracted from potatoes. Various colouring matters are added,
such as caramel, cochineal, and the more formidable fuchsine, and the
highly tinted compound is ready for the market.
Narbonne, nestling amidst her vineyards, is not much behind northern
Nancy in audacious falsification of the strong natural wines that
form the staple of her trade. It has long been the custom with these
south of France wine-growers to press the grapes a second time with
the addition of some water, and to brew a light, thin, vinous liquor,
which was doled out in rations to the farm-servants, or sold at
an exceedingly low rate. It has lately occurred to them that this
second-hand commodity, dosed with tartaric acid, thickened with
treacle, and artificially coloured, would pass muster with heedless
consumers as good ordinaire; and as good ordinaire, or Wine of the
Plains, it is accordingly vended. First class and even second-class
wines, it is well to bear in mind, are invariably the vintage of some
hill-side or mountain slope, but even the low-lying vineyards of a
wine-growing country yield a growth which has deservedly a good name
with buyers of moderate means. This good name, unfortunately, the
landowners and métayers of Southern France seem resolved to throw away,
in their hurry to be rich.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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