Messrs. Deinhard draw their supplies of wine from white grapes, for conversion into sparkling wines, from the Rhine, the Main, the Moselle, and the Palatinate, giving preference to the produce of the riesling grape, as to this the wine is indebted for its natural bouquet. The proportion of wine from black grapes, mingled with the other wines, is vintaged by themselves in the Ahr valley and at Ingelheim on the Rhine. The Ahr, in summer a rippling streamlet and in winter a rushing torrent, falls into the Rhine about twenty miles below Coblenz. The soil of the neighbouring hills seems peculiarly adapted for the growth of black grapes, one of the best of German red wines being produced in the vineyards adjacent to the village of Walporzheim. In order that the wine may be as pale as possible, the black grapes are pressed as soon after gathering as they can be, and only the juice resulting from the first pressure is reserved, the subsequently extracted must being sold to the small growers of the neighbourhood. The newly-made wine is brought in casks to Coblenz, and rests for eight weeks while completing its fermentation. It is then racked into stucks and double stucks, and is blended in casks of the latter capacity during the early part of the following year, great care being taken to preserve the bouquet of the white grapes, with which view, contrary to the practice followed in the Champagne, only a moderate proportion of wine from black grapes enters into the blend. [Illustration: VINEYARDS IN THE AHR VALLEY.] Next comes the fining, and four weeks afterwards the wine is newly racked. The bottling takes place during May or June, when any deficiency of natural saccharine in the wine is supplied by the addition of pure sugar-candy. At Messrs. Deinhard’s the wine is bottled at a temperature of 72° Fahr., and the bottles remain resting on large stone tables until the fermentation is completed, and the saccharine is converted into alcohol and carbonic acid gas. This result is commonly obtained in ordinary hot weather in eight days’ time, most of the breakage taking place during this interval. If on being tested with a manometer the wine should indicate too high a pressure, it is at once removed to a cool cellar, consequently the average total breakage rarely exceeds 2¼ per cent. The wine is now left quiet for at least a year, and if possible for two years, after which the bottles are placed on stands in the customary inverted position, and shaken daily for a period of six weeks, in order to dislodge the sediment and force it against the cork. German workmen are far less expert at this operation than their fellows in the Champagne, as few of the former can manage more than their four-and-twenty thousand bottles per diem. The disgorgement and liqueuring of the wine is accomplished at Messrs. Deinhard’s and other German establishments in precisely the same fashion as is followed in the Champagne.