Manufacturers of champagne and other sparkling wines prepare them dry or sweet, light or strong, according to the markets for which they are designed. The sweet wines go to Russia and Germany, the sweet-toothed Muscovite regarding M. Louis Roederer’s syrupy product as the _beau-idéal_ of champagne, and the Germans demanding wines with 20 or more per cent. of liqueur, or nearly quadruple the quantity that is contained in the average champagnes shipped to England. France consumes light and moderately sweet wines; the United States gives a preference to the intermediate qualities; China, India, and other hot countries stipulate for light dry wines; while the very strong ones go to Australia, the Cape, and other places where gold and diamonds and such-like trifles are from time to time “prospected.” Not merely the driest but the very best wines of the best manufacturers, and commanding of course the highest prices, are invariably reserved for the English market. Foreigners cannot understand the marked preference shown in England for exceedingly dry sparkling wines. They do not consider that as a rule they are drunk during dinner with the _plats_, and not at dessert, with all kinds of sweets, fruits, and ices, as is almost invariably the case abroad. Good champagne is usually of a pale straw colour, but with nothing of a yellow tinge about it. When its tint is pinkish this is owing to a portion of the colouring matter having been extracted from the skins of the grapes--a contingency which every pains are taken to avoid, although, since the success achieved by the wine of 1874, slightly pink wines are likely to be the fashion. The positive pink or rose-coloured champagnes, such as were in fashion some thirty years ago, are simply tinted with a small quantity of deep red wine. The alcoholic strength of the drier wines ranges from 18° of proof spirit upwards, or slightly above the ordinary Bordeaux, and under all the better-class Rhine wines. Champagnes when loaded with a highly alcoholized liqueur will, however, at times mark 30 degrees of proof spirit. The lighter and drier the sparkling wine the more wholesome it is, the saccharine element in conjunction with alcohol being not only difficult of digestion, but generally detrimental to health.