"WINE-TASTING PROPERLY SO CALLED.--Wine taken into the front part of the mouth gives rise to acid, sweet, and styptic tastes at the outer edges and tip of the tongue. All shades, in harmony, ought to give a pleasing sensation to the organ, when neither acidity, sweetness, nor astringency predominates. Next we pass the wine to the posterior part of the mouth, and delay it there by a kind of gargling. It is now that we get the smack of the soil, the taste of cask or wood, the insipidity of salts, or any bitterness. If the whole effect is pleasing to the back part of the mouth, with the absence of all disagreeable impressions, we must, to put the finishing touch on the wine-tasting, not spit it out, but swallow it. As soon as the wine has passed over the root of the tongue and the soft palate and its pillars, a most pronounced odour ascends from the pharynx into the nasal cavities, and gives forth newer and more powerful revelations, AS to the qualities or defects of the bouquet of wine, than can ever be obtained by the outward sense of smell. Moreover, the last contact of wine with the mucous membrane of the pharynx and of the base of the tongue leaves a lasting impression of taste, and when this sensation is disagreeable it is designated under the collective name of 'after-taste.' "GOOD AND BAD WINE JUDGED BY THE SENSES.--If, then, a wine possesses perfect clearness and freshness of colour, if it has an agreeable odour, if the combined effect of the acid, sweet, and astringent tastes is gratifying to the anterior part of the mouth by a fusion, seeming to form a unique taste like many notes in a complete harmony; if to this harmonious impression the back part of the mouth adds a feeling of glow and vinous richness, without alcohol being noticed; and if, at last, the act of swallowing crowns the whole with a natural bouquet, not followed by any 'after-taste,' we may pronounce the wine to be good as judged by the senses. But, on the other hand, the wine is unsatisfactory if it fail in any of these points. It will be inferior in proportion as the acids, sugar, and the salts become individually perceived by the tip of the tongue. Again, it is imperfect when the chilliness, flatness, the essential oils, the taste of earth and of cask, and above all, an excess of froe spirit, are manifestly noticed at the base of that organ. And lastly, it is defective just as the 'ARRIERE BOUQUET' is less pleasant, and the 'after-taste' more disagreeably prolonged.