True that down here in the plains there is less milk to care for. The excellent Norman cows of the Commanderie give, in favourable circumstances, as much as twenty litres of milk a day, whereas our hard-worked, curly-coated, red Cantal kine seldom yield more than eight; but then Madame Langeac has more than fourscore heads of cattle in her rude granges at Olmet, and the herd is larger still at Comblat, across the valley; while the handsome gothic cow-house of the Commanderie counts but one and twenty beasts, luxuriously housed, ten on either side the central gallery or platform. And this is a large _vacherie_ for Touraine. A farm of fifty acres here possesses barely half a dozen cows; for while in Auvergne the cattle are the mainstay of an estate devoted to pasture, here, in this land of corn and wine, they are just the purveyors of the household dairy. Neither cheese nor butter is a great source of profit, and the cows never work in the fields. Next to the cow-house stands a building of great importance--the wine-press, with its cellar for the vats. The cylinders merely caress their ripest loads of grapes; broken by the mass of their own weight, they yield the sweetest of their juice for the _mère-goutte_, mother of wines of choice. But the _vin-de-presse_, or usual red wine--which is tonic, and (when new) a little harsh--is crushed from the fruit by great rollers, which bruise the pulp, break the skins, shatter the pips, and extract the secret tannin. The _mère-goutte_ is all perfume and aroma; the _vin-de-presse_ is stronger and has more body. A wise hand often delicately doses a mixture of the two, endowed with the qualities of either; one-fourth of the sharper wine added to the _mère-goutte_ ensures its keeping.