I always used to think that red wine was made from purple grapes, and white wine from white ones; so it was, no doubt, until, in 1688, Dom Pérignon, abbot of Haut Villiers, in Champagne, invented our modern wine of champagne, which is made from black grapes. The differences lies in the treatment, not in the colour of the skin: the white wine is drawn off the solid residue before it enters into fermentation; the red wine stands on the aromatic detritus from which it has been crushed, and absorbs its qualities: red wine must evidently be more impregnate with tannin. After the juice has been decanted, whether white or red, a great body of pulp remains, still flush and full of alcohol, rich in perfume and savour. Supposing you add a little water to this mass, having well broken it up; if on the morrow you pour on a little more, and do so day by day, until you reach about one-sixth the volume of the juice drawn off; if then you let the liquor stand for ten days or so to ferment, and finally decant the renovated must into barrels, which you keep hermetically sealed; in this way, you may obtain an excellent light drink, called _piquette_, or sometimes merely _la boisson_, much used by farmers and labourers in France. It contains from five to eight per cent. of alcohol, and is the equivalent of our English beer. But often (though not at the Commanderie) in countries like Touraine, where the alcoholic value of the grape is generally low, we sacrifice the good and innocent piquette to what is called the second wine, or _vin de sucre_, or _vin de marc_--a liquid obtained by the fermentation of sugared water added to the pulp. I fear that men of science--especially Chaptal and Parmentier--are responsible for this practice, which is a tampering with Bacchus. It has, however, the practical result of raising by some three per cent. the amount of alcohol, so as to make a second wine which simulates the natural juice. Again, in cold and rainy seasons, when the fruit ripens ill, even the first loads of grapes are often powdered with sugar which, while it counteracts their acidity, increases the strength of the liquid, and is said to augment its resistance to the malady of _la graisse_, that scourge of weak white wines. When in the last resort the wine is drawn off, the pulp which remains is frequently made into food for the beasts. This latter is an excellent practice. A great chemist of my acquaintance (in point of fact, my husband, Emile Duclaux) asserts that alcohol should form a part of the usual dietary of cattle, being, in fact, when economically dosed by the scientific hand, an unrivalled and easily digested aliment. As for the wine, it sells at any price, from twenty or thirty francs a hectolitre for the coarse rustic kinds, to sixty francs for the same amount of a choicer sort, such as is made at the Commanderie.