As a matter of fact the best cider in the world is made in Normandy. And for what purpose do the Normans make it? To send to the Champagne country to be sold to the unsuspecting tourist as the sparkling wine of that district. This is solid truth. Hundreds of millions of gallons are made in Normandy with the most scrupulous care, under the supervision of experienced chemists, and the bulk is eventually sold as champagne. And not only champagne, but claret, white wines, and even honest, manly, beautiful, unsophisticated, good old Portuguese port, owe their being in some instances to Normandy apples; the rich colour of the port being added by log-wood, beet-juice, {177} and the root of the rhatany. In fact, genuine port can be so closely imitated as to deceive many a good judge; and it really seems wonderful that the British farmer does not go in for making port wine, with apples so plentiful and cheap, and beet, mangels, and elderberries so easy to cultivate. In fact, given the time, and the materials, I am convinced that I could produce an excellent ’98 wine for laying down, for hospital purposes, public rejoicings, or _miladi’s boudoir_. Cider, like all other useful drinks, can be, and is, imitated; and Bands of Hope and other well-meaning but misguided associations are chiefly responsible for this. What is known at Sunday-school treats and Salvation Army marriage-feasts as “non-alcoholic cider” has been found, on analysis, to be “a water solution of sugar and citric acid, flavoured with apple essence.” It’s the flavouring as does it. “Harvest cider,” as home-made for the “hands,” is dreadful stuff, and absolutely unfit for human consumption. Apples which have fallen of themselves, or been blown off the trees, “windfalls,” are left on the ground to rot, and be eaten of slugs and wasps; and are then shovelled into the cider-mill, together with leaves, stalks, slugs, wasps, dirt of all sorts, spiders, ear-wigs, wire-worms, “Daddy Long-legs”-es, and—other things; the whole being converted into a species of “hell-broth,” which would have done credit to the best efforts of the witches in _Macbeth_, when properly mixed.