To obtain the juice from the grapes, they are subjected to the operation of large presses of somewhat similar construction to the cyder presses of our own country (the separate gatherings being still kept apart), and the juice is received into vessels fixed for that purpose. Afterwards it undergoes the necessary fermentation to convert it into wine. By the ancients the juice was obtained by treading the grapes. This practice is alluded to in various parts of Scripture, but perhaps in none are the characteristics of the ancient vintage expressed more strongly than in the predictions of Isaiah concerning Moab: "And gladness is taken away, and joy out of the plentiful field; and in the vineyards there shall be no singing, neither shall there be any shouting: the treaders shall tread out no wine in their presses; I have made their vintage-shouting to cease." The treading of grapes is still practised in several parts of the world. The ancients frequently kept their wine in skins, or leathern bags, well secured at the seams; hence the passage in the gospels; "neither do men put new wine into old bottles; else the bottles break, and the wine runneth out, and the bottles perish: but they put new wine into new bottles, and both are preserved." The kinds of wine are extremely various. The difference which exists betwixt them is not, however, so much owing to a distinction in the species of grapes, as in the quality of the fruit, produced by the varieties of soil, cultivation, and climate to which they are subject. This difference likewise depends, in some instances, on the peculiar mode of fermentation, and the state of the grapes from which the wine is produced. (_a_) PORTUGUESE WINES.--Of all the kinds of wine that are consumed in England, none are so much in request as _red port_. This has its name from the city of Oporto, in the neighbourhood of which the vines that produce it are chiefly cultivated. A great proportion, however, of the port that is consumed in England, is said to be mixed with a Spanish red wine of inferior quality, or to be otherwise adulterated. Red port is brought over in casks called pipes, which measure 138 gallons each, and ought to fill fifty-two dozen bottles of legal measure. The difference in colour betwixt red wines and white does not so much depend upon the quality of the grape, as upon the mode in which the wines are prepared. The juice of red grapes, if carefully pressed, and fermented separately from the skins, forms a white wine. If the skins be pressed so as to discharge the colouring matter they contain, or, if they be allowed to remain in the juice during the fermentation, the wine assumes a red tinge. _White port_, and _Lisbon_, are two kinds of white wine which we receive from Portugal. Of these, the former was much in demand some years ago, but it is now seldom called for; the latter is still in use.