While there are some grocers who, for various reasons do not handle these products, there are also many who keep for the family use of their customers a full line of choice wines, malt beverages, and distilled liquors. This work would therefore be incomplete without reference to these articles, and it is believed that the few facts given below concerning them will be found interesting and instructive. WINES.Pure wine is merely grape juice fermented. When the sugar of the grape is wholly or nearly converted by fermentation into natural vinous spirits or alcohol, the result is a STILL or DRY WINE. If the sugar is very abundant, as in overripe grapes, and a considerable portion of it remains unfermented, a SWEET WINE like Tokay or Malmsey is produced. When fermentation has proceeded to a certain stage and the liquid is bottled, so that it continues to ferment and produce carbonic acid gas, the result is an effervescent wine, as SPARKLING CHAMPAGNE. If, during fermentation, the process be arrested by the addition of alcohol, certain vegetable substances are retained in the liquid, and such wines as PORT and SHERRY are the product. Composition of Wines.Wines, as well as all varieties of malt and spirituous liquors, owe their intoxicating qualities to alcohol. But the medical and dietetic qualities of wine are not solely due to it; a mixture of water and alcohol, or whiskey of equal strength, has a very different effect on the animal economy. Pure wines contain also natural acids, sugar, ethers, albumen, phosphates, etc. Their value is, however, mainly determined by their “Bouquet” or flavor, produced by substances natural to the grapes, heightened and rendered more delicate by fermentation. Alcohol and Acids in Wine.The quantity of alcohol in natural wine from grapes, varies between 5 and 12 per cent.; the quantity of free acid from 3 to 7 per cent. If more of the latter be present, the wine tastes excessively sour, and is less easily digested; but some acid in wine is essential, and contributes much to its flavor and virtues. Besides the natural acids which exist in the juice of the grape, cheap and inferior wines often contain, also, the hurtful acids of spoiling, showing the approach to vinegar. WINES OF THE WORLD.France.Even a bird’s-eye glance at the wines of the world, might easily fill a volume. There are the superb French wines of Burgundy and Champagne, which ancient Provinces are now almost one splendid, continuous vineyard; and the Clarets, Sauternes, etc. of Bordeaux and The Wines of Germany.The principal wine districts of Germany are the valleys of the Rhine and Moselle and their tributaries, whence come the well known Hock and the red and white wines, which, though sometimes rather thin and deficient in flavor, are never colored, plastered, boiled, or have spirits added to them, and are therefore natural and wholesome. Here also is the renowned Johannisberg Castle vineyard, owned by the family of Prince Meternich. Every bottle of this wine bears his family arms, and it is the beverage of Emperors and Kings. By reason of its exquisite “Bouquet” it is pronounced “The finest and costliest drink on earth.” Wines of Hungary, Italy, Spain, etc.Hungary sends forth her “Imperial” opal-tinted Tokay wines, made of overripe grapes, from which the juices are never squeezed but allowed to drop; other Hungarian wines are as dry as those of France, as mellow as those of Germany, and more fragrant than American Wines.The wines of California and other sections of the United States are rapidly rising in popular estimation, and the time is probably not far distant when they will rival those of any part of the world. The consumption of domestic vintages increases with the constant improvement in their quality, which follows the slowly acquired knowledge, as to the best methods of turning the luscious juices of our own abundant grapes into wine. Champagne.The French make four varieties of champagne, viz.: Non-Mousseux, Cremant, Mousseux, and Grand-Mousseux. The first is fully fermented wine, fined, drawn into bottles, and allowed to rest a long time. Cremant is moderately sparkling. Mousseux throws out its cork with an audible report and begins gently to overflow. Grand-Mousseux pops out the cork with a loud noise and overflows with much foam, as it has the pressure of five atmospheres. A sound, rather dry champagne is said to be one of the best of remedies for impaired digestion. Good and Poor Champagne.Good champagne throws up for a long time after being opened a continuous stream of small, sparkling bubbles of gas: “Each sunset ray, that mixed by chance With the wine’s diamond, showed How sunbeams may be taught to dance.” Even after hours of exposure, when it has lost all its excess of carbonic acid, good champagne still retains the characteristic flavor of true wine, while an inferior sparkling wine becomes, after exposure, almost as insipid as a mixture of sugar and water. The best are made from the first pressings of the grape. Those made from a third, fourth or fifth pressing require the addition of sugar and are cloying and far inferior in flavor. Imitation champagnes are made by sweetening any ordinary still wines or cider and charging them with carbonic acid gas. MALT LIQUORS.Malt liquors, properly so called, should be made only of malted barley, hops, yeast and water, but other materials are also used. Porter is a beer of a high percentage of alcohol and made from malt dried at a high temperature, which gives it its dark color. Ale is pale beer with considerable alcohol and made of pale malt, with more hop extract than porter. As every per cent. of sugar in the malt yields by fermentation about half a per cent. of alcohol, it is evident that ale, porter, and lager beer are stronger or weaker, as more or less malt is used in making them. ALCOHOL IN BEERS.Beers are stimulating from their alcohol and refreshing from their carbonic acid, besides being tonic and somewhat nutritive. The oil of the hops gives them aroma and the lupulin they contain soothes the nerves. Their taste is vinous, sweetish, and bitter at the same time. The quantity of alcohol in malt liquors was given by Prof. Englehardt, as the result of analyses made for the N. Y. State Board of Health, in 1885, as follows.
Beer Adulterations.It has been popularly supposed that beer is much adulterated. But the result of many analyses made by Mr. C. A. Crampton, for the Department of Agriculture at Washington, last year, show him “That beer is as free from adulteration as most other articles of consumption, and more so than some.” The analyst found that, practically, no foreign bitters other than hops were used; but he also found that nearly one quarter of the samples analyzed contained, as a preservative, the Good Cider contains 3 to 5 per cent. of alcohol. It is made from the fermented juice of apples. Many grown people acquired their fondness for cider on the “Old Farm” in childhood. It is sold by grocers in bulk, and is also bottled extensively and sold as “Champagne cider,” and quite often as champagne. DISTILLED LIQUORS.The disagreeable taste of freshly distilled ardent spirits is due to the presence of fusil oil and other empyreumatic substances, which time alone can transform into harmless ethers which smell and taste agreeably, and produce an exhilaration over and above that of the alcohol which holds them in solution. Spirits can be distilled from any vegetable matter which will yield alcohol, yet many substances yield only a rasping, nauseous or flavorless liquor, which age does not improve. To some of these products, artificial flavors and color are given and the imitation articles are thus placed on the market. But true whiskey, brandy, etc., have a specific and original flavor of their own, and contain vegetable oils and acids. Alcohol in Liquors.The following table shows the proportion of alcohol (by volume) in the various liquors.
Brandy.—This is made from wine; that from white grapes is preferred and it requires about seven bottles of wine to make one Whiskey is a spirit distilled either from fermented malt, rye, barley, oats, wheat or corn. The very best and sweetest grain is only used for making good whiskey. American whiskey is more easily obtained pure than perhaps any spirituous liquor and is therefore more reliable in this country. The name whiskey is a corruption of the Erse and Irish word Usquebaugh, “Water of Life,” the French Eau de Vie. Rum is made from distilled molasses and skimmings from the boiling sugar. Gin is distilled from unmalted grain, the product being rectified and flavored with juniper berries. Favorite Brands.Champagnes come in quarts and pints, Sec or “Dry,” “Extra Dry,” etc. Among favorite Brands are those of Cordials include Anisette, Benedictine, |