“What is a pound?” was a favourite query of the great Sir Robert Peel. “What is brandy?” is a question asked now and then; and the answer thereto should be an ambiguous one. Brandy is supposed, by good easy people who trouble not to enquire too closely into the composition of their daily food, to be a liquid obtained by distilling the fermented juice of the grape. The red wines are preferable, although in the seventeenth century the best French brandy was made entirely from white ones. The original distillation is clear and colourless, but when placed in casks the liquid dissolves out the colouring matter of the wood, brown sugar and other pigments being also added. {73}

But if you want the best French brandy, distilled from the luscious grape, see that you get it; and let your vision be in thorough working order. With the exception of the good, conscientious spirit-distillers, all French houses import potato-spirit in large quantities from Germany, and re-ship it to the home of the brave and free as superior cognac. This alone would seem sufficient excuse for another invasion of France; although these evil-minded distillers seek to justify their actions by blaming the phylloxera, a little insect which has laboured more assiduously in the cause of temperance—by destroying the main source of intemperance—than Sir Wilfrid Lawson himself. “The ravages of the phylloxera,” say the distillers, in effect, “compel us to employ other matÉriel, in order to fulfil our cognac contracts with the merchants of the perfidious isle.” It is related of a theatrical “property-man” that, upon being rebuked by the tragedian for making a snowstorm out of brown, instead of white, paper, he replied curtly: “It was the only paper I had; and if you can’t snow white you must snow brown.” This excuse is on a par with that urged on behalf of the German potato-spirit.

Phylloxera vastatrix (why not devastatrix?) has cost France, it is said, a pecuniary loss far exceeding that of the Franco-Prussian war. The little monster was discovered in North America in 1854, and whether the discoverer or one of his friends brought the vine-killer on a holiday-trip to Europe, or whether it worked its own passage will never be known. But certain it is that the {74} little monster made its first appearance on this side in the year 1863. Striking an attitude, with the exclamation, “Hallo! here’s a vine, let’s have the first suck,” the phylloxera commenced a long starring engagement (to borrow another metaphor from the theatres), which in another fifteen years’ time had developed into an enormous success, as far as the vastatrix was concerned. Naturally, it is the she-phylly who does the harm. From August to October Madam lays her little eggs on the vine-leaves, beneath the surface. The ova develop late in autumn into males and females, who migrate to the stem of the vine. There each bold, bad female lays an egg, under the bark. This egg lies dormant, after the manner of pesky little insect-nuisances, through the winter, and develops in April or May into a wingless, voracious, merciless little “vine-louse,” with power to add to its number. “The rest,” as the mechanical engineers tell us, just before our brains go, “is easy.” The vine-louse attacks the roots, without waiting, the silly idiot, for the grapes to ripen, the vine dies, and the potato reigns in its stead. Without burning the plant, or drowning it, it is impossible to eradicate the phylloxera, without spending three times as much cash, in chemicals, as the vine is worth. This is the true story of France’s great trouble.

Beetroot-spirit is also largely used in making cognac, the coarse spirit being flavoured with oenanthic Æther, cognac-oil (made from palm-oil) and—other things. Also of late years the French have discovered that almost as good wine can be made from raisins as from the uncooked {75} article, provided they use enough raisins; three pounds being required to make a gallon of liquor. A good deal can also be done, in the way of imitation wine, by chemicals; it being quite possible to make sherry which will fetch at least four shillings per bottle, for the ridiculous sum of fourpence for the same quantity. And it is also a fact that a large quantity of alleged claret which (mainly through the endeavours of the late Mr. W. E. Gladstone) we are able to import on the cheap from the other side of the water, is made from currants and raisins steeped in water and mixed with cheap Spanish wine.

And what is to be said of British brandy? A country which can man­u­fac­ture superior Dorset butter from Thames mud, and real turtle-soup from snails and conger-eels, is not likely to get “left” in a matter of dis­til­ling. A great deal of brandy is, therefore, made in the tight little island from ordinary grain alcohol, by adding Argol—I’ll tell ye what this is presently—bruised French plums, French wine-vinegar, a little—a very little—good cognac, and redistilling. I believe that it is also possible to extract a good midnight sort of brandy—specially rec­om­mend­ed for roysterers—from coal-tar and paraffin.

The Americans make brandy from peaches and other stone-fruits, good wholesome liquor, but their French cognac is not to be rec­om­mend­ed. For it is nothing more nor less than the common whisky which America has exported to France, sent back again, after the necessary treatment. Fact. {76}

Argol, mentioned just now, is a crude variety of cream of tartar which forms a crust within wine-vats and bottles. Originally it exists in the juice of the grape, and is soluble therein; but during the fermentation of the juice, and as it passes into wine, much alcohol is developed, which remaining in the fermenting liquor, causes the precipitation of Argol. Thus the “crust” of port wine is Argol, the principal uses (and abuses) of which are in the preparation of (besides cognac) cream of tartar and tartaric acid. And malicious people say that you have only to scratch French brandy to find the Tartar.

A few years ago a German chemist discovered that a very drinkable brandy can be made from sawdust—whether deal sawdust or any description of dust does not appear; and under the heading, “A New Danger to Teetotalism,” an American journal published the following effusion:—

“We are a friend of the temperance movement, and want it to succeed; but what chance can it have when a man can take a rip-saw and go out and get drunk with a fence-rail? What is the use of a prohibitory liquor law if a man is able to make brandy-smashes out of the shingles on his roof, or if he can get delirium tremens by drinking the legs of his kitchen chairs? You may shut up an inebriate out of a gin shop and keep him away from taverns, but if he can become uproarious on boiled sawdust and desiccated window-sills, any effort must necessarily be a failure.”

I can believe in the ability of most German chemists to do most things; and possibly {77} sawdust is used in the Fatherland for the man­u­fac­ture of lager beer, Rhine Wine, and—but ’tis a saw subject.

The pure brandy at Cognac is divided into two principal classes—“champagne” brandy, from grapes grown on the plains, and “bois” brandy, the product of wooded districts—I am not alluding now to sawdust—and the last-named variety is subdivided into many different names. It takes eight and a half gallons of wine to furnish one gallon of spirits; and the ravages of the vine-louse have made a terrible difference in the supply. In fact, the amount produced in 1897 was about one-tenth of the amount produced twenty years previously. But thanks to beet-root, potatoes, and—other things, the distiller manages to “get” there just the same. But the man who wrote in 1889, prophesying the speedy disappearance of pure eau de vie from the market, was probably not far wrong. “It would seem on the whole,” he wrote, “that unless the phylloxera be stamped out, pure brandy will soon be a thing of the past.” But they do not tell you this in saloon-bars, and places where they drink.

It was stated by Mr. Dewar last year (1898) that there were 89,000,000 gallons of whisky lying idle in bond because sufficient suitable water to dilute it to the orthodox strength could not be found. This statement is calculated to give a moderate drinker the gapes; whilst Sir Wilfrid Lawson and others must have longed for permission to set fire to every bonded warehouse in the Kingdom. But the same great authority {78} on the wines of bonnie Scotland made another statement at the same time which is eminently calculated to remove all fears lest whisky, like brandy, be on the down line. “The serpent Alcohol,” remarks a writer in the Daily Telegraph, in discussing Mr. Dewar’s speech, “may have been scotched”—was this meant for a joke?—“but it is far from having been killed.” According to the Ex-Sheriff’s statistics the distillation of Irish whisky, despite its diminishing popularity, has increased during the last fourteen years by about thirty per cent; while in Scotland during the same period the increase has been at the rate of nearly eighty per cent. Ireland, that is to say, which produced eleven million gallons in 1884, now produces fourteen million and a half gallons; while the Scotch output, which was eighteen million gallons in the former year, had risen in 1898 to the enormous figure of thirty-three millions and a half. Hech sirs! these be braw figures indeed.

Yet let not the British be held up to reprobation as hard drinkers, as long as France is a going concern. Statistics prove that in Scotland, the land o’ the barley bree, the consumption of spirits during the year 1892–93 averaged a little more than twelve and a half pints per month, which is little more than the proportion of spirits required by the Parisians, without wine, absinthe, and—other things. The boulevardiers are called “temperate,” although they drink as much spirits as do the Scots, and thirty times as much wine, not to mention cider and beer.

Distilling in Britain dates from the eleventh {79} century, but in the be­gin­ning it was worked solely in the monasteries by the jovial monks. What a good time those monks of old would seem to have had! According to the popular prints they were usually engaged either in fishing, eating oysters, drinking out of flagons, catching beetles, confessing pretty women, or being shaved; and we know that their abiding-places were built, for the most part, on the banks of a river which absolutely swarmed with salmon or trout, in the midst of a district teeming with game. Any how the monks made spirits, or “strong waters” as they were called in those days, first.

Pure malt whisky is, and has been, made almost exclusively in Scotland. In Ireland they use about one-third of malt to two-thirds of oats and maize. In England they make whisky of pretty nearly everything, including German spirit, petroleum, and old boots; whilst in gallant little Wales—well the only acknowledged Welsh whisky I have tasted was excellent in quality, and apparently made from pure malt. Distilling, as a trade, commenced in England during the Tudor period, and from the reputation bluff King Hal bore for feathering his nest, it is probable that the industry was fully taxed. In 1579 Scotch distilleries were taxed for the first time. In Ireland as far back as the eleventh century the natives made uisge beatha—now called potheen—without interference from landlord or gauger, and continued at it until the sixteenth century, when licenses were enforced in the cases of all but the gentry, and to run an illicit still was {80} punishable with death and dismemberment. But they ran ’em just the same; for in those days an Irishman was never really happy unless he were drinking, fighting, or being sentenced to death. But whether it was English, Scotch, Welsh, or Irish whisky, or French brandy, or Dutch gin, smuggling and illicit distilling were rampant through the centuries, and the Inland Revenue officer was no more respected or worshipped than at the present day. Still there has not been much blood shed over those differences of opinion; except in Western Pennsylvania at the close of the last century—a period when the greater part of the universe was fighting about something—when it took 15,000 soldiers from Washington to quell a riot amongst a populace discontented with the Excise regulations.

Blending and diluting whiskies are for the most part done in the bonded warehouses. “All commercial spirit,” says an authority on the subject, “however pure, contains a small proportion of impurities” (which sounds Irish) “or by-products of distillation known as fusel-oil.” It will relieve the minds of some to know that fusel-oil is merely a by-product of distillation, and not the “low-flash” stuff which causes the accidents with the cheap lamps. It used to be thought that during the “maturing,” or “ageing,” of whisky the constituents of fusel-oil underwent decomposition; but my good friend Doctor James Bell, C.B., the chief Government analyst at Somerset House (he retired some three years ago), utterly refuted this theory by analysis.

Whisky is, like brandy, naturally white, and {81} takes its trade colour, and, to a certain extent, flavour, from the sherry-casks in which it is matured. It is also coloured by the direct addition of caramel (burnt sugar), or a maturing wine.

In America, Rye or Bourbon whisky is made from wheat or maize grown in the Bourbon country, Kentucky, and some of it would kill at forty yards. The chief distillery states on the other side of the Atlantic are Illinois, Ohio, Kentucky, Indiana, New York, and Pennsylvania. At the Cape, and through­out South Africa, there is decent whisky procurable, as also a pernicious compound known as “Square-face” or “Cape smoke,” and in much favour with the dusky races of the country. On the Congo, palm-wine—similar to the fermented toddy of the East Indies—was for centuries the only livener, but with the march of civilization have come the whiskies of Great Britain, more or less adulterated; and whereas in the past death by the sword, or the club, was the only known punishment for the subjects of the native tyrants who are so fond of thinning out the population, a well-fuselled whisky is now freely employed for the same purpose.

Although whisky is now freely partaken of all over Great Britain, it was comparatively speaking despised in England until the first half of the present century had slipped by. This fact is apparent from a perusal of contemporary literature. And in no country has “malt” had such a rise in public estimation as in the great continent of Hindustan, where “John Exshaw” and “John {82} Collins”—the last named a seductive compound of gin, limes, CuraÇoa, and soda-water—have been almost knocked out by John Barleycorn and Jean Pomme-de-terre. Until the visit of H.R.H. the Prince of Wales, brandy was almost the sole potation of the heroes who helped to hold the big wonderland, the old-fashioned brandi-pani gradually giving place to the brandy diluted with Belati pani, or “Europe water.” Thirty years ago a “peg” meant a brandy-and-soda; but whisky has now usurped the proud position once occupied by the products of John Exshaw, Justerini and Brooks, and others.