Page:A Treatise on the Culture of the Vine and, and the Art of Making Wine.pdf/162

 ducted, seven or eight months after the vintage.

Other methods are, by removing the fruit from the contact of the air. Take a box, of any convenient size, and suspend in it, by pins and cards, as many bunches as it will hold without pressing. Close it hermetically, by plastering the junctures with lime, place it in a dry place, and cover it with a few inches of fine sand. Grapes are kept in this way in perfect preservation, but it is necessary to use them very soon after the box is opened.

Others are dipped repeatedly in a lie made of the finely sifted ashes ov burnt shoots, and then packed in boxes with the dry ashes. When they are to be used, they are plunged in water, and the adhering matter easily parts from them; others are packed in clean chaff, and this also seems to answer the purpose.

Raisins are prepared in two ways. Those called sun raisins are allowed to adhere to the vine, after the stalk is cut half through, to stop the circulation of the sap; and, after the sun has candied them, they are packed in boxes. Those called Lexia raisins, are cut off from the vine, and after being dipped in a lie (Lexia) of the ashes of vine shoots, are carefully dried in the sun.