Page:A Treatise on the Culture of the Vine and, and the Art of Making Wine.pdf/178

 escaped the treading, shall have commenced theirs; and thus a mass be presented for fermentation, whose elements are not in affinity; but, when the grapes are uniformly pressed, the fermentation is spontaneous, and no partial movements obscure the signs by which it is announced, accompanied, or succeeded.

On the other hand, Labergerie affirms, that these unbroken berries undergo a decomposition, in common with the rest of the mass, notwithstanding their spherical form; and that it would rather be disadvantageous, than otherwise, to crush every individual grape; as, when the must is in sufficient quantity, they operate most actively to the general shock of fermentation. "The manner of treading, in all districts," says he, "proves that they are useful, a few being always suffered to escape." In Burgundy, he has left a quantity of these entire grapes, which are there called grumes, (clods) in the proportion of one-fifth of the whole; when examined, after the vats were emptied, they were found entire, but destitute of vinous substance, deprived of their saccharine matter, and their colour quite gone; when broken by the tooth, they were harsh and ill tasted; when