Page:A Treatise on the Culture of the Vine and, and the Art of Making Wine.pdf/202

 tion in a must too aqueous, as in one too thick. When the grape has attained a perfect maturity, the juice expressed from it is generally of the proper consistence, being in its mean term, when the grape has not been dried, between the eighth and fifteenth degree of the hydrometer of Baumé

In general, the grapes of warmer, afford a thicker must than those of colder climates. During Chaptal's administration of the affairs of the interior, he collected in the nursery of the Chartreux, all the species and varieties of vines cultivated in France. After two years of culture, he found that the grapes of the south yielded a must thicker in consistence than those of the north; but, from the observations he made, he inferred, that they would degenerate by degrees, till they ceased to yield a juice similar to what they afforded in the dry and burning climates of Languedoc and Provence, and be assimilated in their qualities, to those which were cultivated in the same degree of latitude to which they had been removed.