Page:A Treatise on the Culture of the Vine and, and the Art of Making Wine.pdf/60

20 maintains a damp and moist temperature in the atmosphere, the grape neither acquires saccharine principle nor flavour, and the wine made from it is weak and insipid. These descriptions of wine keep with difficulty; the minute proportion of alcohol which they contain, is insufficient to prevent their decomposition, and the large proportion of that principle, which is the yeast of the fermentation, accelerates the movements of an incipient degeneration; all wines of this description contain a large portion of malic acid, from which they derive a peculiar taste, a sourness which is not acetous, and which impresses a character the more marked, as the wines are less spirituous.

The influence of the seasons is so well known in the wine countries, that the nature of the wine can be predicted long before the period of the vintage. When the season is cold, the wine is generally rough and ill tasted: when wet, the wine is in large quantity, but weak, and though producing little spirit, is usually (at least in the south of France), employed in distillation, both on account of its wanting durability, and those qualities which recommend it as a drink.

The rains which fall at the period, or the approach of the vintage, are always the most dangerous, as the grape has then neither time nor vigour to elaborate the juices with which it is