Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 24.djvu/642

Rh 604 WINE read as grammes per litre or as ounces per 1000 fluid ounces. Alcohol. Free Acid, fixed. Volatile Acid. Total Dry Matter. Glucose. Hock at 30s. a dozen 96 3-5 0-6 18 6 nil at 120s. ,, 104 4-3 0-9 20-6 1-1 Claret at 15s. ,, 85 4-2 1-5 21-4 4-3 ,, at 66s. ,, 85 3-2 1-8 18 i-o Sherry at 22s. ,, 172 27 1-5 42 26, , high price 184 2-8 1-6 56 35 Port at 32s. a dozen ... 186 3-1 0-8 75 43 ,, high price 182 27 1-1 31 10 PART II. INDUSTRY AND TRADE. (W. IX) At the present day -wine is practically a European product, although a certain quantity is made in the United States, at the Cape of Good Hope, and in Australia. The principal countries in Europe where the vine is grown to any extent are France, Spain, Portugal, Austria-Hungary, Italy, Germany, and the southern por tions of Russia and Greece ; but in the first six alone is wine an article of much commercial importance. In the lands of the Levant the use of wine is as old as the earliest memory of civilization, and we find its introduction ascribed to gods (Dionysus in Greece, Osiris in Egypt), or, in the case of the Hebrews, to the patriarch Noah, the second father of mankind. Corn, wine, and oil appear together (as in the Old Testament) as the main gifts of the soil, the material bases of life and comfort. The cultivation of the vine was the highest achievement of ancient husbandry, impossible to semi-nomadic peoples, who might grow a corn crop, but did not remain long enough in one spot to form vineyards. Thus the vine and the olive are in antiquity the marks and almost the symbols of settled and cultured life. Starting perhaps from Armenia and eastern Pontus, viticulture gradually made its way through the lands of ancient civilization, rejected only by a race like the NABAT^EANS (q.v.), whose laws were directed to prevent the transition from nomadic to settled life (cp. the Old Testament Rechabites). Of Asiatic wines the most famous was that of Chalybon (Helbon) near Damascus, which was an article of Phoenician commerce in the time of Ezekiel (xxvii. 18) and at a later date furnished the tables of the Persian kings. Of Greek wines the most famous came from the islands (as Chios, Lesbos, Cos) or from points on the Asiatic coast (Strabo, xiv. p. C37). The vine reached Spain through the Phoenicians, and Italy and southern Gaul (Marseilles) from Greece ; it had no place in the oldest Roman husbandry, nor was wine used in the oldest Roman ritual. But in time Italy became a great wine country, and Cato regards viticulture as the most profitable branch of hus bandry. It was indeed artificially fostered by the Roman republic, which prohibited the import of foreign growths into Italy and stimulated exports by restrictions on wine-growing in the provinces, especially in southern Gaul, which thus became a great market for Italian wines. These restrictions were not wholly removed till the time of PKOBUS (q.v.), when the reins of empire were no longer in Italian hands. In the first century of our era Spanish and Gaulish as well as Greek wines were drunk at Rome (Pliny), but in Gaul the production seems to have been limited to the districts of the Allobroges and Bituriges on the Rhone and the Gironde. It was after Probus s time that viticulture seems to have been established on the Seine and the Moselle, and Julian when in Gaul still found occasion to discharge an epigram against the false Dionysus of Celtic beer. The northward spread of the vine was doubtless also retarded by difficulties of acclimatization, which were only gradually over come. In the Middle Ages, when transport was difficult, wine was produced in the south of England and in several parts of Germany where there is now no motive for urging a precarious husbandry. 1 The exact mode of vine-culture and wine-making amongst the ancients is somewhat obscure ; but there is reason to believe that the latter, although in a somewhat cruder form, closely resembled the system in use at the present day. As far as viticulture is con cerned, we find from Pliny and others that the Romans encouraged the upward growth of the vine upon trees and palisades in prefer ence to the dwarf system now followed in the more northern regions .such as France, a fact doubtless attributable to the almost tropical luxuriance which the vine attains in Italy. Little comparative information can be obtained as to the style of wine made by the ancients ; but from the few facts we do know it may be presumed that, apart from alcoholic qualities, the wines of Greece and Rome had not the high properties possessed by those of the present day. 1 On the history of viticulture, see especially Helm, Culturpftanzai, &c., 3d h p - C3 r f?&quot; a &quot; (i Mommsen, R&amp;lt;j m . Oesch., v. 98 s ? . In accordance with the history of the plant, the names wine, vinum, &c., are traced by philologists to .,-. The further history of the name is obscure ; but it seems to be Indo- J.uropean ; the Hebrew yayin is almost certainly a loan-word. The introduction of resinous flavours or of salt, then usually resorted to, would hardly suit the present high rearing of vinous products. The vintage in the more favoured districts began towards the end of September and in the less favoured during the following month. Grapes were not gathered until they had attained their fullest maturity, and in many instances they were allowed to dry three or four days in the sun after gathering in order to obtain further sweetness and body. The grapes were trodden and then submitted to the press, much after the custom still prevalent in Burgundy and Portugal. When, however, the juice was deemed too thin and watery for the production of good wine, it was boiled down to a greater consistency, whilst a small portion of gypsum was added to it. The original receptacles for wine appear to have been the skins of animals, rendered impervious by oil or resinous substances, but later on the principal vessels were made of earthenware (amphora and the like) or, in certain districts, though less frequently, of wood, after the style of modern casks. In modern as compared with ancient times the M ine- growing industry has considerably changed its locality. Although Italy and (in a very minor degree) Greece still produce a considerable quantity of wine, yet France, Spain, and Portugal must now be recognized as the chief homes of viticulture. France is the country whose modern agricultural history and export trade are most connected with wine production ; and, although, in consequence of the Phylloxera and mildew, the yield has fallen off of late years, it still holds the premier position for quantity, variety, and general excellence of quality. Franca. It was only by degrees, owing partly to its soil and partly to France, the aptitude of its inhabitants, that France developed the position which it now holds as a wine-producing country. Geographically and meteorologically speaking, it is in every way eminently fitted for this. The winters are not too cold, nor, on the other hand, have the summers the intense heat and drought which are often so prejudicial to the vine in southern climates. The country is throughout of that gently undulating character which is so import ant for the proper exposure and ripening of the grape, whilst the calcareous properties of the soil are especially favourable to the growth of the plant. The habits of the people, moreover, and the system of small holdings have also undoubtedly done much in developing the industry ; for there is, perhaps, no branch of agri culture which requires more minute attention, or for which such a system of land tenure is more suitable, than vine culture. At present throughout all France there are only ten departments in which wine is not produced, Calvados, Cotes-du-Nord, Finistere, Manche, Nord, Oise, Orne, Pas-de-Calais, Seine-Inferieure, and Sonime ; and in 1887 the total production amounted to 24,333,284 hectolitres, or some 535,332,250 gallons, which, however, is con siderably less than the average for the previous ten years, owing to the immense injury caused by the Phylloxera. In 1875, the annus mirabilis of wine-production in France, the yield amounted to 83,632,391 hectolitres, or nearly three and a half times that of twelve years later. _As France is the home of wine-growing, so must the Medoc dis- Medoc. trict in its turn be considered the very heart of that industry in France, for nowhere have such elegance, finesse, and distinct variety been obtained as on the banks of the Gironde. Unlike the product s of the different vineyards of most other districts, which are purchased by the merchant and vatted to supply a general wine of commerce, the yields of the principal estates of Medoc are kept distinct, and reach the consumer as the product of the particular growth and the particular year. This practice is, almost without exception, resorted to with what are known as the classed growths and the uperior bourgeois, whilst in seasons in which the wines are of good quality it is continued down to the lower grades. The area of the department of Gironde is about 2,407,000 acres, of which some 500,000 acres are under the vine. There are six descriptions of soil : (1) that of the valleys, chiefly alluvial, the vines on which produce wines of considerable colour and vinosity, but wanting in finesse ; (2) the strong lands, which require frequent working and the assistance of lighter earths and manures, although, when of a ferruginous colour, this soil is very favourable to the vine ; (3) the marshy lands, which are of considerable extent, and which, when gravel enters into their composition, are extremely fertile ; (4) lands formed at the surface of gravel, quartz, and heavy sand, with clay subsoil, over which are grown most of the finest vines of the Medoc ; (5) the silicious or flinty soils, covering about one- tialf of the department, of which some portions, when worked with clay^ and calcareous elements, are suitable for vine cultivation ; (6)
 * he intermediate lands, between the strong soil and the last-named,

which are chiefly available for the growth of the commoner descrip tions of white wines. The principal vines used in the Medoc are, for red wines, the Cabernets (2), the Merlot, and the Malbec, and for white wines, the Semillon, the Sauvignon, and the Muscatelle. The vines of the Cabernet species, although producing excellent grapes, are especially susceptible to damage from weather at flower ing time, and consequently are not so greatly used as the Merlot,