Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 15.djvu/640

 of portentous length, and by placards sown broadcast through the country. So that one may buy "Lafite" or "Margaux"—"Chambertin" or "Nuits"—′47 port, or even ′34—at any village store! No terms can be too strong to characterize such trade.

If fine wines of unquestionable character and vintage are to be produced, there are only two ways of possessing them: one, by finding some wine-merchant of long standing and reputation who will do an applicant the favor to furnish them, and the price must be large for quality and age. We may be certain that such a one will never advertise: no man who really has the grands vins of esteemed vintages in his cellar need spend a shilling in advertisements, for he confers a favor on his customer by parting with such stock. But better and more satisfactory is it to obtain from time to time a piece or two of wine, of high character and reputed vintage, when they are to be had, just fit to bottle, and lay them down for years until ripe for use. Commencing thus in early life, a man's cellar becomes in twenty or thirty years a possession of interest and value, and he can always produce at his little dinners, for those who can appreciate it, something curiously fine, and free at all events from the deleterious qualities of new and fictitious wines.

Briefly: the rule, by general gastronomic consent, for those who indulge in the luxury of wine, is to offer a glass of light pale sherry or dry Sauterne after soup; a delicate Rhine wine, if required, after fish; a glass of Bordeaux with the joint of mutton; the same, or champagne—dry, but with some true vinous character in it, and not the tasteless spirit-and-water just now enjoying an evanescent popularity—during the entrées; the best red wine in the cellar, Bordeaux or Burgundy, with the grouse or other roast game; and—but this ought to suffice, even for that exceptional individual who is supposed to be little if at all injured by "moderate" potations. With the ice or dessert, a glass of full-flavored but matured champagne, or a liqueur, may be served; but at this point dietetic admonitions are out of place, and we have already sacrificed to luxury. The value of a cigarette at this moment is that with the first whiff of its fragrance the palate ceases to demand either food or wine. After smoke the power to appreciate good wine is lost, and no judicious host cares to open a fresh bottle from his best bin for the smoker, nor will the former be blamed by any man for a disinclination to do so.

For unquestionably tobacco is an ally of temperance; certainly it is so in the estimation of the gourmet. A relationship for him of the most perfect order is that which subsists between coffee and fragrant smoke. While wine and tobacco are antipathetic, the one affecting injuriously all that is grateful in the other, the aroma of coffee "marries" perfectly with the perfume of the finest leaf. Among the Mussulmans this relationship is recognized to the fullest extent; and also throughout the Continent the use of coffee, which is almost