Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 26.djvu/387

Rh value of rich wine in its raw state, in countries where the grape grows luxuriantly, and where, in consequence, the average quality of the wine is the best, does not exceed sixpence per gallon, or one penny per bottle. I speak now of the newly made wine. Allowing another sixpence per gallon for barreling and storage, the value of the commodity in portable form becomes twopence per bottle. I am not speaking of thin, poor wines, produced by a second or third pressing of the grapes, but of the best and richest quality, and, of course, I do not include the fancy wines, those produced in certain vineyards of celebrated chateaux, that are superstitiously venerated by those easily deluded people who suppose themselves to be connoisseurs of choice wines. I refer to the ninety-nine and nine tenths per cent of the rich wines that actually come into the market. Wines made from grapes grown in unfavorable climates naturally cost more in proportion to the poorness of the yield.

As some of my readers may be inclined to question this estimate of average cost, a few illustrative facts may be named. In Sicily and Calabria I usually paid, at the road-side or village "osterias," an equivalent to one halfpenny for a glass or tumbler holding nearly half a pint of common wine, thin, but genuine. This was at the rate of less than one shilling per gallon, or twopence per bottle, and included the cost of barreling, storage, and inn-keeper's profit on retailing. In the luxuriant wine-growing regions of Spain, a traveler, halting at a railway refreshment station and buying one of the sausage sandwiches that there prevail, is allowed to help himself to wine to drink on the spot without charge, but, if he fills his flask to carry away, he is subjected to an extra charge of one halfpenny. It is well known to all concerned that at vintage-time of fairly good seasons, in all countries where the grape grows freely, a good cask is worth more than the new wine it contains when filled; that much wine is wasted from lack of vessels, and anybody sending two good empty casks to a vigneron can have one of them filled in exchange for the other. Those who desire further illustrations and verification should ask their friends—outside of the trade—who have traveled in southern wine countries, and know the language and something more of the country than is to be learned by being simply transferred from one hotel to another under the guidance of couriers, cicerone, valets de place, and other flunkies. Wine merchants are "men of business."

Thus the five shillings paid for a bottle of rich port is made up of one penny for the original wine, one penny more for cost of storage, etc., about sixpence for duty and carriage to this country, and twopence for bottling, making tenpence altogether; the remaining four shillings and twopence is paid for cookery and wine-merchant's profits.

Under cookery I include those changes which may be obtained by simply exposing the wine to the action of the temperature of an ordinary cellar, or the higher temperature of "Pasteuring," to be presently described.