1869 Cooling Cups and Dainty drinks by William Terrington

38

Wines.

than a century. A red wine called Pontac, which is somewhat of a rough character, is much used in the colony. America (where the vine is found growing wild) produces some good wine, hut it is not very pro- bable that much will find its way to this hemi-

Their choicest production, Catawba, is thus

sphere.

eulogized by Longfellow :

Very good in its way Is tlie Verzenay, Or the Sillery, soft and creamy; But Catawba wine Has a taste most divine, More dulcet, delicious, and dreamy.

It is a fact not generally known, that in the twelfth century vineyards were general in England. William of Malmesbury tells us that the wine made in the Vale of Gloucestershire not onty was abun- dant, but little inferior to the wine of France : that this might have been possible has been proved by the experiments of late years of Sir Richard Wors- ley, in the last century, at St. Lawrence in the Isle of Wight, and by Mr. Hamilton, at Painshill. The last-named gentleman produced some wine fully equal to second-rate Champagne, but which, when kept for sixteen years, lost its Champagne cha- racteristic, and became like dry Rhine wine, and