1872 Cooling Cups and Dainty Drinks (Mixellany)

14 Wines. of the hill on whose slopes are planted the vines which yield the choicest quality. Eed Hermitage is highly regarded for its full body, dark purple colour, exquisite perfume and flavour; but its bril- liant colour sensibly fades after it has been kept twenty years. There are five classes of Hermitage wine (as the production of all the immediate dis- trict is named); the best, or Ermitage paille, is very choice and expensive. Cote Roti is a generous red clear wine, with a slight bitter taste, and violet bouquet. Gauphine is sound, useful wine, grown in the H^rault. Koussillon, on the borders of the Mediterranean, produces some of the deepest-coloured and fullest- bodied of French wines. One of them, Masdew (which is the name for God's field or vineyard), is a full-bodied, bright, red wine, with a bouquet not unlike Claret, yet partaking of a Port character ; in fact, so much like Port, that a good deal of it is sold and used in England as Port. It was the red wines of Roussillon which formed the basis of the famous Bristol Ports, so well known in the last century. In proximity to Masdeu, come the rich, luscious wines Frontignac, Eivesaltes, Lunel, and many