1872 Cooling Cups and Dainty Drinks (Mixellany)

Claret. 5 cms, that no one can enter farther than the doorway. There the listener may hear strange bubblings solemnly echoing in the cool and dark hall, and which proclaim that a great change is taking place,—that these vats of mawkish, sweet, juice are being con- verted into noble and generous wine. There is some- thing wonderful in this mysterious change. Nature will have no intrusion during her mystic opera- tions. The atmosphere around and near the vats would be death to any who should venture near, fenced in, as the vats are, during the grand trans- mutation by a halo of stifling carbonic gas. The French are generally considered the best vine-cultivators in the world. The process of wine- treading is pursued very generally in France, being considered superior, in many vine districts, to the employment of mechanical squeezing. But this last process is used for expressing the juice of the grape for the sparkling wines of Champagne, and it is also the case in Germany. The wines known in France as Vins de Bordeaux, are with us classed under the general name of Claret, a name signifying that it is a mixed wine of a clear red colour,—

" Claret, sweet as the lips we press, In sparkling fancy, as we drain the bowl."