1872 Cooling Cups and Dainty Drinks (Mixellany)

6 Wines. The district in which these wines are produced was the ancient province of Gascony (now the depart- ment of the Gironde), and is estimated to possess above 37,000 acres of vineyard, thickly planted, and constituting one of the most valuable wine districts in France. The popularity of Claret has fluctuated very much in this country, but it now promises to become as common in England as it was nearly twohundred years ago, when our hostility to Louis XIV. and his policy resulted in breaking off, as far as possible, all commercial relations with our neighbours, and led to the introduction of the red wines of Portugal, for the avowed purpose of superseding the use of Claret and Burgundy. Claret was much esteemed in England during the noon- tide of chivalry, when the Black Prince kept court at Bordeaux. Froissart says that, on one occa- sion, a fleet of 200 merchantmen came from England to Bordeaux for wine. In process of time, however, the Bordeaux wines were super- seded in England by the sack produced in Spain and the Canaries, which, with the wines of the Rhine, held sway till the Stuarts again brought Claret in, and, long after the differential duty im- posed on it by the Union, it was the favourite potable of the Scotch.