1879 Facts About Champagne and Other Sparkling Wines

211

The Sparlcling Wines of the United States.

of the white varieties indicating meraly 15° of proof spirit, and the red ones no more than 17~ 0 • The vintage takes place towards the end of October, and the grapes are gathered by Chinamen, who will each pick his 12 to 14 cwt:of g.rapes a day for the wage of a dollar. Light wooden boxes are used for holding the grapes, which are stripped from their stalks on their twrival .at the press-house, and then partially crushed by a couple of revolving rollers. An .inclined platform beneath receives them, and after the expressed juice has been run off into cask they are removed to the press, and the must subsequently extracted is added to that forced out by the rollers. When white wine is being made from black grapes the pressure is less continuous, and the must is of cours~ ~eparated at once from the skins. The fermentation, which is violent for some ten or twelve hours, ceases in about a fortnight, providing a t emperature of from 70° to 75° Fahr. is maintained in the vaults. The wine is racked at the new year, and again before the blending and bottling of it in the spring. The Californian sparkling wine:> not only find a market in the eastern States, but are sent across the Pacific to the Sandwich Islands, Japan, China, and even to wine-produc~g 1 Australia, which has not yet succeeded in producing sparkling wines of its own. The manufacture of spurious sparkling•wines is carried on to some extent in the United States. The raw wine is cleared by fining it with albumen or gelatine and with alum; the latter substance imparting to it gr eat brilliancy. After being 'dosed with a fl.avoUTed syrup the wine is charged like soda– water with carbonic a~id gas by placing the bottles under a fountain, and as this gas is derived from marble dust and sul– phuric acid, it is liable to be impregnated with both lead and