1879 Facts About Champagne and Other Sparkling Wines

Champagne and Othf'/r Sparlcling Wines.

214

ones go to Australia, the Cape, and other places where gold and diamonds and such-like trifles are from time to time" prospected.'' Not merely the driest but the very best wines of the best manu– facturers, and commanding of course the highest prices, are in– variably reserved for the English market. Foreigners cannot understand the marked preference shown in England for ex– ceedingly dry sparkling wines. They do not consider that as a rule they are drunk during dinner with the plats, and not at dessert, with all I.rinds of sweets, fruits, and ices, as is almost invariably the case abroad. Good champagne is usually of a pale straw colour, but with nothing of a yellow tinge about it. When its tint is pinki~h this is owing to a portion of the colouring matter having been extracted. from the skins of the grapes- a contingency which every pa{ns are taken to avoid, although, since the success achieved by the wine of 1874, slightly pink wines are likely to be t.he fashion . The positive pink or rose-colomed. champagnes, such as were in fashion some thirty years ago, are simply tinted · with a small quantity of d,eep r ed wine. The alcoholic strength of the drier wines ranges from 18° of proof spirit upwards, or slightly above the ordinary Bordeaux, and under all the better– class Rhine wines. Champagnes when loaded with a highly alco– holized llqueur will, however, at times mark 30 degrees of proof spirit. The ligliter and drier the sparkling wine the more whole– some it is,the saccharine element in conjunction with alcohol being not only difficult of digestion, but generally detrimental to health. The faculty are agreed that fine dry champagnes are among the safest wines that can be partaken of. Any intoxicating effects are rapid but exceedingly transient, and arise from the alcohol suspended in the carbonic acid beipg applied rapidly and extensively to the surface of the stomach. " Champagne," said Curran, " simply gives a runaway rap at a man's head." Dr. Druitt, equally distinguished by his studies upon wine and his standing as · a physician, pronounces good champagne to be " a true stimulant to body and mind alike, rapid, volatile, transitory, and harmless. Amongst the maladies which are benefited by