1885 New Guide Hotel Bar Restaurant

THE NEW GUIDE FOR HOTELS, ETC.

22

Here follows price list quotations intended for the trade, and which it would be invidious to copy here, as any Hotel keeper, Restaurant proprietor or manager, may obtain them by writing direct to Mons. Lafitte at his Chateau. The quotations are an inducement to invest in the pure wines, and the postscript forms a double attraction and shows the honesty of the producer. He says ''should the wines not prove satisfactory, they can be returned at my charge." It is only an endorsement of what we know to be a general prac- tice amongst wine importers. The modus operandi is this The wines of a good vintage, or of a good maker are bought up in bulk, — Australian, Spanish, Greek, Italian, Hungarian, and other wines are bought and ruthlessly mixed with the vintage products of the Rhine, the Moselle and other famous and popular German and French wine districts, or turned into mean imitations of Prince Metternich, Schloss Johannesberg, Burgundy, Bordeaux, Choice Oporti, or Madeira. Yet strange to say, hundreds of English wine tasters fail to detect the scurrillous imposture. The Wine Merchant Should have a large, reliable and varied Store. He is expected to keep everything and have all wines in good order, but to the average hotel-keeper '*A large and varied stock of Wines" actually kept in stock for single bottle, and single glass retail purposes, would be simply madness and a useless waste of money, which could be successfully floated in the business instead of lying dead, in the shape of wines that may deteriorate. Take the Hockheimmer, Rouge et Blance, two more delicious wines can hardly be named to the real wine lover, but they are rarely called for, and are not good keeping wines. After a certain number of years they deteriorate, thus disproving the . old woman's story, and the fallacious belief of the nouveau riche, **That the older the