1892 Drinks of the world

DRINKS.

63

and preparing the fruit, fining, bottHng, and storing. A correspondent of the Gardeners Chronicle gives a receipt for beer wine, a beverage which has puzzled many connoisseurs. The curious may find it also quoted in Vine's brochure. The manufacture of home-made wines is familiar. An excellent wine is sometimes made from a mixture of the fruits above mentioned, as, for instance, that from gooseberries and currants. All home-made wines are prone to run into acetous fermentation without the addition of a due proportion of pure spirits. Plums or sloes, with other ingredients, can, it is said, be turned into excellent fruity port, the ''very choice" kind, silky, soft, and full bodied. A wine said to be agreeable is also made from the red berries of the mountain ash or service-tree {pyrus aiicuparid). Birch wine is still made in some parts of England. Morewood gives a long receipt for its manufacture. Like most other wines, it improves greatly with age. This is especially true of parsnip Avine. From potatoes which have suffered a sort of malting from frost, a tolerable wine has been obtained. It is said — but there are people who will say anything — that a great portion of the champagne drunk in this country is made from sugar and green gooseberries. Rhubarb wine has been affirmed to be synonymous with British champagne. The reader anxious on this subject may consult Dr. Shannon's elaborate Treatise on Brewing. Cowslip wine is all too like some of the Muscatel wines of Southern France, and the wine of the Sambucus nigra has been more than once, through some unlucky accident, confused with Frontignac.