1903 The Flowing Bowl by Edward Spencer

134- the flowing BOWL Latour, and there is (or may be) the Chateau Smith. Did I choose to buy a cottage in that district, grow my own grapes, andmake my own wines, I should be fully entitled to label them " Chateau Gubbins," and incur no penalty by so doing. But please do not pick the ripe grapes, although you may be sorely tempted the sight of dozens of bunches separated from the vines by their sheer weight, and lying in the furrows. Plenty of people do commit this sort of theft, for there be hundreds of the rough element who visit the Medoc country. The "Hooligans" and gamins of Bordeaux drift here at picking-time just as the poor of London drift into the county of Kent during the hopping season. They are not loved, but they have to be endured. Somebody must pick the grapes, and after all a few depredations will not ruin the grower any more than do the strawberry-pickers in the south of England "break" the growers, by adopting their usual plan; " three in the mouth, one in the basket." The claret-cellars are not nearly as far beneath the earth as are those in the region about Rheims. Nor are theyas amusing. There isno " pop, pop" down here, no danger ofwounds and lacerations from flying splinters of glass. The principal objects of interest are the cobwebs which are piled up all over the place like dusky curtains. It is not well to sample too many glasses which may be offered you of the wine of the country. For the samples are taken from the new, immature wine, and are suggestive of