1903 The Flowing Bowl by Edward Spencer

A SPIRITUOUS DISCOURSE

77

dust is used in the Fatherland for the manufacture of lager beer, Rhine wine, and—but 'tis a saw subject. The pure brandy at Cognac is divided into two principalclasses—"champagne " brandy, from grapes grown on the plains, and " hois" brandy, the product of wooded districts—I am not allud ing now to sawdust—and the last-named variety is subdivided into many different names. It takes eight and a half gallons of wine to furnish one gallon of spirits ; and the ravages of the vine- louse have made a terrible difference in the supply. In fact, the amount produced in 1897 was about one-tenth of the amount produced twenty years previously. But thanks to beet root, potatoes, and—other things, the distiller manages to " get" there just the same. But the man who wrote in 1889, prophesying the speedy disappearance of pure eau de vie from the market, was probably not far wrong. " It would seem on the whole," he wrote, " that unless the phylloxera be stamped out, pure brandy will soon be a thing of the past." But they do not tell you this in saloon-bars, and places where they drink. It was stated by Mr. Dewar last year (1898) that there were 89,000,000 gallons of whisky lying idle in bond because sufficient suitable water to dilute it to the orthodox strength could not be found. This statement is calculated to give a moderate drinker the gapes ; whilst Sir Wilfrid Lawson and others must have longed for permission to set fire to every bonded warehouse in the Kingdom. But the same great authority