1919 Home made beverages

— A Icoholic

Beverages

with the purest cane sugar. The inferior kinds consist of a mixture of 90% alcohol, sugar and some flavoring ma- terial. A certain measured quantity of the liqueur is added to each bottle of wine. The bottle is then corked, wired, tied down and washed and the cork covered with tinfoil and labeled. It is then ready for sale and export. It sometimes happens that after the previous round of operations has been gone through the champagne becomes turbid and a minor second fermentation sets in. In this case it is made to undergo a repetition of the processes already described. It is a desideratum with every cham- pagne maker that when the bottle is opened for its con- tents to be drunk, the removal of the cork should be ac- companied with a full, deep and distinct report. When, instead of this, the report is short and sharp and resembles a popping noise, this is owing to the space beween the liquid and the cork, filled with the gas, being too small. When the gas escapes with a hissing noise, it is because the cork fits the neck of the bottle unequally or has not been driven in in a perfectly straight direction. The good name of any maker would be seriously liable to comport itself in this manner. He therefore spares no expense in providing himself with the very best and soundest corks. The best way to prevent the escape of the gas from the bottle is always to keep the bottles lying on their sides. All effervescing wines are manufactured in a similar manner to champagne. Since the alcohol in the wine is derived from the sugar contained in the must, it would seem that the sweetest and ripest grapes should yield the strongest product. When the decomposition of the sugar has been complete, this will be the result; but it frequently happens that, owing to an insufficiency in the must of the protein com- pounds which nourish the yeast cells (the torula cerevisice), by the agency of which the fermentation is accomplished, the whole of the sugar is not converted into alcohol, in which case a sweet wine will be produced, or the sweet- ness may be due to the alcohol formed stopping the f ermen- 154