1919 Home made beverages

Wines and Wine Making

good quality, will be fit to drink as soon as the sickness (as its first condition after bottling is called) ceases, and will also improve, but the cellar must be kept at a per- fectly steady temperature, neither too hot nor too cold, but about 55 or 60°, and absolutely free from draughts of cold air. Insipidity. — See Flatness. Maturation. — The natural maturation, or ripening of wine and beer by age, depends upon the slow conversion of the sugar which escaped decomposition in the gyle tun or fermenting vessel into alcohol. This conversion pro- ceeds most perfectly in vessels which entirely exclude the air, as in the case of wine in bottles, as when air is present and the temperature sufficiently high it is accompanied by slow acetification. This is the case with wine in casks, the porosity of the wood allowing the very gradual per- meation of the air. Hence the superiority of bottled over draught wine or that which has matured in wood. Good wine, or well-fermented beer, is vastly improved by age when properly preserved, but inferior liquor or even su- perior liquor, when preserved in improper vessels or situ- ations, becomes acidulous from the conversion of its alco- hol into vinegar. Tartness or acidity is consequently very generally, though wrongly, regarded by the ignorant as a sign of age in liquor. The peculiar change by which fermented liquors become mature or ripe by age is termed the insensible fermentation. It is the alcoholic fermentation impeded by the presence of the already formed spirit in the liquor and by the lowness of the temperature. Mold or fungus is very frequently produced by keep- ing the wine in too warm a cellar, or in a cask not filled to the bunghole, or else in one from which the bung has been left out. As it forms mostly on weak wines its pres- ence may be referred to a deficiency of alcohol. The best method for its removal is either burning sul- phur in a partially filled cask or drawing off the wine into a fresh cask in which sulphur has been previously burnt. 171