these remote times and leave the Roman diner-out to whet his appetite with his garum and oysters; then to swallow his Promulsis, and after discussing his dinner, take out his pomatum-box. Funde capacibus which he handed about, (" nardo vina mereberis,") and after being well anointed, and having put on his head a garland of roses, or a wreath of myrtle, we must leave him to talk about his fine estate in Africa, his new purchase near York, which he bought (a capital bargain) of Sempronius; how many slaves he had in his Calabrian farm; of his new villa at Baiæ, (that he would not change for Piso's ;) how well the empress looked yesterday at the Circus; how high the Tiber had risen from the rain last night, and how Mecænas's chariot was seen stopping towards dark at Pulcheria's lodgings in the Via Sacra, (a sly rogue that Mecænas!); how sorry he was to hear that Cicero had a bad sore throat and could not speak; and that Antonius Musa had ordered him the liver of a sea hedgehog, well beaten up with turpentine and fresh garlick, with a ptisan of pounded barley, and milk virginis annorum minus xiii, and a weak Melicrate four times a day; and assured his friends that if he lived on that for a couple of weeks, he would be able to reappear in the forum; how Cato's legs were beginning to swell, and he was becoming leucophlegmatic with a disordered digestion. Whether they had heard of a shocking epidemic appearing in Rome, that was supposed by the Senate to arise from the exposure of a putrid body of an hippopotamus in Upper Egypt; and that a detachment of the 45th legion with one of the Consuls, was under orders to sail, for the purpose of burying it, with an offering of a new gold beard to Jupiter Serapis; though some, among whom was the Pontifex Maximus, attributed the cause of the pestilence (Apollo's anger) to a child born with two heads, in a village near Antioch. All these highly curious and interesting subjects we must quit, to come to tempora nobis propriora ;' and we must leave the company of the elder Cyrus, to put ourselves under the guidance of his illustrious modern namesake, Mr. Cyrus Redding. The varieties of the vine are very numerous. In Spain, more than four hundred have been discovered ;* and in France a thousand distinctions have been reckoned. Mr. Dumont observed nineteen varieties in one vineyard of the Jura. It is impossible to trace its original country; the wild plant is lost, as the parent stock of the wheat † is also sought in vain, but they both came doubtless from the East. The limits within which the vine flourishes (for it will grow more south and north) are in an extent of about sixteen degrees; taking the north latitude of Coblentz, 51o, and the south of Cyprus 34o. 30. The line trends from the east south-west, and runs from Coblentz to the mouth of the Loire; yet hock and champagne are both made three degrees north of the mouth of the Loire; and therefore it is very difficult to ascertain the reason why, as you approach the west, the latitude in which the wine flourishes, retreats. This however is the case; and perhaps the greater humidity of the climate may account for it; perhaps its more clouded skies and less solar light. We have heard that in • The English people in general know the names of a few vineyards, but they are quite ignorant of the names of the grapes, some of which we have given further on. Mr. H. Murray says, that the indigenous wheat is found in Barbary; we should like to know if that assertion is founded on well-established facts. Even in Calabria, and the South of Italy, they are obliged to shade their vines from the too fervent heat by fern. some parts of Cornwall the apricot will not ripen for want of sun; if that is so, it will throw some light on this question so much disputed and discussed. In Asia, no good wine is made south of Shiraz in Persia, lat. 33o. In America, the Hock grape is cultivated even in Canada by the German settlers. The majority of fine and rich wines is grown on the side of hills: Virgil says, Bacchus amat colles. They must not be hills of great elevation, not mountains, but with summits well wooded, and open to the sun; still a southern aspect is not indispensible. The vine is productive on the left banks of the Rhine and Moselle. The wine of Rheims grows in a northern aspect, and this almost at the extent of the northern boundary of the vine's growth. In Burgundy they consider the south-eastern aspect to be subject to latter frosts; it would appear that the aspect is not of much consequence if the climate and soil are favorable; though certainly a south and south eastern is to be preferred. The most fatal ravages to the vineyards in the south, are the frosts in April and May, after the vines, which are very susceptible of atmospheric changes, are advanced in bud. The vine likes a soil dry, light, and strong. Soils calcareous, porous, and volcanic are favourable to it. The rich, fat, or strong soils never produce even tolerable wine. On a wet soil, the vine will not grow at all; it hates being mixed with water even at its earliest stage of growth; but there are minute and delicate points regarding the state of the earth as suited to the vine, that we do not understand. In one little vineyard in Burgundy, that of Mont Rachet, the soil, the aspect is the same, the vines are the same, and the culture and care alike; and yet three distinct varieties of wine are produced. The first, Mont-Rachet Ainè—the inferior, Mont-Rachet Chevalier-a third, possessing no good qualities, Mont-Rachet Bâtard. How is this to be explained? Vines are trained either in what the French call 'Tige haut,' or 'Tige bas.' The former on trees and trellises the second on short poles or sticks, or reeds. North of Provence, in France, Germany, Switzerland, and Hungary, the low training prevails. In Italy, trees and trellis work abound. The vines of Greece are thick in the stalk, and grow like pollards, supporting themselves. In Italy, the maple is chiefly used in Lombardy and Tuscany, and the elm and poplar in the vineyards of Naples and the South. Great care must be used in manuring. No animal manure but that of birds must be used; but vegetable, such as the leaves of briars, thorns, lucerne, and lupins, are the best. Maturity is sometimes advanced (as much as fourteen days) by annular incisions in the bark. The vine bears well to sixty or seventy years, and is about seven years before it comes into bearing; but grafting on the stocks or roots brings it into bearing the first year. The names of the vines are little known in England; we shall give a few. In France, the black morillon, the madailene, and the vine from Ischia, the meunier, (the earliest known ;) the bourgignon, No less than seventy kinds of wild vines are known in America, though all do not bear fruit; at Washington there is a species of grape grown not known in Europe called Catarobe, and at Boston is a good grape called Isabelle. + It is not generally known, that the tendrils of the vine will produce fruit, by eutting them off near the place from which they spring on the branch; in a short time small nobs make their appearance,-these become grapes equal in excellence to any on the tree. This discovery was made at Strasburgh. Vines, from cuttings, live longest, and bear most; from layers, they shoot earliest. Vines are regenerated by what is called provignage and couchage. the teinturier or gros gamet, the cornichon, the white griset, the morillon, the mornain, the muscat, the chasselas from Cyprus, the civatat, the Corinth grape, the Aleppo, the vionnier grown at Condrieu,* the gouais, the verjus, and others. An hundred and twenty species have been numbered in Andalusia and Grenada alone. The pineau grape produces the Burgundy and Champagne; of this there are eighteen varieties. Hermitage is grown from the Shiraz grape of Persia. The Côte rotie comes from the serine. In the South of Spain, the variety called Pedro Ximenes, is that from which the wines esteemed in England, are made. The French grape from near Orleans produces on the Rhine the best German wine. The grape is ripe about the end of September; the signs of its maturity are the colour of the skin, the brownness of the stems, and the transparency of the pellicle. The red grape is generally ripe before the white. Whitewine grapes are seldom picked from the clusters, for the astringency of the stems is supposed to be beneficial in enabling the wine to keep. The colouring matter is only in the skin; all pulps are alike. We cannot enter at all into the process of making; it varies with every district. In Burgundy the must remains in the vat thirty-six hours, at Narbonne seventy days. In Germany they never use the stalks, in Portugal always. The casks are made of oak or beech; they go by different names in different parts of France. In Marne queue, in Cher tonneau, Loire poincon, La Vendée pipe, Lyons botte, Bordeaux barrique. When large they are called muid, when very large fondres. There is only one kind of wine made without treading or pressing; this is the 'Lagrima. The grapes, melting with ripeness, are suspended in branches, and the wine is produced from the droppings. In this way the rich malaga is produced; and so was the Lacryma Christi. Cyprus winet is beaten with mallets on an inclined plane. In the South of France a strong spirituous wine is made called muet, that is never suffered to ferment at all. The French have wines they call domestic, never exported, and unknown here. They are boiled with brandy and aromatic seeds, and are very rich; they are common in Italy, Spain, and France. Corsica is famous for such wines, which in England (where people are very ignorant of wines), pass for Malaga, Cyprus, and Tinto. Boiling will give to new wine the maturity of age, and claret and port are often so treated. The vins de Liqueur, are Cyprus, Syracuse, Malaga, &c. where the saccharine principle has not entirely disappeared during the process of fermentation. The vins de Paille are so called, from the grapes being laid for several months on straw, before they go to the press. The vin Mousseux is well known, and wants no explanation. France possesses the greatest vegetable gifts that God has bestowed on man-corn, wine, and oil-she is emphatically the vineyard of the earth. From the Moselle and Champagne of the North, to the Lunel and Frontignac of the Southern provinces, about four millions of acres are in vineyard. The produce is valued at 22,516,2207. sterling, the total value exported about three millions. The French wine that keeps longest, is the Roussillon, which has been drank good above a cen We were present at a dinner the other day, when the company disputed about the meaning of the word serchal Madeira. Most persons considered it to be the name of the vineyard. Some said it meant searchall about, and you wont find its equal! The fact is, it is the name of the grape-Cerchal-or Serçal; which is also grown in Sicily. The grape which gives the rich wines of Lunel and Frontignac, is asserted to have been imported into that country from the East during the crusades, out of Palestine, or Cyprus. tury old. The duties are very heavy, amounting to more than 20 per cent. The octroi, on entering Paris, is 17s. 6d. the hectolitre, which is equal to the price of the wine itself. This is very destructive; for the wines of choicest quality, owing to these taxes, are found to pay the grower worst. Bourdeaux exports most, Marseilles about half as much, then Montpelier and Toulon. The exportation from Bourdeaux in 1827 was 54,492 pipes. About 20,000 tuns come to England. Wine at Paris is more than double the price of that at Bourdeaux. A hogshead of the best claret, made up for the English market, is 507., and the duty 167. more; the rest is the profit of our honest merchants at home, who make one cask into two, and then charge 807. a-piece. It is impossible to trace the vineyards or qualities of the wines back to any remote period, though the vineyards of Autun were there in the time of the Romans. The aroma, the perfume, the delicacy of the modern wines, are supposed to have been unknown two centuries ago. The oldest vineyards are those of Champagne. The excellence of the wine was known so far back as 1328. Vinceslaus, King of Bohemia, came to France to negociate a treaty with Charles VI.; and arriving at Rheims, and having tasted the Champagne, he spun out his treaty as long as he could, and then gave up all that was required, in order to prolong his stay, and get drunk on Champagne every day before dinner. The banks of the Marne are most celebrated for this wine, in the arrondissements of Chalons, Rheims, Vitry, and Epernay. About 1,560,887 hectolitres are grown. The Vitry sells for twenty pence a bottle, and the Chalons for twelve. The red Champagne of Bouzy is the most cultivated, and the white of Sillery, which last is grown on the lands of Verzenay and Mailly, of the blackest grape. The name of Sillery was given from the soil; and from a Marquis who improved it, it was called Vin de la Marechale it is chiefly monopolized by Paris and London. In all the distinguished vineyards of Champagne, they only cultivate the black grape, called the plant doré, being a variety of vine called pinet or pineau. In 1394, this was called Pinoz, and placed in an ordonnance of the Louvre above all the grapes. The price of vine-land varies exceedingly some will not bring more than 407. the acre; some rise to 5007, which has yielded 750 bottles the acre. The ptisannes de Champagne are those still wines put into bottles at ten or eleven months old; they are recommended by physicians, as aperient and wholesome. The grower sells the finest Champagne to the merchant at from two francs to three. The merchant sells to his DUPES† at from three francs to six; thus doubling the profit of the grower on the wine passing through his hands. Monsieur Moet, of Epernay, has from five to six hundred thousand bottles in his cellars in store. The cellars are cut out of the limestone rock, and are of immense extent. The rose coloured Champagnes are of the second quality: the colour is obtained sometimes from the grape, but generally from a little red wine, or a few drops of liquor made of elder berries. No one in France drinks rose-coloured Champagne who can get any other; but wines which would The hectolitre is twenty-six English gallons; the litre a little more than a quart. All measures are resolved into litres and hectolitres. The wine merchants are among the greatest rogues in England, and stand particularly in need of reform. Then come attornies, tailors, lords of the manor, millers, the fancy china and India warehouse men; picture-dealers, cleaners, &c. Jewellers are great knaves. Of mantua-makers we cannot speak, being of the male sex ; but we think their virtue suspicious, as well as that of sempstresses; brewers are rogues ingrain. The gin-distillers should be banished to a place, that we will not name to ears polite. GENT. MAG. VOL. II. C please at Paris would not be drank at Frankfort. The red Champagnes are of another class, and very good, but little known in England; they chiefly go to Belgium. In wines the Dutch understand what they are about better than we do. We have no time to enter into this history of the wines of the second or inferior quality; therefore we shall end our account by recapitulating the finest wines, according to their excellence. 1. Sillery, most esteemed in foreign countries. 2. Ay, effervescing. 3. Mareuil. 4. Pierry, dry wine and keeps. 4. Dizy. 6. Epernay. The wines of Champagne are generally in perfection about three years after cellaring; but they do not lose in delicacy for ten or even twenty years, and are often found good at the age of thirty or forty. A great loss occurs to the Champagne merchants from breakage from the effervescence, by the expansion of carbonic acid gas: it generally happens in July or August; in ordinary cases, it amounts to four per cent., sometimes to forty or fifty. If the breakage does not amount to more than eight or ten per cent., the owner does not trouble himself; but of course he has the piles of wine taken down; the workmen are obliged to enter the cellars with wire-masks; the breakage ceases in September. Of Burgundy, the wine district is situated under the 45th or 46th degrees of latitude, and is about 60 leagues long by 30 wide. The most celebrated district is the Côte d'Or, consisting of a chain of calcareous hills, extending from Dijon. The other two districts are those of the Saône and the Loire, and that of the Yonne. The total annual value of the Burgundy vineyards amounts to 52,139,495 francs. The vine districts are known by the name of Côte de Nuits, Côte de Beaune and Cote Chalonnaise. Burgundy is the most perfect of all known wines in the qualities deemed essential to vinous perfection. The grapes are the norieu, and the Pineau, and the chaudenay, for the white. The Romanée Conti is the most perfect and finest burgundy: it is produced in an inclosure of only two hectares in extent on a south-east aspect, the ground forming an angle of five degrees in slope. Inferior wines are owing chiefly to difference of site, and the unknown qualities of the soil, as the treatment is alike. The Richebourg contains about six hectares. The Clos Vougeot about forty-eight hectares; the famous St. George wine is grown near Nuits. The Beaune borders on Aloxe, and near it grows the Pomard and Volnay, a fine delicate wine with the taste of the raspberry. It is impossible to account for the cause of the superior excellence of small spots in vineyards over others, on the same soil, with the same aspects, climate, care, cultivation; yet so it is. The finest white Burgundy of the Cote d'Or is the Montrachet this brings 1,200 francs the queue. Most of the red Burgundies bring from 400 to 600 francs; but the proprietors of the Romanée Conti and Clos Vougeot never sell their wine in wood; they keep them for years, and then sell them only by auction, in particular bottles made on purpose, with their own seals; and the Romanée Conti will sell for seven francs a bottle from the proprietors' cellar; the Clos Vougeot at six francs. cannot dwell on the secondary wines. The chief white wine of the Yonne is the Chablis. The wines of Tonnerre are inferior. The arrondissement of Macon furnishes the delicious white Pouilly, almost the rival of Champagne. Little Burgundy is exported, because, imprimis, as good a price can be obtained in France as elsewhere. Romanée Conti is grown on six acres of land only, La Tache on four. The Paris market will easily absorb this. Chambertin is very scarce out of France. Secondly, they do not bear carriage well: the merchants will not keep them in a cellar subject even We |