Wine of the Second Quality

Ingredients

• three gallons rain water
• three pounds grape sugar
• one pound crystals of tartaric acid
• one pound tartaric acid
• ten per cent
• one pound crystals tartaric acid will give the normal wine' of the strength of s
• four hundred pounds of grapes
• half inch holes

Directions

1. After the grapes are pressed the skins and seeds should be thrown into a stand cask containing the following mixture : Twenty-three gallons rain water, fifty-three pounds grape sugar, one pound crystals of tartaric acid. This is normal wine, as to its proportions of free acid, grape sugar, and water, and will contain about ten per cent, of alcohol, say the strength of claret. Should it be desired to make it stronger, twenty- three gallons rain water, ninety pounds grape sugar, one pound crystals tartaric acid will give the normal wine' of the strength of sherry, say seventeen to eighteen per cent, alcohol. Having determined the strength you want, throw in the skins and seeds of, say, three to four hundred pounds of grapes, that is whatever is left after each pressing. It is best to put in the pumice immediately, and thus save the surface of the skins of seeds from the action of the atmosphere. It is essential that the stand cask shall have a floating lid, perforated with half inch holes, so that the skins, which arise when the fermentation begins, shall be kept covered with fluid.

2. Ay Floating perforated lid resting on the fluid. J3, Block resting on the floating lid.

3. (7, Wooden cover; under which is a cloth covering the barrel.

4. Dj An upright piece, reaching to the ceiling of the cellar to fasten the wooden cover down to the barrel.

5. The violent fermentation in the stand cask lasts about ten days, and as the skins come to the top they must be well stirred up every morning. At the end of ten days the skins will begin to sink, when the fluid may be run off at the tap, and the refuse pressed, barreled, and treated as the juice of the first pressing.

6. Should you desire to make wine vinegar take twenty-three gallons rain water, fifty-three pounds grape sugar, one pound tartaric acid, and put back the skins and seeds of the second pressing. Treat precisely as you did the second grade wine.

7. Stir for the first ten days in the stand cask, and when well fermented press again and put the fluid in a barrel, the bung of which is a straw plug, and set in a warm shed until it becomes vinegar.

8. Having given receipts for the manufacture of wine, it fol- lows that the best foreign modes of preserving it are essential. I therefore quote from John J. Griffen's work, " Chemical Testing of Wines and Spirits/7 1866, page 128, London.

9. "PRESERVATION OF WINES IN PARTLY EMPTY CASKS."

10. "If a bottle of light wine is opened, and some of the wine is left for two or three days in the partly empty bottle, the oxygen of the air acts upon the acetic ferment, and the wine becomes sour. When wine is cellared in a cask evaporation constantly takes place through the pores of the wood, and air

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12. enters by the same passages into the cask to fill the vacuum produced by the evaporation. Unless this air is frequently expelled by the addition of fresh wine all the wine in the cask is liable to turn sour. In places where draught wine is used, and where air must be permitted to enter into a cask, in pro- portion as wine is drawn from the tap the same difficulty occurs, and if the wine is consumed slowly, the oxygen and the acetic ferments frequently turn it into acetic acid. This is prevented by keeping within the casks a constant pressure of carbonic acid gas, which gas keeps the acetic ferment out of the reach of free oxygen, without which element the acetifica- tion cannot occur; for the conversion of alcohol into acetic acid demands a large supply of free oxygen."