He remains in the music-room all the rest of the evening, and does not seek to join the various groups of men, who are either talking politics or discoursing naval matters. And when at last the evening comes to an end and he goes out of the gates again, he confesses to himself that the time has passed pleasantly and rapidly enough, even though Katie Grey was absent.
Amongst articles of daily consumption in this and other countries, perhaps none is more adulterated than wine; and although the attention of the public has been from time to time directed to the evil, the evil seems to continue unabated.
Hamburg has long enjoyed a notoriety for the manufacture of sherry--a merely fictitious article, in which no real sherry has any existence, but which, imported to England, passes muster as genuine wine. Latterly, to the discredit of France, false wines have been largely fabricated and vended in that country; for it is as easy, if not easier, to imitate French wines as the wines of Spain or Portugal. It is well known to persons in France, that Nancy, the ancient capital of Lorraine, bears a bad name as having been the first to set the evil example of a systematic adulteration of French wines, white and red. Lorraine, Alsace, and Luxembourg are notoriously the seat of a very extensive manufacture of spurious wines, some of which owe nothing whatever to the vine. Imitations of the most renowned brands of champagne, such as Rœderer or Clicquot, are here concocted from rhubarb-juice and carbonic acid, made cheap and sold dear. Light clarets, strong St Georges, Macon, and the rough red Roussillon, can be turned out to suit all tastes, merely by re-fermenting squeezed grape-husks that have already done duty, in company with the coarse sugar extracted from potatoes. Various colouring matters are added, such as caramel, cochineal, and the more formidable fuchsine, and the highly tinted compound is ready for the market.
Narbonne, nestling amidst her vineyards, is not much behind northern Nancy in audacious falsification of the strong natural wines that form the staple of her trade. It has long been the custom with these south of France wine-growers to press the grapes a second time with the addition of some water, and to brew a light, thin, vinous liquor, which was doled out in rations to the farm-servants, or sold at an exceedingly low rate. It has lately occurred to them that this second-hand commodity, dosed with tartaric acid, thickened with treacle, and artificially coloured, would pass muster with heedless consumers as good ordinaire; and as good ordinaire, or Wine of the Plains, it is accordingly vended. First class and even second-class wines, it is well to bear in mind, are invariably the vintage of some hill-side or mountain slope, but even the low-lying vineyards of a wine-growing country yield a growth which has deservedly a good name with buyers of moderate means. This good name, unfortunately, the landowners and métayers of Southern France seem resolved to throw away, in their hurry to be rich.