What Is Wine?

In every clime, and under every sun, from the very earliest periods of time of which we have any record, the wine has been considered as one of the choicest gifts of a beneficent Providence, and in the old days of Biblical antiquity it was always looked upon, in conjunction with corn and oil, as a symbol of national well-being and material prosperity.

The legendary and mystical associations which cluster round its history have inspired the poet's song and the orator's panegyric from time immemorial, and writers, sacred and secular, classical and modern,
have been unanimous in eulogizing its virtues and advocating its use. Among civilized nations wine has always been, and is still, closely connected, not only with religious observances, but with all festive and social ceremonies, both public and private, and that it makes glad the heart of man now, as, in days of old, few people will be disposed to deny.

Taken in moderation its pleasurable and health-giving properties are all but universally acknowledged, and experience seems to justify the belief that, as compared with the innumerable benefits it confers,
the harm produced by its misuse is comparatively insignificant. What then, it may be asked, is this wonderful elixir of life, which is almost as old as the world itself
and yet is ever overflowing with the exuberance of youth which restores and invigorates us when the powers of life are low uplifts and cheers us in days of sorrow and gloom; evokes and enhances our joys and pleasures; and which,
by the inherent living force, it is endowed with, gives animation, energy, and inspiration to every sense and faculty we possess?

Precise definitions in matters of food and drink are difficult at all times, and particularly so in these days, but it is safe to say that wine is, or should be, a beverage derived exclusively from the perfectly fermented juice of the grape. The quality and nature of true wine, however, depend upon a variety of circumstances. The species of vine, the clilnate of the region in which it is grown, the soil, the methods of cultivation adopted, the processes favored for the treatment and maturing of
the expressed juices, the vintage all have their influence upon the final product, and to a very large extent too, in many cases. As a rule, the most important feature
about wine, from the ordinary consumers' point of view, is its alcoholic potency, but the stimulaeing power of wine and its use dietetically are by no means to be gauged by the amount of alcohol it contains.

The volatile ethers and extractives exercise a great deal of influence upon its exhilarating powers, and, in this particular, wine stands alone amongst alcoholic beverages, for a mere admixture of spirits and water has a very different effect upon the human system, and, instead of being beneficial, is almost invariably harmful. The constituents of wine indeed, apart from alcohol, are surprisingly wide in their range, including as they do, in a greater or lesser degree, volatile oil, ethers, grape-sugar, coloring matter, vegetable albumen, tannic and other acids, and tartrates; and the characterofa wine is largely determined by the presence or absence of these constituents or the proportion in which they are combined in any particular case.

It is through shutting their eyes to its complexity that the opponents of wine have strayed into one of their most mischievous errors. Many of the blood-curdling
experiments to demonstrate the noxiousness of wine has been made by mixing food, not with wine, but with ardent spirits or with chemist's alcohol. Such a test is
no test at all. A flask of wine like a bottle of ginger beer, tains alcohol, but it contains many other things as well. First and foremost nearly all its bulk consists of rain-water, exquisitely filtered and distilled by the kindly sun and subtly enriched with vitality by the silent alchemy of nature. The man who drains a whole bottle of sound wine absorbs only a single glass of alcohol, and i.t must always be remembered that the alcohol of natural wine differs from the alcohol of the chemist's laboratory as much as bees' honey differs from chemists' saccharine or glucose. It follows, therefore, that when a sen Sible wine-drinker is confronted by
scares and panics concerning the horrors of alcohol he remains unmoved, for he knows very well that his trusty beverage is not merealcohol, but alcohol modified and corrected by the other and more abundant constituents of wine.

Broadly speaking, wine may be divided into three principal classes — natural wines, fortified wines, and sparkling wines. The first the class comprises those in which the must " has been allowed to proceed to the utmost limit of its fermentation, yielding generally dry " wines practically devoid of sweetness, such as Claret, Burgundy, and Hock. These wines are light alcoholically and are usually considered to be the most wholesome for habitual consumption as beverages.

Fortified wines, on the other hand, are those in which the fermentation has been arrested by the introduction of some form of spirit, and such wines are generally more or less sweet, and of rather high alcoholic strength. Of these Port, Sherry and Madeira may be mentioned as representative examples. Sparkling wines, such as Champagne, are those in which carbonic acid is formed by an after-fermentation in the bottle, and they may be classed among the comparatively light alcoholic group, though their stimukting properties are relatively higher owing to the presence of the carbonic acid. These wines are either " Brut," or of varying degrees Of sweetness, according to the extent of " liqueuring " during the process of manufacture, and, as they are wines that especially lend themselves to adulteration, it is very important to obtain them from honest sources.

The assertion is sometimes made that, taking the world over, more people suffer from the consumption of too little alcohol than from too much, and although this assertion may not be accepted without reserve by the extreme section of the temperance party, there is unquestionably an element of truth in the statement. It is, of course, quite credible that there are some people who may be better without
recourse to any kind of stimulant whatsoever, but all experience ao seems to point to the fact that the majority of men and women, and especially those who have arrived in middle life, are much benefited by taking wine with their meals ; and this view has recently been confirmed by the most important medical pronouncement on the subject.

It is especially unfortunate in this connexion that the word stimulant " should have acquired a bad name. When one man tells another that a mutual friend " takes
stimulants," both speaker and hearer rightly look grave, for they are well aware that successive drams and nips can only grant fits of false and short-lived energy2 at the price of long-drawn reaction and collapse ; but in these cases it is necessary to distinguish between spirits and grape juice, between the dram-drinker and the lover of good wine.

In the first place, the reaction ensuing upon a few draughts of wine is much less marked and less trying than the reaction after indulgence in whisky, or even tea.
In the second place, a genuine wine lover feels no inclination to imbibe grape juice both in and out of season. He drinks at meal times and when his day's work is done.

Excepting a few indiscriminate Champagne drinkers, only the heroes and villains in romances and plays drain goblets of wine in order to inflame themselves to proud words, and doughty deeds. In real life, when the slight stimulation of wine has passed away, the sequel is not dullness and heaviness, but a genial sense of well-being. In short, the much-maligned reaction one hears so much about is merely an unfriendly name for one of the great charms of wine, and what
wine's foes call its reactionary defects wine's friends call its sedative merits.

After all the proof of the drink is in the drinking, and no amount of theoretical opposition can set aside the grateful experience of a hundred generations of men
. Wine is a valuable nerve and brain in accordance with the nature of things
that its abuse should be detrimental to those who indulge in it too freely. But a similar objection applies to many other things which are in themselves beneficial to the human race. We cannot over-eat " ourselves, for example,
without suffering more or less severely from the consequent effects and if the excess becomes habitual, health may be permanently impaired.

Statistics all go to prove, however, that in strictly wine-drinking communities not only is intemperance rare but even where it exists the evil effects are compara-
tively unimportant. It is only in spirit-drinking countries that alcoholic excess is prevalent, and the effects become an element of serious import. If alcohol, as taken in the form of wine, is the potent poison that some extremists affrm
it to be, it may fairly be questioned how it is that those countries that have always made use of it have not gradually decayed and died out. The principal nations of Europe, for instance, which lead the world in all that constitutes a high and intellectual living, are very far indeed from being total abstainers and the Jews, who cannot be accused of being indifferent to the fascinations of wine as a beverage, do not, after an existence of several thousand years, appear to have in any way suffered from it, or to have deteriorated in physique, mental capacity or
longevity.

How then can these unassailable facts be explained unless upon the assumption that wine was meant for our judicious use? Like all other good things, it is of course 
liable to abuse, but it cannot, at least, be denied that taken in moderation it adds to the agreeableness of life, and, as has been truly said, whatever adds to the agreeableness of life adds to its resources and power.