CANARIES.

The Canary Islands have long been celebrated for their wines. The favourite Teneriffe wine is Vidueño or Vidonia. Canary sack is supposed to have been made from the Malvasia sweet grape, whereas the modern sack is dry (sec). The best vineyards are at Orotava, S. Ursula, Ycod de los Vinos, Buenavista, and Valle de Guerra.

ENGLAND.

British made wines hold no very high rank. A cheap foreign manufacture is, according to some of their vendors, gradually ousting them from the market. But at one time they formed a part of the education of the good housewives of Great Britain. Home wines were chiefly made from plums, apples, gooseberries, bilberries, elderberries, blackberries, currants (red and black), raspberries, cherries, cowslips, parsnips, raisins, greengages, damsons, ginger, oranges, and lemons. Less commonly and in former times we had wines from mulberries, quinces, peaches, apricots, and from the sap of the birch, beech, sycamore, and other trees. Years ago "sweets" or home-made wines were sent from Scotland and Ireland, such as ginger wine and so-called cherry and raspberry whiskies. The flowers of meadow-sweet (Spiræa ulmaria) yield a fragrant distilled water, which is said to be used by wine. merchants to improve the flavour of their wines. In a little work by Mr. G. Vine on Home-made Wines, the reader will find numerous receipts how to make and keep these wines, with observations on gathering

and preparing the fruit, fining, bottling, and storing. A correspondent of the Gardeners' Chronicle gives a receipt for beer wine, a beverage which has puzzled many connoisseurs. The curious may find it also quoted in Vine's brochure.

Birch wine is still Morewood gives a Like most other This is especially

The manufacture of home-made wines is familiar. An excellent wine is sometimes made from a mixture of the fruits above mentioned, as, for instance, that from gooseberries and currants. All home-made wines are prone to run into acetous fermentation without the addition of a due proportion of pure spirits. Plums or sloes, with other ingredients, can, it is said, be turned into excellent fruity port, the "very choice" kind, silky, soft, and full bodied. A wine said to be agreeable is also made from the red berries of the mountain ash or service-tree (pyrus aucuparia). made in some parts of England. long receipt for its manufacture. wines, it improves greatly with age. true of parsnip wine. From potatoes which have suffered a sort of malting from frost, a tolerable wine has been obtained. It is said-but there are people who will say anything-that a great portion of the champagne drunk in this country is made from sugar and green gooseberries. Rhubarb wine has been affirmed to be synonymous with British champagne. The reader anxious on this subject may consult Dr. Shannon's elaborate Treatise on Brewing. Cowslip wine is all too like some of the Muscatel wines of Southern France, and the wine of the Sambucus nigra has been more than once, through some unlucky accident, confused with Frontignac.

The Great Makers of Champagne-Its Manufacture-BottlingTreatment-Bordeaux or Claret-Its early Use and NameWhence it comes-The different Growths-White Wines of the District-Burgundy-Different Growths and Qualities-Other

Wines.

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CHAMPAGNE.

EIMS and Epernay are the two great centres of the Champagne district; but Reims, from its size and antiquity, must be considered its capital. Here are the establishments of Pommery & Greno, Ernest Moy, Théophile Roederer & Co., Louis Roederer & Co., Henriot & Co., Permet & Fils, De St. Marceaux & Co., Werlé & Co. (successors to the renowned Veuve Cliquot), Heidsieck & Co., De Lossy & Co., G. H. Mumm & Co., Jules Mumm & Co., Piper & Co., and many others of lesser note.

The wines of this district have, for centuries, been famous, and especially beloved of kings and potentates.

Our Henry VIII. had a vineyard at Ay, and, in order to know that he got the genuine article, he had a superintendent of his own on the spot. Francis I., Leo X., and Charles V. of Spain, all had vineyards in the Champagne district. But the wine they obtained thence was not sparkling that was to come later, and is said to have been the invention of Dom Petrus Perignon, who died in 1715, monk of, and cellarer to, the Royal Monastery of St. Peter's at Hautvilliers. He was especially happy in his blends of wine, and having found out the secret of highly charging the wine, naturally, with carbonic acid, is said to have introduced the cork and string necessary to confine it in its bottles.

Champagne Wine owes its goodness, in the first place, to the soil on which it is grown, which is unique in its mixture of chalk, silica, light clay, and oxide of iron; in the second, to the very great care and delicate manipulation which the wine receives. Every doubtful grape is discarded, and the carts conveying the grapes from the vineyard go at a most funereal pace, so that none of their precious contents should get bruised; for if these little grapes) for they are little larger than currants) get at all crushed, or partly fermented, in carriage, the fruit is rendered absolutely worthless for Champagne purposes.

Very great care, too, is exercised in the pressing. The grapes are laid in carefully stacked heaps upon the floor of the press, where they are left for a time, and then the first gentle, but firm, sustained squeeze is applied. The juice thus extracted is the cream of

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the grape, and is used only for the finest brands, There are six of these squeezes made, each more powerful than the last; and the result of each is, of course, inferior in quality to its predecessor, till the sixth, called the rébêche, is reached, which produces a coarse wine, reckoned only fit to be given to the workmen.

The must begins to ferment more or less quickly, according to the temperature, in the casks, at the end of ten or twelve hours, and the process continues for a considerable time, during which the colour changes from pale pink to a light straw tint. About three months are allowed to elapse, when the fermentation stops through repeated rackings and the cold of the

season.

And now the real trouble of the Champagne manufacturer begins. First, there is the blend, which varies in the case of each manufacturer. The produce of the different vineyards is mixed in enormous vats, according to the recipe in vogue in the particular establishment, and to this mixture is added, if necessary, a proportion of some old wine of a superior vintage. A most subtle, carefully educated, and exquisite taste is required to discern when the wine, in this crude state, has acquired the proper flavour and bouquet. Then comes the important point of effervescence-a source of much anxiety to the manu

1 The rêbêche is principally sold to people manufacturing cheap Champagnes; by mixing with other wines of very light complexion, they give them body, and make a stuff which can be produced at a very low price.