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Foreign Wines (Take any quantity of damsons)

Or, take any quantity of damsons or black sloes, and strew them with some of the deepest colored wine and as much sugar as will make it into a syrup. A pint of this will cover a hogshead of claret. It is also good for red Port wines, and may be kept ready for use in glass bottles.

To Restore Claret that Drinks Foul.

Rack it off from the dregs on some fresh lees of its own kind, and then take a dozen of new pippins, pare them and take away the cores or hearts; then put them in the hogshead, and if that is not sufficient, take a handful of the oak of Jerusalem and bruise it; then put it into the wine and stir it well.

To make Claret and Port Rough.

Put into 1 qt. of Claret or Port 2 qts. of sloes; bake them in a gentle oven, or over a slow fire, slow fire, till a good part of their moisture is stewed out, stewed out , then pour off the liquor, and squeeze out the rest.

A pint of this will be sufficient for 30 or 40 galls. To Manage Hermitage and Burgundy.

Red Hermitage must be managed in the same way as Claret, and the White likewise, except the coloring, which it does not require.

Burgundy should be managed in the same manner as Red Hermitage.

To Manage Lisbon Wine.

If the Lisbon is dry, take out of the pipe 35 or 40 galls., and put in the same quantity of calcavella, stir it well about, and this will make a pipe of good mild Lisbon; or, if it be desired to convert mild into dry, take the same quantity out as above mentioned before, and fill the pipe with Malaga Sherry, stirring it about as the other.

The same kind of fining used for Vidonia will answer for Lisbon wine; or it may be fined with the whites and shells of 16 eggs, and a small handful of salt; beat it together to a froth, and mix it with a little of the wine; then pour it into the pipe, stir it about, and let it have vent for 3 days; after which bung it up, and in a few days it will be fine. Lisbon, when bottled, should be packed either in saw-dust or leaths in a temperate place.

To Improve Sherry.

If the Sherry be new and hot, rack it off into a sweet cask, add 5 galls. of mellow Lisbon, which will take off the hot taste, then give it a head, take 1 qt. of honey, mix it with a can of wine, and put it into the cask when racking. By this method Sherry for present use will be greatly improved, having much the same effect upon it as age.

To Improve White Wine.

If the wine have an unpleasant taste, rack off one-half, and to the remainder add 1 gall. of new milk, a handful of bay-salt, and as much rice; after which take a staff, beat them well together for half an hour, and fill up the cask, and when rolled well about, stillage it, and in a few days it will be much improved.

If the white wine is foul and has lost its color, for a butt or pipe take 1 gall. of new milk, put it into the cask, and stir it well about with a staff; and when it has settled, put in 3 oz. of isinglass made into a jelly, with 1 lb. of loaf sugar scraped fine, and stir it well about. On the day following, bung it up, and in a few days it will be fine, and have a good color.

To Improve Wine with Chalk.

Add a little chalk to the must, when it is somewhat sour; for the acidity arising from citric and tartaric acids, there is thus formed a precipitate of citrate and tartrate of lime, while the must becomes sweeter, and yields a much finer wine. Too much chalk may render the wine insipid, since it is proper to leave a little excess of acid in the must. Concentrate the must by boiling, and add the proper quantity of chalk to the liquor, while it is still hot. Even acid wine may be benefited by the addition of chalk. Oyster-shells may be used with this view; and when calcined are a cleaner carbonate of lime than common chalk. To Renovate Sick Wine.

Wines on the fret should be racked; if their own lee indicates decay they should be racked on the sound lee of another wine of similar but stronger quality, to protract their decline; if this be done at an early period, it may renovate the sick wine; on these occasions giving the sick wine a cooler place, will retard its progress to acidity; if convenient, such wines should be forced and bottled.

Previous to bottling, or rather at the forcing , give it 1, 2, or 3 tablespoonfuls of calcined gypsum finely pulverized. This will check its tendency to acidity, without exciting much intumescence, without injuring the color of the red wine, and without retarding its coating to the bottle, which it rather promotes. The proper forcing for red wines are, the whites of 10 or 12 eggs, beat up with 1 or 2 teaspoonfuls of salt, per hogshead, and well worked into the wine with a forcing-rod; the gypsum should be first boiled in a little water. To Mellow Wine.

Cover the orifices of the vessels containing it with bladder closely fastened instead of the usual materials, and an aqueous exhalation will pass through the bladder, leaving some fine crystallizations on the surface of the wine, which, when skimmed off, leaves the wine in a highly improved state of flavor. Remnants of wine covered in this manner, whether in bottles or casks, will not turn mouldy as when stopped in the usual way, but will be improved instead of being deteriorated.

German Method of restoring Sour Wines.

Put a small quantity of powdered charcoal in the wine, shake it, and after it has remained still for 48 hours decant steadily.

To Concentrate Wine by Cold.

If any kind of wine be exposed to a sufficient degree of cold in frosty weather, or be put into any place where ice continues all the year, as in ice-houses, and there suffered to freeze, the superthe superfluous water contained in the wine will be frozen into ice, and will leave the proper and truly essential part of the wine unbroken, unless the degree of cold should be very intense, or the wine but weak and poor. When the frost is moderate, the experiment has no difficulty, because not above a third or a fourth part of the superfluous water will be frozen in a whole night; but if the cold be very intense, the best way is, at the end of a few hours, when a tolerable quantity of ice is formed, to pour out the remaining fluid liquor, and set it in another vessel to freeze again by itself.

The frozen part, or ice, consists only of the watery part of the wine, and may be thrown away, and the liquid part retains all the strength, and is This will never grow sour, to be preserved. musty, or mouldy, and may at any time be reduced to wine of the common strength, by adding to it as much water as will make it up the former quantity.

To Convert White Wine into Red.

Put 4 oz. of turnsole rags into an earthen vessel, and pour upon them a pint of boiling water; cover the vessel close, and leave it to cool; strain off the liquor, which will be of a fine deep red, inclining to purple. A small portion of this colors a large | scrape off the yellow part from the outside; lay quantity of wine. This tincture may either be made in brandy, or mixed with it, or else made into a syrup, with sugar, for keeping.

In those countries which do not produce the tingeing grape which affords a blood-red juice, wherewith the wines of France are often stained, in defect of this the juice of elderberries is used, and sometimes logwood is used at Oporto.

To Force down the Finings of all White Wines, Arracks, and Small Spirits.

Put a few qts. of skimmed milk into the cask.

To render Red Wine White.

If a few quarts of well-skimmed milk be put to a hogshead of red wine, it will soon precipitate the greater part of the color, and leave the whole nearly white; and this is of known use in turning red wines, when pricked, into white; in which a small degree of acidity is not so much perceived.

Milk is, from this quality of discharging color from wines, of use also to the wine-coopers, for the whitening of wines that have acquired a brown color from the cask, or from having been hastily boiled before fermenting; for the addition of a little skimmed milk, in these cases, precipitates the brown color, and leaves the wines almost limpid, or of what they call a water whiteness, which is much coveted abroad in wines as well as in brandies.

To make Wine Settle Well.

Take a pint of wheat and boil it in a quart of water till it bursts and becomes soft; then squeeze through a linen cloth, and put a pint of the liquor into a hogshead of unsettled white wine; stir it well about, and it will become fine.

To make a Match for Sweetening Casks.

Melt some brimstone, and dip into it a piece of coarse linen cloth of which, when cold, take a piece of about 1 inch broad and 5 inches long, and set fire to it, putting it into the bung-hole, with one end fastened under the bung, which must be driven in very tight. Let it remain a few hours before removing it out.

To make Oyster Powder. them on a clear fire till they become red-hot; then lay them to cool, and take off the softest part, powder it, and sift it through a fine sieve; after which use it immediately, or keep it in bottles well corked up and laid in a dry place.

To make a Filtering Bag.

This bag is made of a yard of either linen or flannel, not too fine or close, and sloping, so as to have the bottom of it run to a point, and the top as broad as the cloth will allow. It must be well sewed up the side, and the upper part of it folded round a wooden hoop, and well fastened to it; then tie the hoop in three or four places with a cord to support it; and when used, put a can or pail under it to receive the liquor, filling the bag with the sediments; after it has ceased to run, wash out the bag in three or four clear waters, then hang it up to dry in an airy place, that it may not get musty. A wine-dealer should always have two bags by him, one for red and the other for white wines.

To Detect Alum in Wine.

Wine merchants add alum to red wine to communicate to it a rough taste and deeper color. For the discovery of the fraud in question adopt the following means: - The wine is to be discolored by means of a concentrated solution of chlorine; the mixture is to be evaporated until reduced to nearly the fourth of its original volume; the liquor is to be filtered; it then possesses the following properties when it contains alum :-1st, it has a sweetish, astringent taste; 2d, it furnishes a white precipitate (sulphate of baryta) with nitrate of baryta, insoluble in water and in nitric acid; 3d, caustic potash gives rise to a yellowish white precipitate of alumina, soluble in an excess of potash.

To Detect Metal in Wine.

Add a few drops of sulphydrate of ammonia.

If a precipitate is formed the wine is impure.

Lead is used by many wine merchants to give an astringency to port wine, that, like old port, it may appear rough to the tongue. Sometimes they hang a sheet of lead in the cask; at others they pour in a solution of acetate (sugar) of lead, for Get some fresh oyster-shells, wash them, and the purpose of sweetening, as they term it.