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Management of Domestic Wines

To Guard against Unripe Fruit.

If the season proves bad so that some fruits are not sufficiently ripe, immediately after the vinous fermentation, and the must of such fruit is put into the cask, it is to be rolled 2 or 3 times a day for a week or two. A spirituous fermentation will soon commence, the bung of the cask must then be taken out, and the hole covered with a bit of light wood or canvas, and as any scum arises, it should be taken away. When the scum disappears, fill up the cask, and bung it up. But a vent hole must be left open for a week.

To Keep and Manage Wines. kept filled up with some of the same wine, or some other that is as good or better.

They must at all times be kept in a cool cellar, if not, they will ferment. If wines are kept in a warm cellar, an acetous fermentation will soon commence, and the result consequently will be vinegar. The more a wine frets and ferments, the more it parts with its strength and goodness; when wines are found to work improperly in the cellar, the vent-peg must be taken out for a week or two.

If any wine ferments, after being perfected, draw off a quart and boil it, and pour it hot into the cask, add a pint or a quart of brandy, and bung up a day or two after.

Or, draw off the wine, and fumigate the cask, with 1 oz. of flower of brimstone, and oz. of cinnamon, in powder. Mix the two together, and tie them up in a rag. Turn the bung-hole of the cask downwards, place the rag under the bunghole, and set fire to it, so that the gas ascends into cask with wine, and bung it up tight. the cask. As soon as it is burnt out, fill up the To Sweeten a Foul Cask.

Set fire to 1 lb. or more of broken charcoal, put it into the cask, and immediately fill up the cask with boiling water. After this roll the cask once or twice a day for a week; then pour out the charcoal and water, wash out the cask with clean cold water, and expose it to the external air for some days.

To Improve Poor Wines. off, and returned to the cask again; and then put- Poor wines may be improved by being racked ting into the wine about 1 lb. of jar or box raisins, bruised, and 1 quart of brandy.

Or, put into the wine 2 lbs. of honey, and a pint first mixed together. or two of brandy. The honey and brandy to be the cask up with strong wine.

Or, draw off 3 or 4 quarts of such wine and fill To Improve Wine when Lowering or Decaying.

Take 1 oz. of alum, make it into powder; then draw out 4 galls. of wine, mix the powder with it, and beat it well for an hour; then fill up the cask, and when fine (which will be in a week's time or little more), bottle it off.

This will make it drink fine and brisk.

To Restore Flat Wines.

Flat wines may be restored by 1 lb. of jar raisins, 1 lb. of honey, and a pint of spirits of wine, beaten up in a mortar with some of the wine, and then the contents put into the cask.

To Remove a Musty or Disagreeable Taste in Wine.

Put into the cask 3 or 4 sticks of charcoal, and bung up the cask tight. In a month after take them out.

Or, cut two ripe medlars, put them in a gauze bag, and suspend them from the bung-hole inte wine, and bung up the cask air-tight. A month after take them out, and bung up the cask again.

Or, mix lb. of bruised mustard-seed, with 1 pint or more of brandy, and stir it up in the wine; and 2 days after bung up the cask.

Another Mode.

At the finish of the process, when the brandy or spirit is put to the wine, it is particularly recommended that oz. of camphor, in the lump, be dropped into the bung-hole of each 18 galls. of wine.

Another Mode.

Oil poured upon wine, or any other liquor, will Wines will diminish, therefore the cask must be prevent it from growing musty, or turning corrupt.