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Wine in Europe and This Country

What Wine is.

WINE is the fermented juice of the grape, and consists mainly of water and alcohol, its other constituents or components being volatile oil, cœnanthic ether, grape sugar, gum, extractive and coloring matters, tannic, carbonic, and malic acids, tartar and tartrate of lime. The volatile oil has never been isolated, but is supposed to be the cause of the delicate flavor and odor of wine, called the bouquet; it is generated during fermentation, and is supposed to be a combination of acetic, butyric and other ethers. The vinous odor of wine is due to cœnanthic ether, which has a sharp, disagreeable taste, and has so powerful an odor of wine as to be almost intoxicating. It does not exist in the juice of the grape, but is produced during the fermentation, and increases in quantity by keeping, as the odor of old wines is stronger than that of new wines. So powerful is the odor of this substance, however, that few wines contain more than one fortythousandth part of their bulk of it. Yet it is always present, can always be recognized by its smell, and is one of the general characteristics of all grape wine. Enanthic ether must not be confounded with the substance which gives rise to the bouquet of wine. The other (126)