The Chemistry of Cookery

values of fancy wines are largely due, or more properly speaking _were_ largely due, to peculiarities of bouquet. These peculiar wines became costly because their supply was limited, only a certain vineyard, in some cases of very small area, producing the whole crop of the fancy article. The high price once established, and the demand far exceeding the possibilities of supply from the original source, other and resembling wines are now sold under the name of the celebrated locality with the bouquet or _a_ bouquet artificially introduced. It has thus come about in the ordinary course of business that the dearest wines of the choicest brands are those which are the most likely to be sophisticated. The flavouring of wine, the imparting of delicate bouquet, is a high art, and is costly. It is only upon high-priced wines that such costly operations can be practised. Simple ordinary grape-juice—as I have already stated—is so cheap when and where its quality is the highest, _i.e._ in good seasons and suitable climates, that adulteration with anything but water renders the adulterated product more costly than the genuine. When there is a good vintage it does not pay even to add sugar and water to the marc or residue, and press this a second time. It is more profitable to use it for making inferior brandy, or wine oil, _huile de marc_, or even for fodder or manure. This, however, only applies where the demand is for simple genuine wine, a demand almost unknown in England, where connoisseurs abound who pass their glasses horizontally under their noses, hold them up to the light to look for beeswings and absurd transparency, knowingly examine the brand on the cork, and otherwise offer themselves as willing dupes to be pecuniarily immolated on the great high altar of the holy shrine of costly humbug. Some years ago I was at Frankfort, on my way to the Tyrol and Venice, and there saw, at a few paces before me, an unquestionable Englishman, with an ill-slung knapsack. I spoke to him, earned his gratitude at once by showing him how