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THE

GENTLEMAN'S MAGAZINE.

HISTORY OF WINES.

BY CYRUS REDDING. 1833. 8vo.

"FACUNDI calices quem non fecere disertum ?"-WI o would not be eloquent, when discoursing on that which is every where described as the mother of Pleasure, and the nurse of Eloquence, oiros máμpwvos. Mr. Cyrus Redding is a true Dionysiack. He is deep in the mysteries of Bacchus, knows the very penetralia of the divine cellar, and can trace the history of all Wines from the days of Noah, down to our degenerate times of adulterated port and sherry, brewed in the Domdaniel caves of fire. We never read a more delightful book. We smacked our lips at every page; we tasted, or seemed to taste, the raspberry flavour of his Burgundy; the violet aroma, delicate and fine, of his La Fitte. We had such visions of sunny vineyards, and purple clusters, and foaming vats, and mantling goblets, and beautiful nymphs wreathed with viny tendrils, and waggons reeling under their fragrant and luscious load, and 'paterâ spumantia vina capaci;' and then we believed that we were seated at tables pil'd in regal state, and by the sideboard,

"Astabat domini mensis pulcherrimus ille
Marmoreâ fundens nigra Falerna manu,
Et libata dabat roseis Carchesia labris
Quæ poterant ipsum sollicitare Jovem."

We sipped, we tasted, we inhaled the aromatic bouquet. We distinguished
the seve, we acknowledged and approved the veloute, and we smacked
our lips at the pateux ;—but, save the mark! it was, after all, nothing but
a day dream. It was a momentary touch of the thyrsus of the god. We
woke sobered, and saw our jug of SMALL BEER standing by us.
taste Champagne-cream; our lips are never purpled with the rich blood
of the Garonne, except at our Publisher's table, at the settling the half-
yearly accounts,-a day much to be esteemed!!

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We never

Mr. Redding does not enter into the history of ancient Wines; but we learn from him and others enough to assure us that the wine which graced the table of Augustus, would soon have been dismissed from that of George the Fourth. What would his Majesty (God bless him!) have thought of mixing salt water with Barnes's claret; or putting into his bottle of Romanè Conti a certain quantity of hepatic aloes? What would he think of boiling, stewing, mixing, and pouring honey into his delicate white Hermitage; or of giving a delicious flavour to his Champagne, by means of rosin, pitch, wax, the smoke of the fumarium, tar, spikenard, pine-leaves, bitter almonds, the juice of the wild cucumber, and the hairy skin of a he-goat? No wonder Augustus could never get through more than a pint, though he put in as much honey as the liquor would take

up.

There is a good story, at p. 320, of Mr. Redding's book, of George the Fourth being taken in, with regard to some fine wine, by some of his old courtiers, who drank it all out, and palmed some city brewage on the unsuspicious monarch.

No wonder that his ancestor Julius was always sick after dinner. No wonder that Polyphemus was made drunk so soon; for it is supposed that the wine which Ulysses gave him was Thasian; that, Ulysses-like, he did not tell the giant that it required to be mixed with twenty-four parts of water, before it was palatable, and that it would have killed any one, but him who possessed such magnificent powers of digestion. The Mareotic wine was of great excellence; it was white, light of digestion, and rather sweet, but apt to affect the head. Horace mentions that Cleopatra used to drink more of this than well beseemed a lady and a queen in fact, the word he uses means little less than that her Eminence was furiously drunk, till Cæsar sobered her: Mentemque lymphatam Mareotico, redegit in veros timores Cæsar.'

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We have not time to enumerate the qualities of the various wines of Greece, which are immortalized by her bards. The Thasian we have mentioned; then came that of Lesbos, which Aristotle pronounced to be more agreeable than that of Rhodes, dɩov ỏ Aérßios: and the Byblian grape, and that from Phenice, and the Mendæan, famed for its diuretic qualities; the Cretan, olvos ávbóopos, for its fragrancy like flowers; and the Magnesian, soft and light; the mild Chian, which had the same preeminence among Greek wines, as the Falernian among the Roman; the perfumed Saprian; the Peparethan, very bitter; the dry and stimulating Pramnian, eschewed by the dainty Athenians, so called аnò тоv πрavvet̃v, from softening the ferocious; and the wonderful Herian juice (in Arcadia) which rendered the men fools, and as a natural consequence the women prolific; and the vineyards of Myndus and Halicarnassus, the former of which places was called aλuoróris, because the inhabitants mixed so much salt water with their grape-juice, as caused gripings and purgings and flatulency. The finest Roman wines were the Massic, and Falernian. Martial calls it immortal.' That it was very strong, like a strong rich liqueur, appears from the epithet of indomitum,' bestowed upon it by Persius, and by Horace declaring that it required mixing with water,

quis puer ocius

Restinguet ardentis Falerni
Pocula, prætereunte lymphâ?

It kept well; for Damasippus, when Cicero dined with him, gave him Falernian of 400 years old, and when the great man tasted the first glass, he nodded to his host and said, "Bene ætatem fert."† Horace appears

The Greek wines are divided into two classes, όλιγοφόροι and πολυφόροι, as they wanted a greater or less proportion of water. The wine mixed with sea-water was called Olvos Baλasoáμvos. Horace speaks of the Chian as Maris expers.' In his twenty-first ode of the third book, he speaks of Vina languidiora,' an epithet, we believe, not elsewhere to be found, except in the 16th ode of the same: Bacchus in amphora languescit mihi.'

The universal voice of antiquity is in favour of the complete supereminence of the Falernian grape.

"Ac Methymna ferax Latiis cessere Falernis."-SIL. ITAL.

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et quo te Carmine dicam

Rhætica Nee cellis ideo contende Falernis."-VIRG.
"Si Bacchi cura, Falernus ager.-HOR.

Besides all the prose writers. It also appears that it was of an amber colour. "Condantur parco fusca Falerna vitro." (Martial, pp. 11, 40.) Summa laus Falernis a vini Colore dictis, MELLI FULGORE PERSPICUIS. (Ruellius de Succino.) Some modern critics have considered it to be like a rich Madeira.

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to have had a cask in his cellar of 36 years standing. Besides these, there were the inferior wines; there was the Sabine, nobile vinum, the Surrentinum, Albanum, and Setinum, (the favourite of Augustus,) and the wine recommended by St. Paul to Titus, for his stomach; the Nomentanum, like claret; the wine of Venafrum, of Spoletum, of a bright golden colour; the Sicilian Mamertinum, the Pollium of Syracuse, the growth of Cæsena, Liguria, Verona, the wines of Marseilles and Narbonne, the violet scented grape of Vienna,' and the rich Muscat of Languedoc. That the ancients were as fond of wine as we are, seems quite clear; and as they drank theirs free of duty, no wonder that they did not stint themselves to a pint. Melchisedec drank his wine. Homer is very eloquent in its praise; he calls it Tórov Oetov, a divine beverage; and Horace intimates that he indulged pretty freely in his cups,

Laudibus arguitur vini vinosus Homerus."

Nestor warmed himself with generous libations of wine eleven years old, ἐνδεκάτω ἐνιαυτῶ : and Ulysses is described as indulging in old sweet wine, οἴνοιο παλαῖου ἡδυπατοῖο. Achilles drank wine and water, when he dined en garçon; but when he had friends, Zwporɛpou dè képape, he brought in his Magnum bonums. And even Nausicaa was allowed a cellaret at her command; for she and her young ladies sat down to their bottle, of the "vinum virgineum ;"-which we hope was Cowslip. The prices of the ancient wines seem to have varied, like ours, according to quality and to age. The very worst kind appears to have sold for little more than one pound the hogshead; but about double that price, or eight pounds the ton, seems to have been the common value.

In the year A. C. 63d. (we wish he had lived then) was an excellent vintage. And wines were laid in at 100 nummi the amphora, which is about seven pounds the hogshead. An amphora of the best Chian was sold for a thousand nummi, or eight pounds, eleven shillings and five pence. The servants were allowed about a pint and a half each daily; the Romans, as would be induced by their climate, generally drank their wine cold, but a few preferred hot negus; old debauchees, whose stomachs could no longer bear liquors cold, drank hot wine. Thence Nero was called Caldus Nero, and Tiberius had the nick-name Biberius Caldus. Calidum bibebant! Augustus was forbidden by his physician to drink warm wine and water. The vinum decoctum was that which was first boiled, and then cooled in snow; this was a refinement of Nero's upon the old custom, of putting lumps of ice or snow into the wine. The favorite water was that which came from the aqueduct, called Aqua Martia; it was distinguished for its splendor and purity. Propertius says, lib. iii. 7. 26.

"Temperat annosum Martia Lympha merum.". Seneca was afraid of these iced wines; he thought they produced a schirrus in the liver. 86 Quid tu (he says) illam æstivam nivem, non patas Caldum obducere jecinoribus ?" Wine was drank at all their meals, breakfast, dinner, and supper;-Aкрárioμа, "Apiorov, Aeiπvov; of these, the dinner was the lightest, and sometimes was taken without wine, for which reason Varro calls it, Prandium Caninum; the expression "Cœnæ Tempestivæ," appears to apply to the stated hours of the meal, and not to the duration of it, or the manner in which it was performed. The supper hour among the Greeks, was later than that of the Romans, which was antequam advesperasceret.' But we must now descend from

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these remote times and leave the Roman diner-out to whet his appetite with his garum and oysters; then to swallow his Promulsis, and after discussing his dinner, take out his pomatum-box.

- Funde capacibus Unguenta de conchis,

which he handed about, (" nardo vina mereberis,") and after being well anointed, and having put on his head a garland of roses, or a wreath of myrtle, we must leave him to talk about his fine estate in Africa, his new purchase near York, which he bought (a capital bargain) of Sempronius; how many slaves he had in his Calabrian farm; of his new villa at Baiæ, (that he would not change for Piso's ;) how well the empress looked yesterday at the Circus; how high the Tiber had risen from the rain last night, and how Mecænas's chariot was seen stopping towards dark at Pulcheria's lodgings in the Via Sacra, (a sly rogue that Mecænas!); how sorry he was to hear that Cicero had a bad sore throat and could not speak; and that Antonius Musa had ordered him the liver of a sea hedgehog, well beaten up with turpentine and fresh garlick, with a ptisan of pounded barley, and milk virginis annorum minus xiii, and a weak Melicrate four times a day; and assured his friends that if he lived on that for a couple of weeks, he would be able to reappear in the forum; how Cato's legs were beginning to swell, and he was becoming leucophlegmatic with a disordered digestion. Whether they had heard of a shocking epidemic appearing in Rome, that was supposed by the Senate to arise from the exposure of a putrid body of an hippopotamus in Upper Egypt; and that a detachment of the 45th legion with one of the Consuls, was under orders to sail, for the purpose of burying it, with an offering of a new gold beard to Jupiter Serapis; though some, among whom was the Pontifex Maximus, attributed the cause of the pestilence (Apollo's anger) to a child born with two heads, in a village near Antioch. All these highly curious and interesting subjects we must quit, to come to tempora nobis propriora ;" and we must leave the company of the elder Cyrus, to put ourselves under the guidance of his illustrious modern namesake, Mr. Cyrus Redding.

The varieties of the vine are very numerous. In Spain, more than four hundred have been discovered ;* and in France a thousand distinctions have been reckoned. Mr. Dumont observed nineteen varieties in one vineyard of the Jura. It is impossible to trace its original country; the wild plant is lost, as the parent stock of the wheat † is also sought in vain, but they both came doubtless from the East. The limits within which the vine flourishes (for it will grow more south and north) are in an extent of about sixteen degrees; taking the north latitude of Coblentz, 51o. and the south of Cyprus 340. 30. The line trends from the east south-west, and runs from Coblentz to the mouth of the Loire; yet hock and champagne are both made three degrees north of the mouth of the Loire; and therefore it is very difficult to ascertain the reason why, as you approach the west, the latitude in which the wine flourishes, retreats. This however is the case; and perhaps the greater humidity of the climate may account for it; perhaps its more clouded skies and less solar light. We have heard that in

* The English people in general know the names of a few vineyards, but they are quite ignorant of the names of the grapes, some of which we have given further on. † Mr. H. Murray says, that the indigenous wheat is found in Barbary; we should like to know if that assertion is founded on well-established facts.

Even in Calabria, and the South of Italy, they are obliged to shade their vines from the too fervent heat by fern.

some parts of Cornwall the apricot will not ripen for want of sun; if that is so, it will throw some light on this question so much disputed and discussed. In Asia, no good wine is made south of Shiraz in Persia, lat. 33o. In America,* the Hock grape is cultivated even in Canada by the German settlers. The majority of fine and rich wines is grown on the side of hills: Virgil says,

Bacchus amat colles.

They must not be hills of great elevation, not mountains, but with summits well wooded, and open to the sun; still a southern aspect is not indispensible. The vine is productive on the left banks of the Rhine and Moselle. The wine of Rheims grows in a northern aspect, and this almost at the extent of the northern boundary of the vine's growth. In Burgundy they consider the south-eastern aspect to be subject to latter frosts; it would appear that the aspect is not of much consequence if the climate and soil are favorable; though certainly a south and south eastern is to be preferred. The most fatal ravages to the vineyards in the south, are the frosts in April and May, after the vines, which are very susceptible of atmospheric changes, are advanced in bud.

The vine likes a soil dry, light, and strong. Soils calcareous, porous, and volcanic are favourable to it. The rich, fat, or strong soils never produce even tolerable wine. On a wet soil, the vine will not grow at all; it hates being mixed with water even at its earliest stage of growth; but there are minute and delicate points regarding the state of the earth as suited to the vine, that we do not understand. In one little vineyard in Burgundy, that of Mont Rachet, the soil, the aspect is the same, the vines are the same, and the culture and care alike; and yet three distinct varieties of wine are produced. The first, Mont-Rachet Ainè-the inferior, Mont-Rachet Chevalier-a third, possessing no good qualities, Mont-Rachet Bâtard. How is this to be explained? Vines are trained either in what the French call 'Tige haut,' or 'Tige bas.' The former on trees and trellises the second on short poles or sticks, or reeds. North of Provence, in France, Germany, Switzerland, and Hungary, the low training prevails. In Italy, trees and trellis work abound. The vines of Greece are thick in the stalk, and grow like pollards, supporting themselves. In Italy, the maple is chiefly used in Lombardy and Tuscany, and the elm and poplar in the vineyards of Naples and the South. Great care must be used in manuring. No animal manure but that of birds must be used; but vegetable, such as the leaves of briars, thorns, lucerne, and lupins, are the best. Maturity is sometimes advanced (as much as fourteen days) by annular incisions in the bark.

The vine bears well to sixty or seventy years, and is about seven years before it comes into bearing; but grafting on the stocks or roots brings it into bearing the first year. The names of the vines are little known in England; we shall give a few. In France, the black morillon, the madailene, and the vine from Ischia, the meunier, (the earliest known ;) the bourgignon,

* No less than seventy kinds of wild vines are known in America, though all do not bear fruit; at Washington there is a species of grape grown not known in Europe called Catarobe, and at Boston is a good grape called Isabelle.

It is not generally known, that the tendrils of the vine will produce fruit, by cutting them off near the place from which they spring on the branch; in a short time small nobs make their appearance,-these become grapes equal in excellence to any on the tree. This discovery was made at Strasburgh. Vines, from cuttings, live longest, and bear most; from layers, they shoot earliest. Vines are regenerated by what is called provignage and couchage.

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