Rensselaer Republican, Volume 18, Number 24, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 18 February 1886 — Experts in Wine. [ARTICLE]

Experts in Wine.

are no professional wine tasters in this country. Here every dealer is his own taster. In Franee there are wine- tasters, called brokers, who regularly test the wiues in the cellars there and classify them according to their qualities. The dictumtj§ these gentlemen is the law of the trade. But although there is no class here who have such an occupation, or even 'an occupation allied to that of the gentlemen who sit around tables down town and look at and smell of tea in little . cups, there are good expert judges of wine among the dealers. To beeome an expert, a man must add years of experience to a rfaturally fine sense of smell and taste. He must also be able to see well. There is a certain routine through which experts, pass in tasting wines, but a knowledge of the routine will not make a man an expert by any means. * When a list of wines is to be submitted to a dealer he will usually select thin glass goblets to hold the samples. It is asserted by some that the taste of the wine varies with the thickness of the glass. The glass should be perfectly pure, and the lines of the goblet parallel. In a goblet it is impossible for the color of the stand upon which f the "goblet is placed to affect the color if the wine. The French rise a silver saucer in testing the color of wiue. j In using the goblet we hold it before a candle in a dark room to determine the brightness of the wine. Good wine of the’ proper age is called candle bright. If the wine is cloudy or it is out of condition, but may be clarified. Then the goblet of yine is held between the eye and the window in daylight to determine the degree of color, whether it is faint or deep, and also the quality, of the color. Thus, pure port wine, when held up to the light, shows a bronze-red color. If it be pink it indicates bad grapes or fuscine or adulterants of some kind. If claret show a blue color, or the color of blackberry juice, objection is made to it. There is one kind of grapes, the Lenoir, that makes a very excellent claret except for tins bluish color.

Having found the color all, right, the expert next smells of the wine. It is impossible to describe the peculiar aromas of different wines, but by many comparisons the nose becomes so well educated that some experts oan tell very nearly the age of the wine submitted to them, the kind of grapes from whioh it was made, and whether it is a pnre sample of one kind of wine or one wine blended with another. • '» t Last of all thepxpert takes a sip of wine,, retains it a moment in his month ho get the first taste, and then ejects it and holds his mouth open a moment to get the after-taste, or what is technically ■.V . ■ '' ■ ’

called the “farewell.” The farewell taste’s the orurial test. Wine may be bright, it may have the right quantity of color, it may have the smell desired, it may even have a rich, luscious taste when,taken in the mouth, and yet the farewell be unpleasant. Wines may be doctored until the ordinary purchaser may think he has an ancient brand of the purest but they have never yet been blended or drugged so nicely that the expert cannot tell that they are not pure, nor does an inferior wipe exist that cannot be properly classified by an expert. —Wine and Fruit Grower.