MOSELLE, and RHINE WINE.
The vineyards of Austria are extensive, and produce a great variety of wines, which are mostly consumed in the country itself, the red Voslauer being the kind principally exported. Hungary is still more a wine-growing country, producing considerably more than it consumes, and is the home of the renowned tokay (q.v.), which boasts a high antiquity, and commands a more fabulous price than any other wine in the world. Meneser-Ausbruch, Carlowitz, Buster, Somlauer, and one or two others, are also favor ably known. Hungarian wines are finding their way to English and other markets, but the long land-carriage operates as a serious check on the trade with England.
Perhaps the wines best known in Great Britain are the sherries of Spain and the ports of Portugal. The best kinds of the former are those technically called dry—that is, free from sweetness. Manzanillo is said to be the purest, but Montilla, Amontillado, and vino de Pasto arc also famous kinds of sherry. This wine is chiefly shipped at Cadiz,•near which it is made. The Malaga wines, both sweet and dry, are widely known, and from Catalonia come what are known in England as the Spanish reds. Port wine (q.v.) is mostly brought from Oporto, and its consumption in Great Britain has, as a rule, continued to increase for nearly two hundred years. The shipments of-it had, however, fallen in 1858 to two million gallons; but from that time they gradually rose to the large annual total of seven million gallons oin 1877, three-fourths of which were to England. For the ten years ending 1876, the average annual shipments of sherry from Spain amounted to nearly eight million gallons. Nearly all wines passing under the names of port and sherry are fortified, that is, dosed with brandy; but these form only a small portion of the wines produced in the Peninsula. Madeira, where twenty-five years ago the vineyards were almost totally destroyed by the oidium fungus, is now rapidly increasing the yield of its highly-prized wine.
Italy, with great natural advantages, is behind several other nations in the production of fine and especially of sparkling wines; but the Barolo of Piedmont, the Chianti of Tuscany, the Orvieto of the Roman states. the lacryma Christi of Naples, and other
special growths, have a high reputation. The celebrated Marsala, a wine with a sherry like flavor. comes from Sicily. Not much Italian wine is exported, but the acreage occupied by the vineyards must be very large. The lesser wine-growing countries of Europe are Switzerland, Russia, Turkey, and Greece, which continues as in ancient times to put resin in what is required for home consumption. Australia can already astonish the best French judges by the excellence of her wines, and the cape continues to yield her luscious Constantia and other growths of fine quality. The following table gives the annual yield of the more important wine-producing countries, but the great destruction caused in many districts since 1865 by the phylloxera (q.v.)—impairs the value of such a table: Gallons.
average from 1863 to 1873 .. _1,176,000,000 Spain, mean of two estimates for 1873 450,000,000 Portugal, 1873 111,000,000 Germany 76,317,000 Austria, 1870 .84,700,000 Hungary, 1873 221,214,000 Italy, 1873 750,000,000 The value of a full vintage in France, including the spirit distilled from the husks and stalks of the grape, amounts to the enormous sum of £76,000,000. Since the com mercial treaty of 1860, which led to the import duty being fixed at one shilling per gallon on wines containing less than 26 per cent of proof spirit, a great increase has taken place in the consumption of French wines in Great Britain, nearly 7,000,000 gallons having been imported in,1877. But how little a wine-drinking people we still are is shown by the fact that the annual consumption of wine per head—over forty gallons—in Paris, is eighty times more than it is in the United Kingdom; our total, imports of wine being a little under twenty millions of gallons in 1877, valued at £7,138,900.