WINE is obtained from the fermented juice of the grape; but the term is also applied to signify an agreeable spirituous liquor produced by fermenta tion from various fruits and vegetables, exclusive of grapes, such as currants, gooseberries, cherries, mulberries, apples, pears, and many others. In this article we shall confine our observations to wine produced from grapes.
The invention of wine is enveloped in great ob scurity; and much fabulous tradition on the subject has been handed down to us. But we must refer this invention to very remote times. The first portion of the fruit of the vine, says Dr. Hender son, which had been pressed by accident or design, and allowed to remain a short time undisturbed, would be found to have assumed new and surpri sing properties; and repeated trials would soon prove the value of the discovery. By degrees, the method would be learned of preserving for constant use the beverage so obtained; and various processes would gradually be resorted to for enhancing its grateful qualities: the knou ledge of the art would rapidly spread; and its simplicity would recommend its universal adoption.
This discovery of the latent virtue of the vine, and the invention of its manufacture into the beverage which forms the subject of this article, have, in different nations, been ascribed to different indi viduals. The Egyptians gave the honour of it to Osiris, the Latins to Satui n, and the Greeks to Bacchus, N\ bile various authors have respectively conferred the distinction on other persons, not cer tainly so celebrated as the fabulous individuals just named, but not the less likely to merit the honour in question. The investigation is very far from being important; the various persons who have been named as inventors were only, it is probable, the promoters of the manufacture under review. But we have higher authority on this subject than any that has yet been referred to. Whether wine was known before the flood we know not, as the sacred record is silent with regard to it; but we are distinctly informed that "Noah began to be an husbandman, and he planted a vineyard, and he drank of the wine." (Genesis ix. 20.) From the
manner in which the subject is here introduced, it is not unlikely that the art of wine-making had been known to the antediluvians; but, however this may be, it is mentioned in almost every page of the sacred volume as quite commonly practised after the flood. " Corn and wine," which commo dities seem to have been equally abundant, are mentioned in the Old Testament as expressive of the necessaries and comforts, if not the luxuries, of life.
But though vineyards were cultivated to so great a degree by the Israelites, and the manufacture of wine was so much extended, this beverage seems not to have been so common in other countries. Indeed the quantity produced elsewhere was for a long time very small. Except in Egypt and Greece, wine was seldom allowed either to virgins or mat rons, or to young men. In Rome, most severe re strictions were laid on it for the first 200 years of that celebrated city. But about this period, that is 500 years before the Christian era, it began to be manufactured in greater abundance. When in an cient Italy the Romans had carried the cultivation of vineyards to the greatest extent to which they ever reached, their productiveness was incredible, exceeding that of modern vineyards by about a half. The varieties of the vine, known to the an cients, were very numerous, amounting to about fifty, some of which are described with sufficient minuteness to enable us to appreciate the relation in which they stand to our modern vines. Wine, however, was generally designated, not by the spe cies of wine from which it was produced, but generally from the place where it was manufactured; thus we read of Vinum Falernum, Masyicurn, .41ba num, Chitin', Rhodium, Maeonium. Sometimes it obtained its name from its colour or age, as vine m album, nigrzim, rubrunt, rents, hornum, trimum.