WINES, BRITISH. British wines, or Sweets, as they are called by the Excise, are sweet beverages made as substitutes for real wine. The making of them forms a part of domestic chemistry or household skill, as well as a branch of trade. Generally speaking they are prepared from the juice of fruits ; but a large number of other chemical substances are similarly employed. The common English fruit wines comprise gooseberry, currant, cherry, raspberry, mulberry, strawberry, apple, elder, whortleberry, blackberry, damson, bullace, apricot, orange, juniper, lemon, grape, peach, quince, and mixtures of these. The dry fruit wines are chiefly raisin, fig, and date. The root wines are such as rhubarb, celery, parsnip, turnip, and beet-root. The flower and sap wines comprise cowslip, elder-flower, rose, clove, gilliflower, violet, carnation, lavender, primrose, balsam, pine-apple, birch, &e.
In the preparation of ordinary fruit wines. the fruit is selected mature and ripe, but not so sweet as over-ripe fruit. The stalks and the damaged portions are picked off. The rest is bruised in a tub, put into a vat, and steeped thirty or forty hours in water, with frequent stirring. The liquor is drawn off. The pulp is pressed in hair hags ; sugar, tartar, &c., are added, and stirred for some time. Vinous fer mentation then commences ; during its 'continuance the liquor is frequently skimmed, and after three or four days is run off into casks. In about a week, flavouring ingredients are added ; and several days afterwards brandy or some other spirit. Fining and racking complete the process. Some fruits are better for boiling before these operations ; others would be spoiled thereby.
The Excise authorities first gave the name of sweets to raisin wine ; but the name became afterwards applied to all the fermented bever ages known as British wines. The making of raisin wine as a branch of trade arose in a curious way. In VINEGAR MANUFACTURE it is explained that a substance called rape, consisting of the stalks and skins of raisins, forms the best known filtering and clarifying sub stance for vinegar. When Mark Beaufoy established his vinegar works at Lambeth more than a century ago, be could devise no better way of obtaining rape then by purchasing raisins, steeping them, throwing away all the juicy portion, and retaining the rest. Dr. Fothergill, au eminent physician, suggested to him the making of raisin wine out of the juice, instead of wasting it. He did so ; and thus commenced a trade which has been continued by his descendants ever since. The manufacture of raisin wine requires larger appliances than those which relate to familiar English fruits. The kinds of raisins chiefly used are Smyrnas, Malagas, Lexias, Faros, and Cape de Verde ; these Droduce various qualities of wine known by such terms as dry, sweet, irony-bodied, rich, full, &c. The wholesale purchases of raisins are made chiefly towards the close of the year ; and the wine is made 'rem thence to spring. The hard masses of fruit are beaten open, and iteeped in water till the raisins swell and float. All the vinous and accharine juices are then pressed out by hydraulic-presses, screw tresses, or heavy weights, according to the scale on which the opera ions are conducted. Fermentation is then induced in the juice by a
eaven or yeast. From the fermenting tuns the juice, which is now vine, passes to other vessels, where the racking, fining, and sweetening ,re carried on.
Home-made wines or sweets paid a small duty until 1834; but the hay was abolished in that year, since which time the extent of the nanufacture has not been known.
A maker of sweets may be as honest a dealer as a maker of the ,est foreign wines; but unfortunately the cheaper wine has come to e used as an adulterant of that which is more costly. There is hardly ny possibility now of determining to what extent the rectifier and the tritish wine maker ere, knowingly nr unknowingly, concerned in pro• ucing imitations of foreign wine. If the name given to the beverage e euch as to denote home manufacture, there is no difficulty. There are in the market wines designated British champagne, British port, British sherry, British Moselle, ko. These are made in England mostly from English fruits, by processee in which the rectifier and the British wine maker are ooneerned. But the great fraud, which recent investigations have brought to light, is the making up of a mixture which shall bear the name and bring the price of foreign wine. It has been estimated that two out of three bottles of all the so-called cham In England are surreptitious : the wine being made chiefly orn English gooseberries. Cider is a chief constituent in a very large roportion of the low-priced port. Much of the port imported from Portugal, also, Is adulterated. It was proved before a committee of the House of Commons on the Wine Duties, in 1852, that the Portuguese mix elder-juice, apple-juicer, sloe-juice, and logwood de000 tion, in the port wine intended for the English market; and that the Spaniards are not more scrupulous in reference to sherry. They believe that the English taste for wine Is so depraved. as to render detection improbable. When the wines reach England, various ether ingredients are often added, including oak-bark, turnsole, elder, privet, beet. Brazil-wood, cudbear, red Sanders wood, and catechu—some to hide the fact that a large quantity of water has been introduced, some to imitate the right colour, some the right crust, &e. It has even been found that glass.makers are employed to make bottles of glass having a peculiar chemical constitution, such ae to lead to the forma tion of a sort of akin or scum which shall imitate the " bee's wing" of " fine old crusted port." Many receipts for making so-called port wine are extant, some of which contain not a drop of real port. It is known that much of the port sold at public-houses can be made for Is. 6d. per bottle, thus leaving a large profit, even when sold at what seems to be a low price.
It may be well to remark that brandy, either real, foreign, or imita tive British, is used to mask the use of adulterants in port "inc. In imitating most other foreign wines, the produce of the British wine makera is more especially relied upon.