At Borleaux the white wines are generally ready for the first racking In December, the red not till March ; the secon I racking is to prevent the working which the great heats of July and August might occasion in them ; and the third in October, before the cold comes ou. A favourable state of the weather must be chosen for these processes. A fourth racking takes place in eighteen mouths after the vintage, in March; it is then that the auks may be stowed with the bung at the side. After this it only requires to be racked twice a year, In March and October. When it has attained the age of five or six years, it requires racking only once a year, which is always done in March, the moment when the wines are always finer and clearer than at any other season of the year.
One of the qualities of a good wine is firmness or durability; but In this respect there is great difference among wines and one possessing every other requisite may be deficient in this easeetlaL This may be imparted to it. however, by adding some other stronger wine, or one little disposed to undergo any deleterious change. Hence has arisen the practice of mixing wines, or, as it may be termed, their medication, vulgarly called doctoring, which being a judicious and honourable pro ceeding when the only articles employed are the real produce of the grape, is not to be confounded with unwholesome mixtures and dis honest practices, which deserve to be reprobated. Thus some of the finest growths of the Claret country require to be supported by the addition of Hermitage. It is obvious that no fraud is here contem plated, since the Hermitage is, perhaps, the more expensive wine of the two, and the maker can afford to add it only to the best claret. It in no degree Impairs the fine characteristics of the choicest claret, nor diminishes the lightness for which first-rate claret is remarkable. Where working the wines is practised to fit them for the depraved taste of the majority of consumers in England, who are accustomed to the stronger wines of Spain and Portugal, the case Is very ditlerent ; and to the second and third growths the red wines of Roussillon, Ilene Carlo from Spain, and brandy are added—to the detriment of the character of Claret The latter addition is made under the pretext that it is necessary to enable the wino to bear the voyage. This, except so far as a very small quantity of brandy is concerned, is alto gether erroneous, not only as relates to Claret, but also to Port and Sherry. Thu wines of lkmsscins and St. Etilitlieel'Ambares, two parishes
near Bordtetux, furnish a wine which is generally purchased for the French navy, because it keeps well, and improves greatly at sea. The French wine-brokers at Bordeaux, familiar with the qualities of the first growths, and jealous for the reputation of their country, deplore the deterioration which much of their wines undergo to fit them for the English market. Still Claret with no other addition than Hermi tage may be obtained here, provided a proper price is given, by resorting to *Me-merchants of high repute. Two Sherries come to England devoid of brandy, d ".on/Wade and Mon:anilla ; and it is now the wish of Port-wine merchants, of the highest character for science and probity, to introduce Port-wine with as small an admixture of brandy as possible, thereby consulting the health as well as palate of their customers. Brandy added after the early stages of fermentation is only mingled. not incorporated with, the wine — increasing its spirituomity, but not its vinosity, and producing on the human stomach. liver, and other organs the same effect as brandy merely diluted with an equivalent quantity of water. The extension therefore of a Mate for the pure and unsophisticated wines in this oountry would be a national benefit. Sometimes the object iu mixing wines is to pro duce a compound having a ditlerent or more agreeable quality than either of the wines singly pollees/we : hence the mixing of the Mine wines almost constitutes a science. Of all wines Sherry is the most mixed with the vintages of different years. " The wino-merchants of Xerea never exhaust their stock of finest and oldest wine. According to the price at which the wine expedited to the market is intended to be geld, it contains a larger or smaller pruportion of old wine. But it br only in wines of a very high price that even a small portion of their fluted wines is mixed. What is withdrawn from the oldest and finest casks is made up from the casks which approach them nearest In age and quality, and these are sgain repleniahed from the next in age and quality to them. Thus a cask of trine, said to be fifty years old, may contain a portion of the vintages of thirty or forty seasons." (Busby.) A sherry, the unmixed produce of one vintage, may now and then by a rare chance be obtained.