The Scuppering Grape and Wine-Making [pp. 379-381]

THE SCUPPERNONG AND WINE MAKING.
noniig vines, indicating their worth to be seven hundred dollars at 6 per
cent interest; and that from the trifling investment of about two dollars.
Can any agricultural profit exceed this? And according to the sound
maxim, that "what has been done may be done again under like circum stances," there is no telling how vast the agricultural revenue to all the
South may be from this grape alone, if our citizens were once " wide
awake to its great merits."
But as the scuppernong juice is the basis for wines of every grade of
excellence, and as I make them in quality and price from one dollar
to six per gallon, indicating different degrees of excellence, the aforesaid
profits might have been greatly enhanced by using doubly refined sugar
as the safe-keeping, enriching ingredient in making the wine.
I prefer, however, bringing forward examples of wine made in the
most simple and most safe way; or so made that none need fear imitat ing the process. For if any operate with scuppernong juice mixed well
in tunning, or after putting into the cask with one-third good spirits, or
the quantity Mr. Longworth advises in his letter of 1847, in Patent Office
report, there is no danger but that the result will be a good safe keeping
wine, or very excellent medicinally and otherwise.
Indeed, spirits are safer than sugar as the ingredient to be added to
any juice for wine. And therefore, the people of Madeira, and other
vintners of Europe, making the least wine, do wisely as to their profit
at least, in using a plenty of spirits. In using sugar more attention is required to rack off the wine from one cask into another, and otherwise
to guard against acidity and injury, or spoiling. But with about one
third good spirits when incorporated by shaking in the cask after the
juice of any kind of grape has been poured in duly prepared by straining through folds of a woollen cloth; the result, in a month or so is a
good safe-keeping wine. After it is drawn off by a fauset a little above
one of the lower ends of the cask on its side, some quantity of sediment
will be found indicating that a gentle fermentation had taken place. But
any one wishing a wine of highest grade of excellence from genuine
scuppernong juice, can have it by using at least three lbs. of doubly
refined loaf sugar per gallon, and racking from one cask to another several times in the course of a few months. And in this case it will be
found that fermefitation has taken place, and alcohol generated in the
wine as the pure safe-keeping principle, or such as pervading all vegetable creation as the preservative part thereof. Indeed, by adding
either spirits or sugar to make wine, it is merely increasing the very
principles or pure ingredients in grape juice that constitute the basis
nature has provided for enriching and preserving the wine. For, destitute of alcoholic and saccharine principles, there can be no wine.
By good spirits for making wine, I mean either brandy divested of
any peculiar taste by age, or any kind of strong spirits, as new brandy
or whiskey divested of any peculiar taste by being doubly rectified
through charcoal and sand. I rectify so as to make the best of pure
spirits out of any strong spirit liquor. The wine therefore has the peculiar taste of the grape from which it is made; and this taste is one of
the chief excellences of the wine. I have tried distilling grape juice
and mixing the brandy thereof with the same kind of juice as that distilled. But I cannot myself perceive that the wine made with such in
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