(_For the Mirror._)
The passion for old wines has sometimes been carried to a very
ridiculous excess, for the "_thick crust_," the "_bee's wing_," and the
several other criterions of the epicure, are but so many proofs of the
decomposition and departure of some of the best qualities of the wine.
Had the man that first filled the celebrated Heidleburg tun been placed
as sentinel, to see that no other wine was put into it, he would have
found it much better at twenty-five or thirty years old, than at one
hundred, had he lived so long, and been permitted now and then to taste
it.
At Bremen there is a wine-cellar, called the Store, where five hogsheads
of Rhenish wine have been preserved since 1625. These five hogsheads
cost 1,200 francs. Had this sum been put out to compound interest, each
hogshead would now be worth above a thousand millions of money, a bottle
of this precious wine would cost 21,799,480 francs, or about
908,311_l._, and a single wine-glass 2,723,808 francs, or about
113,492_l._.