The outstanding example of the menace to the survival of wine in its
natural form is the wholesale demand for what the French call the
“_champagnisation_” of all kinds of wine, great and humble, good, bad
and indifferent, red, white and _rosé_, quite irrespective of their
suitability for gaseous treatment, which tends more and more to absorb
choicer and rarer, rather than poorer and more abundant, qualities. This
insatiable public appetite for effervescence ignores the amount of those
surplus qualities that are available and, in certain cases, readily
adaptable, for the purpose and so degrades fine still wines from their
lawful sphere by constraining them to pop, froth and bubble in indignant
and impotent protest instead of gurgling majestically into the glass of
honour in a tranquil and limpid stream. Our spendthrift generation is
convinced that the sparkling variety of any given wine must needs be its
highest, because its costliest, expression. Even to-day, few growths have
remained wholly immune to this vandalism, while the commercial pressure
brought to bear on the few conscientious recalcitrants is increasing
yearly. It would seem that in the United States, where the real meaning
of simple words is even more often misunderstood than in England, wine,
in common parlance, always implies a sparkling wine of sorts, whether
genuine or spurious Champagne. The youth of Europe, hypnotised by jazz
strains, convulsions and idioms, is doing its best to make the word have
the same ignorantly exclusive and inglorious significance in lands that
have spontaneously evolved their own languages and ancestral wassailing
traditions. It is arguable whether sparkling wine is really wine at all.
What admits of no sort of cavil is that its name needs qualifying by some
such admonitory adjective so as to distinguish it from the natural wine
from which it is, or purports to be, manufactured.
Happily there is yet no sign of a vogue in fortified “qualities” of
famous natural wines, but with Port dearer and stronger than ever
owing to the new schedule of wine-duties, there is no reason to be
over-sanguine. Thanks to the spirited competition of Australian sweet
wines, made possible by the considerable preference accorded to Empire
wines in this country and an export bounty of 3s. to 4s. the gallon
granted by the Commonwealth Government, Portugal and Spain are not
likely to have a monopoly of this market for the future. Already, too,
a home industry has sprung up for the manufacture of fortified “British
Wines”—the unfermented must being imported from abroad in a muted state
and “worked up” in this country into a liquid on which the courtesy title
of “wine” has been bestowed. Mr Churchill, in the course of his speech
on the Budget for 1927, tempered the unwelcome compliment of rendering
these concoctions liable to duty by promising to taste them before that
measure had the force of law. A less fearless man in his position might
well have preferred to renounce the project of raising revenue from such
an unpalatable source.
The transformation of various wines (Chablis, Vouvray, Anjou, Mercurey,
Cap Corse, etc.) into “tonic wines” or _apéritifs_ (the different
proprietary brands of Vermouth, French and Italian, together with the
numerous “Quinas,” “Quinquinas,” “Kinas,” and the like, to say nothing
of those combined with meat-extract sold by English apothecaries) by
an admixture of quinine and other “appetising” herbs and “restorative”
drugs, is another barbarism that is now assuming considerable
proportions. This heinous practice is at all events of more respectable
antiquity than “_champagnisation_,” having been familiar in classical
times, with rather different but no more inviting ingredients, in
the guise of “wine tempered by the nymphs.” As it is, Great Britain
imports more Italian Vermouth than Italian wine. Non-alcoholic wine,
or sterilised grape-juice, which is now prepared in France, Germany,
Switzerland and the United States, is the most recent fad in the way of
_Weinersatz_. It has been claimed that this emasculated beverage has
considerable medicinal value. Doubtless it will soon be advertised in
this country under some such slogan as “Take the Modish Grape-Cure of
Meran at Merriest Margate (or in your own home) with Vincent’s Vitamined
Verjuice.” These parodies of wine, it is hardly necessary to add, belong
to the same school of “refreshing pick-me-ups” as Cydrax, Kop’s Ale,
Herb-Beer, Kola Champagne, Raspberry Sherbet and other mineral-water and
Soda-Fountain eruptions. The survival of these dismal and sickly tipples
depends on the survival of the Teetotal Dogma which ordains the purging
of the pride of the palate with one or other of these potable Puritan
penitences.