Page:Mexico, California and Arizona - 1900.djvu/380

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been validated.
360
OLD MEXICO AND HER LOST PROVINCES.

into it, from the few hundred gallons of red wine made by the Portuguese and Italian laborers for their own families, to the manufacture of an American champagne on a large scale by the Hungarian, Arpad Haraszthy, at San Francisco. The Americans, who have not acquired the habit of looking upon wine as a necessity in the family, are not yet, as a rule, very active in its production.

A certain romantic interest attaches to this ancient industry. The great tuns in the wine-cellars and all the processes were very clean. It was re-assuring to see the pure juice of the grape poured out in such floods, and to feel that here was no need—founded on scarcity, at least—for adulteration.

Teeming loads of the purple fruit were driven up, and across a weighing scale. The contents are lifted to an upper story, put into a hopper, where the stems come off, and the grapes fall through to a crusher. They are lightly crushed at first. It is something of a discovery that the earliest product of grapes of every hue is white wine. The red wine gets its hue from the coloring matter in the skins, which are utilized in a subsequent ruder squeezing.

I shall not enter upon all the various processes—the racking off, clarifying, and the like—though, so much in the company of those who spoke with authority and were continually holding up little glasses to the light with a gusto, like figures in popular chromos, I consider myself to yield in knowledge of such abstruse matters to few. Immense upright casks, containing a warm, audibly fermenting mass, and others lying down, neatly varnished, with concave ends, are the most salient features in the dimly lighted wine-cellars.

They are not cellars, properly so called, either, since