ountain sides, and often up to their very summits. These vineyards, he
says, having been mostly planted in haste in the happy days of the
demand for wines (when French vineyards were destroyed by phylloxera),
were formed by the personal labour of the peasant eked out by the help
of loans. Since then the wine trade has passed through critical times
and prices have often been greatly depreciated. The small vine-growers,
who are also for the most part wine-producers, fell on evil times and
became heavily indebted. They have remained so until the last year or
two, when, owing to the large demand and the high prices of wines in
Egypt, they have been able to free themselves.

Gennadius regarded the cultivation of the vine in Cyprus as indisputably
unprofitable, and was in favour of checking its extension, and even
advocated the imposition of a special tax on new plantations. At the
time he wrote there was an overproduction, and the value of wine had
greatly fallen, and the revenue which Cypriot wine-makers could gain
therefrom would hardly suffice to cover the expenses of its transport to
the market, the annual interest on their debts, and the taxes they had
to meet.

The village-made wine is usually clarified by means of gypsum. It is
carried down from the mountain villages in goat-skins (askos or ashia)
on pack animals, and then sold to the Limassol merchants, who ship the
greater part to Egypt.

The production of wine as carried out in Cyprus leaves much to be
desired. M. Mouillefert, who visited Cyprus in 1892 to report on the
wine industry, says: "The vintage is often gathered too late.
Insufficient care is given to the picking of the grapes and diseased,
rotten, mildewy or unripe grapes are often used which detract from the
quality of the wine.

"The grapes are trodden and the fermentation takes place in jars and
chatties of porous earth, of a capacity of 2 or 3 hectolitres, which are
tarred inside to counteract their porosity. The houses in which the
fermentation takes place are of almost the same temperature as the
surrounding air, with the result that in the warmer parts of the Island
fermentation at first is generally rapid or disturbed, and the
temperature of the must becomes excessive. In the colder parts, on the
contrary, the opposite takes place and the resulting wine is rough and
sharp. The use of gypsum as a preservative is unfortunately very common.
The tarring of the goat-skins and jars imparts a flavour