about "natural" wines, and would condemn every addition of sugar
and water to the must by man, when Nature has not fully done her part,
as adulteration and fraud. Why, there is no such thing as a "natural
wine;" for wine--good wine--is the product of art, and a manufacture
from beginning to end. Would we not think that parent extremely cruel,
as well as foolish, who would have her child without clothing, simply
because Nature had allowed it to be born without it? Would not the
child suffer and die, because its mother failed to aid Nature in her
work, by clothing and feeding it when it is yet unable to feed and
clothe itself? And yet, would not that wine-maker act equally foolish
who has it within his power to remedy the deficiencies of Nature with
such means as she herself supplies in good season, and which ought and
would be in the must but for unfavorable circumstances, over which we
have no control? Wine thus improved is just as pure as if the sugar and
water had naturally been in the grapes in right proportions; just as
beneficial to health; and only the fanatical "know-nothing" can call it
adulterated. But the prejudices will disappear before the light of
science and truth, however much ignorance may clamor against it.
GALILEO, when forced to abjure publicly his great discovery of the
motion of the earth around the sun as a heresy and lie, murmured
between his teeth the celebrated words, "And yet it moves." It _did_
move; and the theory is now an acknowledged truth, with which every
schoolboy is familiar. Thus will it be with improved wine-making. It
will yet be followed, generally and universally, as sure as the public
will learn to distinguish between good and poor wine.

Let us now observe for a moment the change which fermentation makes in
converting the must into wine. The nitrogeneous compounds--vegetable
albumen, gluten--which are contained in the grape, and which are
dissolved in the must as completely as the sugar, under certain
circumstances turn into the fermenting principle, and so change the
must into wine. This change is brought about by the fermenting
substance coming into contact with the air, and receiving oxygen from
it, in consequence of which it coagulates, and shows itself in the
turbid state of must, or young wine. The coagulation of the lees takes
place but gradually, and just in the degree the exhausted lees settle.
The sugar gradually turns into alcohol. The acids partly remain as
tartaric