WINE IN THE MAKING.

Dominion, Volume 3, Issue 778, 30 March 1910, Page 8

WINE IN THE MAKING.

VISITING THE TARARUA VINEYARDS. [By Jenny When.] Meditatively one sipped the wine and in the intervals watched' the golden shafts that glimmered and glinted in • its clear amber depths. Fragrant, with the fragrance of a thousand scented things, glowing with the light kindled by months of ardent sunshine, it spoke of long past ages and of far-off countries. Like the magic liquid of the oldtime necromancer, it held in its depths pictures of the sloping hillside vineyards, steeped in the brilliant sunshine of Europe, of tho simple peasant lives that tended them, of monkish" figures and of dim monastic cellars, now crumbling in the dust, of festivals and of strange religious rites in times that are now but barely glimpsed. .

It seems a far cry from the wonderful old wines of Europe to those of Australia and of New Zealand, and equally from the wine one was drinking to the grapes ready for the gathering in the vineyard. It was exceedingly interesting being shown round and told everything about wine-making. Rows and rows of vines, each row as straight as Euclid's straight line, stretched away over several acres of land, their lower branches weighted with heavy purple clusters, the bloom on them asyet unprofaned by the hands of the small boys. They were perfectly ripe, and the grapes simply massed togetner as thick as they could possibly grow.' It had been an excellent year for them. Two varieties of-grape are grown here, the Hamburg for eating and'the Pinot for the wine-making.. The Pinot varifity is much ; smaller than the other, but is wonderfully sweet,-and from it are made at least four kinds of -wine—claret, hock, port, and a golden dessert, Phenau by name. The more dead ripe the fruit becomes the better the wine, one is told, 'and, if some' are a trifle withered up, they are looked upon with an approving eye as they add to ■> the richness of colouring and the flavour of the wine'later on.- •'

There is great joy in the . hearts of the small boys who are selected for the picking, and there is no lade of offers for the wdrk. A batch'of about eighteen set to work early in the morning,' and work on till lunch time, when another one arrives to take their places. They are ■at liberty to eat as -many grapes as. they like (it would be a rather difficult matter ,to stop them), and then, if they get ill, >as they often do, it really does not matter as it is usually near the end of their work. At one time they were engaged for the day, but experience taught Mr. Lamb, the owner of the vineyard, that it waß a bad: plan. They invariably: became lazy, or ill later, on in the day, and both time ana money were wasted that way. The latter plan works much better. Before the gathered grapes are crushed they are first weighed and then placed, stems and all, upon tables , fitting over the crushing machines —machines that remorselessly mangle their beauty, and that are fixed into an opening in the floor of. the loft. That is. the beginning of things.. The machine is something like a mangle turned upon its side. The handle is kept going by ounningly utilising a, motor cycle, and a perfect cascade of juice, skins.and all, streams from between the rollers, into the huge vat be10w..., There are three machines, and three ,vats capable, of holding ;;two hundred or mora gallons of juice, so, as'may bp imagined, the scene is ah extremely busy one. Wicked old Omar Khayaam would have been iii. the seventh Heaven of delight over 'such a scene, 1 eten though he missed but little connected with wine when alive. Probably, could he have, been there he would'have 'sat himself down, written some more of his' haunting-:bitter-sweet verses, 'and then plunged headlong into the biggest of the vats. For about, seven- days the liquid is left in the vats to ferment, the top'of it (when fermentation has gone on longonough) being an encrustation of dry skins, pips, and stems. Every day it has to be-stirred twice with a curious .long stick, looking as though it had. been fitted with about a dozen metal lainj)'shades, and, finally,' when time' is up, it-is strained'into huge casks, holding two hundred and forty-four gallons or more, and-the year in-which tho wine is made painted on the outside. If a white wine is being - made, however, it is at once strained-after the crushing, and put away into-casks, where it shortly begins to ferment. There' is a wine—a . beautiful rose red in colour— for which, so far, there has been verylittle demand, and yet it is; according .to a noted French authority, infinitely superior to its deeper-coloured brothers. - . People, somehow or other, seem to- care for the darker coloured wines much more, quite overlooking the flavour, and general excellence of the rosecoloured one. In making the. latter it has to be left for about two days only and then strained, when most of the colouring substance is left in a sediment at the bottom.

Perhaps one of the most interesting things about the wine-making process is to see the alcohol distiller at work. The cask of wine is'fixed away overhead, a tube connecting it with the distiller directly below. Underneath the distiller a kerosene lamp burns steadily at a certain temperature, and in'the distiller itself, which is divided into three compartments, through which a worm or pipe passes, a somewhat complicated performance takes .'place, vapourising, condensing—a wandering up and down and in and. out of the compartments by the liquid—which finally emerges in the form of alcohol, 47 over-proof, from one pipe and from another, simply the leeß'of wine. It is this alcohol which'is proving to be the thorn in thepath of the vigneron. The police -exercise a vigilant guardianship .over it.- Anything over two gallons of alcohol have to be kept in a still of which the police keep the key, Mid as all sweet wines' when being made must have,'besides pure cane'sugar, a certain proportion of alcohol added to them, a great amount of calling at the police station takes place. After the wine is made it is put away to remain in undisturbed seclusion till it has matured. The time which a wine takes to mature varies, according to the kind that is made, and the temperature in which it is kept.. Generally speaking, it is about , five years, with a temperature of from -50 to 58 degrees. Though one hardly thinks of it in that .way, .wine is just like any, other living organism: it has itß time of youth, of_ maturity, and is also subject to the law of death. A higher temperature matures a wine more quickly, but hardly improves it, and, indeed, might even kill it. -._ The busy time for the vigneron- extends from , about March to November, for. after the grapes are gathered, and the sheep have been turned in for a while there is tho ground to be ploughed, the pruning of tho vines to be seen to, tying them up and snipping them, much of which no one but himself can attend to. In. the summer time a deadly vendetta' is waged against the birds from early morning to sunset, and it is not alwayß tho biros who get the worst of tho battle.