COLONIAL WINES.

Dunstan Times, Issue 298, 10 January 1868, Page 3

COLONIAL WINES.

(Communicated.) We have just seen and tasted some South Australian Wine at a Gentleman's house in Clyde recently imported from Adelaide through a private channel, it carried the first prize for wine, at the late Intercolonial Exhibition in Melbourne, and after paying prime cost, freight, carriage &c. and an import ditty of four shillings a gallon, (eight shillings a dozen) cost 3 in Clyde less than thirty six shillings a ozen—the retail price on the Gold fields of common ale and Porter, brewed in Dunedn. The quality of the wine seems excellent, and of a kind peculiar to South Australia, but somewhat resembling genuine Con-tan-tia, yet unlike it too, but a. totally different article from so called Ports, Sherries, &c. commonly sold as wines in these Colonies - more especially on the Goldfields of this Colony, where the character of the liquors are so notoriously bad, that the medical profession ascribo the great majority of cases of mental derangement to them alone, as well as numerous cases of death and illness. An extensive use of pure and natural wine is a matter affecting the moral, social and sanitary interests of the community as may be lea nt from the fact, that in those countries where wine is the ordinary beverage of the people, there is less intoxi" cation and a hatter tone of morality among the working classes, than there is among the corresponding classes of Great Britain and her Colonies. Wine-natural wine, which is exhilirating, rather than intoxicating, should be considered an article of necessity rather than one of luxury, a thing for daily use rather than indulgence, an article which should be drunk with our food, and not separately. As an illustration of the perceptible in. crease in the taste for natural wines in England, where the duty is only one shilling a gallon owing to the enlightened policy of Mr. Gladstone, the late Mr. Cobden, and a few others, we may state that prior to 1860 the importation was only 695, 913 gallons> it attained in 1866 the comparatively large quantity of 3,365,802 gallons or nearly five times more than in 1860. On the characteristics of wine, that is natural wine not „doctored" and "loaded" wines composed with spirit*, Professor Lie. big the greatest authority of the age, writes, "Wine as a restorative, as ameansof refreshment when the powers of life are exhausned as a means of correction and compensation where misproportion occurs in nutrition, and the organism is deranged in its operation, and as a means of protection against transient organic disturbances, wine is surpassed by no product of nature or art" and again, "In no part of Germany' do the apothecaries establishments bring so low a price as in the rich cities on the Rhine ; for there wine is the universal medici no for

the healthy as well as for the sick, and it is as milk to the aged"—Of spirits Professor Liebig writes that he who drinks them, "draws as to speak, a bill on the health, which must be always renewed, because for want of means he cannot take it up ; he consumes his capital, instead of his interest ard the result is. the inevitable bankruptcy of his body." Dr, Druitt in a little work written by him entitled "Report on cheap Wines" says,—"But it is not only in a medical point of view, but as a friend of sobriety and morals, that 1 venture to advocate the larger use of wine— i.e.-pure wine, as a beverage. There are a large number of townspeople, and especially of women, engaged in sedentary occupations who cannot digest he beer which is so well suited to our outdoor labouring population. The very tea which is so grateful to their languid, pasty, flabby tongues, from its astringent and sub-acid properties, and which also comforts heir miserable nerves, has this intense drawback that, when taken in excessive draughts, and without a due allowance of substantial food, it begets dispepsia, and that worst form of it which impels the sufferer to seek a refnge in the gin bottle—Cheap wines would cut off the temptation to gin, and with an equal bulk of water would be found in many cases a happy substitute for tea.