THE WINE CROP IN FRANCE.

Manawatu Herald, Volume III, Issue 39, 14 January 1881, Page 4

THE WINE CROP IN FRANCE.

The wine crop of* 187$ was about twenty-five million, hectolitres, or i thirty million hectolitres below the average of the' last ten yeara The j annual consumption in France is j from forty to forty-five million hecto- : lilSrop. Everybody expected- a rise in ! Jthe. price of wine, and some con-; sciery-ious dealers laid in a stock from abroff. The rise in price, however, . never-came. and the market remained • we*_l, supplied. The reason was that tbe natural deficit was compensated tdi by artificial means, Wine was manufactured out of dry grapes. A ll the raisins to be found in the Eastern ports were bought up, and wine manufactories sprang np all over the country. Around Paris alone there are seven steam power wine manufactories. The cost of a cask of raisin wine is about fifty, francs, and it was sold*at one hundred francs, thus giving, a profit of a hundred per centum. But the competition has now become such that the price of raisins has risen from twelve francs to seventj'- • five francs the one hundred kilo, grammes. The consequence i 3 that raisins have been abandoned, and wine is now manufactured out of glwose , a sugary matter obtained from the potatoes out of the residues of molasses, out of rotten apples, dried prunes, dates, figs, and all kinds of j refuse fruit, and oven out of beet root. These abominable liquids ure colored artificially, and coupes more or less with >panish wine or white wine. The adulteration and manufacture cf wine has attained such • vast proportions 'that the principal dealers, whq had taken measures to supply the market royally with harvest wine from foreign countries have taken steps to put a stop to tho gigantic fraud. The imposture has reached such a pitch that not onethird of the wine drunk ut I'aris is real grape wine.