No considerable quantity of wine being exported to the United States from the La Rochelle district, my inquiries have been wholly confined to the quality of the brandy produced in this region whence nearly the entire supply of our country is drawn. In the year 1881 the export of brandy from France to the United States was of the declared value of $1,338,563, of which a part, valued at $1,210,851, was shipped from this district, chiefly from the town of Cognac. The conclusion is inevitable at the outset that the production of genuine brandy from the white wine of the country has substantially ceased on account of the failure of the vine. In a trip for personal observation through the "Grand Champagne" region of the department of Charente, I was unable to find a single vineyard; the destruction caused by the phylloxera is complete, and not a barrel of wine will be made this year in that famous country. In the region of the so-called "Petite Champagne" a few vines may still be seen, and in the "Bois," where formerly a pure brandy, but of relatively inferior quality, was produced, the wine crop of the last three years has been of comparatively trifling importance. Every-where wheat-fields occupy the soil formerly covered by the vine. In the whole department of the Charente 197,500 acres of land, all in the zone of inferior brandy, remain nominally devoted to vineyards; but two thirds of this area is already attacked by the phylloxera. In the Lower Charente, where also a portion of the white wine was formerly distilled, 375,500 acres of vineyards still exist; but 125,000 acres are rendered in great measure unproductive by the progress of the disease, which is this year making its appearance upon the coast itself, where it has hitherto been supposed that its approach was not to be dreaded. The average annual production of wine was formerly 176,000,000 gallons in the two departments. For the last three years it has been as follows: The production of wine has therefore fallen to less than one third of its former average, and in the Cognac region it has ceased. The production of genuine brandy has diminished in a much larger proportion, since the 50,000,000 gallons of wine reported for 1881 include the red wines not used for distillation, and the high price of the small quantity remaining fit for making brandy prevents its general use for that purpose. FALSIFICATION OF BRANDY. Production having ceased three years ago, the only genuine brandy sent to the United States is drawn from the stocks accumulated in former years. These accumulations are still quite important, amounting, it is claimed, to over 2,000,000 gallons. But less than a third of the shipments to the United States are made by houses that have refused to renew their supplies by purchasing or concocting the new brandy, which is, in the majority of cases, necessarily falsified. A very large part of the brandy we receive from France is this falsified article, and, in my opinion, not more than one third of it can be regarded as above suspicion. Not a week passes without shipments to New York or Boston of brandy which is delivered in the cask, all expenses paid, on board the steamer at Havre or Bordeaux, for less than the genuine article costs here. During the present quarter, for instance, many shipments have been made at 175 to 180 francs the hectoliter of 22 gallons, while no brandy, even the so-called "1881," is sold at less than 205 francs by the rural proprietors. In case of prices like the above there is not the least room for doubt, all the disinterested authorities whom I have consulted here being unanimously of the opinion that an article furnished on such terms cannot contain a drop of genuine brandy. In fact, I do not understand the merchants to sustain a different view; they only say that their American customers demand an article at a given price, and that they furnish it as required. The greater part of the shipments, however, especially from Cognac, are at prices calculated to inspire confidence. But unhappily this test is quite insufficient; for within the last three years the brandy trade has undergone a complete transformation. Even the merchants who honestly desire to purchase a pure article, and who profess to have done so, cannot be sure that they are not deceived. As is probably well known, these merchants do not generally distill brandy themselves. They buy it of the proprietors of the vineyards, each one of whom has a still. Now these latter have become extremely skillful in the manipulation of the alcohol and the drugs of which the brandy of to day is made, as I have learned from conversations with the mayors and curés of the rural communes. A priest inhabiting a little village in the "Grand Champagne" country, and perfectly conversant with the subject, said to me: "There is no business in the world in which fraud is more universal or more successful. Our country people have become more than a match for the merchants." The designation under which the merchandise is delivered to the public is a still less satisfactory safeguard against falsification. Merchants now deliberately make brandy of any year required or of any quality. The mention of the years 1849 or 1876, for instance, in an invoice or on the label of a bottle, may be regarded with perfect assurance as having no further meaning than that the article in question is presumed to have the taste or color of the brandy produced in the year mentioned. The same remark may be made in reference to the popular designations, "Cognac," "Fine Old Cognac," and especially "Fine Champagne." The greater part of the brandy of to-day is prepared from alcohol obtained from grain, potatoes, or beets. Coincident with the failure of the white wine was the appearance of large quantities of alcohol in the ports of the Charente, the most of it coming from Germany. This importation increases from year to year, and is to-day 46 per cent. greater than in 1880. Whoever will take the trouble to look may see barrels of this German alcohol piled up in the store-houses of the merchants. A simple process of reduction and admixture of drugs, a little pure brandy, or the dregs of wine to give the brandy taste, and the color of the "wood," ordinarily suffice, with the brand of Cognac, to create a beverage which finds a ready sale in foreign countries. All French brandy might properly and perhaps ought to be excluded from the United States on sanitary grounds. There is a strong presumption against the purity of a very large part of it, and it is unfortunately almost impossible to detect the fraud by chemical analysis, especially where the various mixtures now employed are passed through the still. The reputation of a few great houses that now place on the market only what they draw from their own stocks, accumulated before 1879, might be a sufficient guaranty of the purity of their merchandise. But even with respect to them, it may be said that they dose their brandies with caramels and other substances in order to adapt them to the taste of their English and American customers. They would never venture to send to the United States a strictly pure brandy as it comes from the still, for our amateurs would regard it as a harsh and inferior and perhaps falsified article. In any case, these houses could hardly be excepted by name from the operation of such measures as might be taken to protect the public health. A general measure, excluding the article entirely, would seem, therefore, to be the only effective defense against the admission of a poison for which our people pay one or two million dollars a year, besides the import duty, which, in case of the impure article, is over 100 per cent. of its invoice value. GEORGE GIFFORD, UNITED STATES CONSULATE, Consul. La Rochelle, June 5, 1882. THE BREW OF THE WORLD. Gambrinus, a legendary king, regarded in Germany as the inventor of beer, and variously represented in the old traditions,' has the greatest propularity among all beer-drinking people. "No personage in Belgic tradition has been more recommended than King Gambrinus."" To this day, at Jena and other university towns, the students annually choose the one of their number who drinks the most beer for their "beer king," whom they induct into a chair placed under a picture of Gambrinus, and who henceforth becomes an authority in all matters relating to the consumption of beer. In all countries where the art of brewing is held in honor, the portrait of Gambrinus-sometimes a rough wood-cut rudely colored, sometimes a fine steelengraving tastefully decorated-is hung by his devotees in every smoking room. The type is a Flemish cavalier of the Middle Ages, decorated with royal and ducal insignia, holding in his hand a glass of foaming beer. During the present century, the manufacture and consumption of beer have been greatly extended, making it a large commodity in the commerce of the world. At the Vienna Exhibition, in connection with the samples of the "Wines of the World," the devotees of Gambrinus assembled samples of beers manufactured all over the world, which were subjected to the inspection of connoisseurs of the brewing art. The magnitude of the industry and the infatuation of the worshipers of Gambrinus impressed all observers. The brews of the world are not exempt from the crime of adulteration." An old tradition makes him the son of the German king, Maosus, and husband of Isis, the reputed founder of Cambrai, near Hamburg. It is absurdly stated, in the "Annales Bojorum," of Aventinus, that he lived about 1730 B. C., and was probably initiated into the mysteries of brewing by Osiris, to whom Diodorus of Sicily attributed its first invention. Tradition in Holstein makes him the son of a giant who passed over the sea on a sea-horse, to take possession of Flanders and Brabant. Another version makes Gambrinus only a corruption of Jean Primus Duke of Brabant, (1251-94,) who, to gain popularity, took an honorary title from the Guild of Brewers in Brussels. (See Larusse's "Grand Dictionnaire Universal." Supplement) Dr. Coremans, a learned Belgian. 3 See chapter on the "Beer Invasion." |