CONCENTRATED WINE.

New Zealand Illustrated Sporting & Dramatic Review, Volume IX, Issue 694, 25 June 1903, Page 22

CONCENTRATED WINE.

(“ The Leader.”)

A recent invention is one that may posaiblv affect the export of Australian wine by bringing in a new competitor into the Loqdon market. For several years there has been a great over-production of thin, jight bodied wines in France, through infonM* culture of heavy bearing varieties grafted upon vigorous American stocks. These wines are marketed when only a few months old, as they are too thin to keep for any length o f time, and form the vin ordinaire of the better class mechanic

.and bourgeois. They are almost always consumed from the wood, and are to be found in all French restaurants. The price is only a few pence per gallon wholesale in fact, the consumer can purchase from the merchant quite a paiatab’c Gunk if not too fastidious for hl, and oven less:

per gallon. The outlook for uie Fnncb grower has not been a happy one, a;- the I production of this class of wine has greaty exceeded the demand. Growers have ©Ven attempted distilling their wines on a large scale to get rid of their stocks, but with very poor financial success, nine . spirit does not seem destined to successfully compete with grain spirit, except under the very exceptional surroundings of the Cognac district. The demand for heavier wines has been steady, and the price remunerative, and this is causing growers to devise a means of suiting their wines to this demand. The manager of Chateau Tahbilk, Mr IL D’A. Burney, informs us that a machine has lately been invented which the constructor, Mons. F. Fouche, of Paris, claims will concentrate wine without destroying the bouquet and flavour. To quote his own words: —“The apparatus extracts the surplus water from the wine without affecting the colour or quality, but only subtracting a portion of the volatile acidity when desired. ’ The operation can reduce any growth of wine to a type that can be completely, uniform as far as alcoholic strength is concerned, and almost so in colour, extract, and fixed acidity.” The apparatus is a somewhat complicated one, that would be impossible to describe in detail without diagrams. Briefly, the wine is partially vaporised as

soon as it enters • the machine. All the alcohol is extracted from the vapour and condensed back into the wine, while the aqueous vapour is condensed separately, and run out. of the machine, as it consista only of water and acetic acid, should any be present. The whole process is carried on in a vacuum, and the degree of heat required to vaporise the wine is, therefore, much reduced,, and in consequence the constructor claims that there is no abnormal taste given to the )rine. This latter point is more readily believed when it is understood that only a portion of a season’s crop would be treated, as the machine concentrates to a greater extent than is usually required. For instance, if it were required to make up 3 500 gallons of wine at 21 per cent, proof from a wine at i?i per cent. 900 gallons would be concentrated t o an alcoholic strength of 26 per cent., and this reduced in bulk to 600 gallons and bleaded with 900 gallons untreated, and so making a total Of 1500 gallons at 21 per cent. The cost the constructor claims to be roughly 2s per degree per 100 gallons. Thus, in the example given, it would cost id per gallon. This if a machine concentrating only 800 gallons of wine per diem is used ; if the machine is larger the cost would be somewhat less. The cost includes necessary labour and fuel at French prices', and also an allowance for a sinking fund to pay for the cost of the apparatus, which, no* doubt, is considerable. This estimate is sufficiently low for light 'bodied wines to be sold as full bodied wines at a profit. . . Mr Burney, to whom we are indebted for the details just submitted, points out that the market in. London for Australian wines is based upon our supplying a class of generous full bodied wines produced by practically no other country. Should the Tight French wines, when concentrated, meet with the requirements of the London market the Australian export trade might find in them a formidable opponent, as it would be impossible to compete in price with the heavy yields and cheap labour of the south of France. The thin French wines that are specially intended for treatment by this concentrating machine contain, however, a large percentage of fixed acidity, which would presumably be increased by concentration, which would thus render them unpalatable to the British consumer. This is a difficulty which the constructor of the concentrating apparatus does not seem to explain, luckily perhaps for the Australian grower.