THE HOME OF WINE.

New Zealand Illustrated Sporting & Dramatic Review, Volume XVIII, Issue 1053, 12 May 1910, Page 21

THE HOME OF WINE.

Dr. Stephen Paget a while ago laid it down that Pasteur had taught England to brew good porter and ale. This seemed a strange statement, considering that England has always been held to be the home of beer and France of wine. But, curiously enough, M. J. Chailie has just sent to the French Academy an interesting study on the “Evolution of the Brewery in France,” in which h e shows that the “brasserie” is not a modern introduction from Germany, but of the oldest date in France. Without going back to Cato and Pliny the Elder, Charlemagne and Saint Louis both legislated on beer, and all through the Middle Ages the Royal Edicts show that great interest was attached to brewing. Louis XIV- even went so far as to forbid foreigners to brew or sell beer. In 1735 brewing was a great source of revenue to the State (says the “Globe”), but in the middle of the eighteenth century, beer seems to have been supplemented by wine in France, as, indeed, it was among the wealthier classes in England, and, to some degree, in Germany. But wine not being a native production in England, of course, affected the general consumption of beer very little, whereas in France beer-drinking was extinct in most parts of the country until about a quarter of a century ago. Now the wine-growers complain that beer is ousting wine, especially in the north- » west of France, and this was one of the causes of the disturbances in the Midi last year..