MODERN CHAMPAGNE DANGEROUS.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XII, Issue 12, 11 July 1884, Page 15

MODERN CHAMPAGNE DANGEROUS.

(From the Philadelphia, Times.) " Champagne is not what it used to be," said a wine merchant yesterday. " The old process prodnced pure, wholesome wine, but the new process does not. By the old process the juice of the grapes is allowed to ferment in tbe casks first. Fermentation, you know, is an action of nature that throws off impurities, and the more of it you have the better. After the caße fermentation the wine is bottled, with a little syrup, or, perhaps, a few raisins, added to produce a Becond fermentation. " The bottles are then pnt on racks in the vault with the necks down, so that the sediment falls upon the cork. Men go through the vaults every day for three years, and take up the bottles and shake them, so that each bottle is handled about twelve hundred times before it is put on tbe market. During that time the corks are changed three times. !Now, that is tbe way true champagne is made. The new process turns out an inferior article, containing nitrogen, and sometimes albuminous matttr as -well. It is the second or bottle fermentation that permits the nitrogen to escape, and completes tte work of good wine making. The new process omits this second fermentation, and puts the wine on the market in two months from the time they begin to make it. If a man drinks too much champagne tfow-a-daye, he has the most beastly headache to which the flesh is heir, and it generally lasts two or three days. That is caused by the nitrogen in the champagne, left there by the new process. " Some of the best known brands are now produced by the new process. You see, the demand is so great that the old process is too slow to snpply it, and it will be a cold day when French wine-makers get left in a matter of that kind. They not only rush the champagne Into the market in two months, but make it now very largely of green, scrubby grapes, and even of « ioilksour ' wines— anything to swell the profits. " When the Germans captured Alsace and Lorraine, which were the garden spots of France, they went through every old chateau and cellar, and drank all the champagne they contained. I've heard that in a few months the stock was as large as ever." " You think, then, that pure champagne is pretty hard to get now 1 " " I do, and unless you are very particular in your search the less wine of that name you drink the better for you."

Mr. Talmage is a well-known Protestant preacher of Brooklyn He knows the ways of " Spiritualists." In a late sermon he said • •« Spiritualism ruins the physical health, and is a marital and social curse. Orgies of obscenity have taken place under its wing. Women by hundreds have been pushed off into a life of profligacy. If spiritualism had full awing, it would turn this world into a pandemonium of carnality. It is an unclean and adulterous religion and the sooner it goes down to the pit from which it came up the better for humanity. Spiritualism produces insanity all over the land If yon put your hand in the hand of this influence, it will lead you down to hell, where there is an everlasting seance. Spiritualism. nuns the soul and makes men infidels."