Foreign Wine-Making

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Mar 27, 1884

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 10, No. 13.

Foreign Wine-Making.

A CORRESPONDENT of a London journal, who had indulged romantic ideas of the wine-press, writes from Hungary as follows, after visiting a winery:—

"I had had dim ideas of snowy garments dyed purple with the juice of the grapes, and the delicate feet of the girls treading the luscious fruit under the shade of vine-clad trellises in the open air. In my imagination there were fountains of pure water washing away all stains and impurities, and long processions of men and maidens bearing the fruits on their heads, all decked with flowers, and singing and dancing to the sound of harps and flutes. Had I not seen pictures to that effect, read political opinions of it, and had I not always been encouraged by my childhood's instructors in this delusion? And now, behold, there were not any snowy garments at all; the Hungarians had on coarse shirts and loose drawers tucked above the knee, and I came to the conclusion that they had never seen any fountains of pure water, and wouldn't have known the use of them if they had. For there was a kind of grimness about them, burned by the sun, which seemed to indicate that they never washed either themselves or their clothes. One black-eyed, purple-legged fellow, with the grape-juice just drying on his bare feet, seized a basket, and ran off down the steps and into the vineyard, and presently returning with a load of the fruit, shot it into the press, and, with all the dust and dirt of the road still clinging to his feet, mounted, and began to tread the grapes, and soon stood almost knee deep in the liquor which, having served him as a sort of foot-bath, was to be the drink, perhaps, of future generations of refined fastidious palates. Having seen this I became melancholy, and preferred to leave the rest of the manipulations of earth's choicest nectar in obscurity."