Mr. Warner Allen Describes Its Diticultien By Ronext Lys, Tue Wines oF Enaser"" By I Ware ner Allen." Fisher Unwin, #8, 6d: will be safer for _teetotalers than for others to read Mr, Warner Allen's book. There iz nothing more dangerous for a Mer than} ood wine and a middling one. is, whatever people may say, one of the most expensive fruits that you can pluck from the tree of know: ledge. Yet here ix Mr. Warner inciting ws with the most. tem eloquence to abandon our easy-so-tolerance of the second-bent and to go in for a long course of training in the flavours of wines as thought Wwe were entering for a contest in the Olympic Games.
Most people, till they have read! Mr. Allen's book, will not probably' have realised how: difficult a job it to drink correctly. It may: even bbe news to them tha:, when they Joy the taste of wine, "it ix the which enjoyment' depend; tainly, the nose Jocks as} though it had the work. Mr. Allen tells us that with: out the nose we could not tell the difference between good wine and bad. He writes: p of wine in his mouth, he will promptly realise hhow limited are the possibilities of the sense of taste. "He will be conscious of clearly defined a salt, sweet, and bitter sensations, and also of that freshness which] is due to the wine being colder than the mouth, but these taste ud thermal sensations will leave im hopelessly in the dark ax to the wine he is drinking, unless it fs inexpressibly bad, and his en-Joyme: t will be reduced to. minimum. The average lover cannot say without hit note sight, of course, bei of Claret, Sherry, Burgundy, or Port whether it is' bad wine or ge provided that it is not so bad as} to affect the Fain organs of the! tongue.
At the same time, the for has its uses even for a wine-drinker.
The sensations the "velvet" and increase in intensity and. com plexity, as the liquid is hell in the mouth ard rolled round the! tongue. At the momen: of swal-Towing, new factors come play. For in that act, the soft! palate is suddenly raised, and the it, saturated with aromatic par-tides, is driven up under pressure from within' into the olfactory region. Again, when the act is completed, there is a deeper ex-Piration than usual, and the of the "pharynx, charged with' the odours exhaled by the-wine, foreed up into the same region, A Seri 1S Business Thic will give you some notion of what a serious business is the drink-jing of wine. 'The wine-drinker, indeed, if he wishes really to enjoy. wine, must learn to scorn delights! and live Iaborious days like a' poet. He must keep himself "fit" in every delicate nerve. He must. not smoke.
He must not fatigue himself. doubt if Mr, Allen would allow him to remain out of bed after 10 o'clock. He must keep his taste for good wine like a guarded flame, and, Ihoedless of the allurements of pleasure, must devote himself to a life fof arduous duties, Here are some of the necessary qualifications for the graduate in oenophily:
He must have an eye apprecinive of colour, a nose sensitive to the finest delicacies of perfume, and a tongue and palate capable Of distinguishing and enjoying the most subtle savours. Full appreciation cannot be attained if either the sense of smell or of taste ix impaired by catarrh or other indisposition. "Weariness any kind, even healthy muscular fatigue, is a foe to a discriminate ing taste; after violent exercise, all wines taste delicious, but. the enjoyment of them is an animal faction rather than an intel-Jeetual pleasure. The connoisseur will eschew tobacco for a reason able period before he tastes great wine, for it deadens the perceptive though for some mysterious reason there ix a friendly relation atween the clean taste of a Sherry and the charm of the goddess Nicotine.
Add to this that the artist in wine must be able to do that most di cult thing—order a meal:
It is not everyone, unfortunate ly, who can order a dinner with wines and dishes scien: ifically artistically arranged. For. the wine-lover the food should bbe a frame for the wines, for he peal of food is course and obvious and can make no claim to the subtle intellectual fascination provid. ed by a great wi At will be seen that Mr. Allen's ideal is an ascetic one, in the strietest sense of the word." He despises! the easy-going, the second-best. Te hax the Puritan's passion for per fection.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.