It Costs No More Either In Labour Or In Plant To
Produce A Good Wine Than To Continue Your Present Rude Method Of
Production.
You may double the value of your wine by an improved system,
without adding materially to your expenses; you will then have a large
margin for profit, which will increase in the same ratio as the quality
of your wine."
The grower will reply, "We must have roads for carts if we are to
substitute barrels for goat-skins. So long as the mule-paths are our
only routes we must adhere to the skins, which we acknowledge are
destructive to the quality of the wine and reduce our profits. Give us
roads."
This is a first necessity, and it is simply ridiculous to preach reforms
of quality to the cultivators so long as the present savage country
remains roadless. It is the first duty of the government to open the
entire wine district by a carefully devised system of communication: for
which a highway rate could be established for repairs.
If this simple work shall be accomplished the goat-skins will disappear;
or should some cultivators cling to the ancient nuisance, a tax could be
levied specially upon wine skins, which would ensure their immediate
abolition. A new trade would at once be introduced to Cyprus in the
importation of staves for casks, and the necessary coopers. The huge
jars that are only suggestive of the "Forty Thieves" would be used as
water-tanks, and the wine would ripen in casks of several hundred
gallons, and be racked off by taps at successive intervals when clear.
The first deposit of tannin and fixed albumen would remain at the bottom
of No.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 323 of 524
Words from 87841 to 88126
of 143016
