Note 31 — WINES.

Colonel Leake described the ordinary country wine as a villainous compound of lime, resin, spirits of wine, and grapes, without body or flavour. Nor were things better in the days of old. Dugald Dalgetty, a German Ensign, writing from Athens in 1687, says, “Would that I could exchange a cask of Athenian wine for a cask of German beer!” The vin du pays is impregnated with resin or turpentine now as formerly, whence, according to Plutarch, the Thyrsus of Bacchus is adorned with a pine cone. Pliny says it favours the preservation of the drink.