Читать книгу The Raisin Industry - Gustavus A. Eisen - Страница 55

—The curing of the grapes into raisins requires great care, and nowhere is any more skill shown than in Smyrna. Its raisins are the most beautiful of any, their splendid appearance and transparency being due to the process employed. The drying is done on drying-floors, which sometimes consist of the bare ground only, at other times of elevated beds of earth a foot or so high. When the soil is not naturally hard and suitable for drying-floors, it is first prepared by cutting off the weeds, and is then watered and packed until a smooth and hard surface is produced. This hard bed is sometimes left bare, and at other times covered with matting. In other places the grapes are dried on canvas, or on trays made of the Italian reed, or of grasses. These trays are raised on props three or four inches above the ground, and are loose so that they may be put on top of each other to exclude the sun, rain or fog, according to locality and season. Great stress is laid upon having the grapes fully ripe. Before thus exposed, the grapes are dipped in a solution of lye and oil, and upon the skill in this performance depends the beauty and value of the raisins. A potash is made from the ashes of the vine cuttings of the previous year. About one gallon of this potash solution is mixed with from twenty to twenty-five gallons of water, making a weak lye solution of a strength of from five to six degrees in Beaume’s “Lyeometer.” A similar strength would be obtained by dissolving one pound of pearl ash in ten gallons of water. Tubs of wood or zinc of the size of two and a half by two feet are used for dipping. To every such tub of twenty-five gallons is added from one-fourth to two gallons of olive oil. The latter quantity is used in the Karabournou district, where the finest raisins are made. When of proper strength as regards both oil and lye, the wash runs off from the bunches smoothly; when, again, the wash runs off in small globules, there is a deficiency of either oil or potash. The grapes are loaded in small baskets of twenty-five pounds each, and immersed in the wash for half a minute. They are then taken out and spread either on the ground or on trays or canvas. In the interior, where the sun is hot, the reed mats are placed on top of each other to exclude the sun. The same is also done if rain or fog is feared. After a few days of exposure, and when partially dried, the raisins are sprinkled every morning with the same lye solution, but without oil. The Sultanas are dried in from five to eight days. This dipping process is also used for the larger Muscatels, but the lye is made stronger, probably reaching the proportion of about one and a half pounds of pearl ash to five gallons of water. The carefully dipped raisins have a pure greenish amber color, and a peculiar flavor. They are worth twenty per cent more than undipped fruit.