TESTING WINE

Evening Post, Volume CVI, Issue 126, 24 November 1923, Page 16

TESTING WINE

TELEPHONE USED IN LATEST FRENCH METHODS.

Many connoisseurs of wines pride themselves on their ability to judge the sparling liquid'solely ,by taste. Others rely on the marks as they appear on the bottles. Still more take someone else's word for it that the wine is good, bad, or indifferent. French experimenters are now employing a somewhat curious -wine-testing d«*ice. By means of electric current linked up to a telephone the true characteristics of the wine are revealed. As soon as the wine is matui-ed a. few samples are taken at random. A tube is then filled with the liquid and placed in the circuit of a nearby telephone so that the current must pas 3 through it. Wine that is pure conducts the current, with the result that sounds in the telephone are heard and interpreted. Should the wine be adulterated with certain chemical salts then the current has difficulty in passing through, and the telephone interpretations are unsatisfactory. Different samples of genuine wine all conduct the current more or less. In some cases the telephone sounds are perfectly audible, while other wines, all good in quality', produce softer sounds according to their make-up. It is .practically impossible to miss detecting those wines that are faked by means of cheap alcohol, ■ sugar, dyes, and cheap fruit-juices. If ' the grapes were grown in France, then the locality can be gauged to a nicety, be it hillside or valley.—A Wine Merchant in the "Daily Mail."