BAD WINE.

South Canterbury Times, Issue 3111, 22 March 1883, Page 3

BAD WINE.

Teetotallers might discover a very good argument for übstenation in an analysis of wines just made at the Municipal Laboratory of Pans, iue details are impressive, and are worth reproducing in fall. 1881, 3001 samples were analysed, the result being that 279 ■were found to be good, 991 passable,and 1731 bad ; while in the first five months of the present year 1869 samples were analysed, out of which 372 were good, 613 passable, and 814 bad, 145 of these latter were pronounced decidedly injurious. A liquid is largely sold as wine which is manufactured of water, vinegar, and logwood, with a tenth part of common wine from the South of l! ranee to cover the fraud. Not only is wine falsified by adding cider, molasses, /guear, tartaric, acetic, or tame acids, sulphuric acid, lime, alum, bitter almonds, leaves of the cherry, laurel, ,&e., but it is largely manufactured without the slightest pretence of being . associated with the grape. The result . of a fermentation of the juice of the grape is imitated by means of fermenta- ■ tion with water and sugared substances, snch as syrup of fecula, driedif runs, and raw sugar, or of juniper berries, , coriander seeds, and fresh rye-bread. After fermentation the liquor is racked . off, and if it is not sufficiently coloured, an infusion of red beet or myrtle berries is added. In order to correct the r slizl i lias— l mlm

enough to use litharge, thus affording to the drinkers the probable chance or an attack of colic. In the departments M Herault. Pyrenees, and Var lime iused to heighten the color ot the wine and reduce the lees, but by so doing chemical changes supervene, with the effect of a purgative and even corrosive nature to the liquid. Alum is principally used to produce the syplto which belongs to Bordeaux wine. The color ing matters generally used are dwart ana black elderberries, myrtle and phytolacca berries, Brazil and Campeachy wood, beet juice, rose mallow, oochineal, fuchsine, or aniline red, and more especially grenat, the residue o the fabrication of fuchsine, of red or violet aniline, and rose am!mo sorts. Some of the coloring wine tinctures sold under fancy names contain arsenic, ine most successful of all these coloring matters is the brown grenat, which imitates as nearly as possible the natural color of wine, while its elements are very nearly the same. Ihe logwood appears to be most in favor in the Paris manufacture of wine, as it gives young wine the color of the old; while beet, fuchsine, and cochineal are the usual agents in the South of Prance, and the elderberries are most used in Portugal and Spain. It is the bounden duty of the French Government to take immediate steps to put a stop to this shameless adulteration. There has been within recent years an enormous increase in the consumption of claret in the country ; and most of us have been disposed to regard it as a step in the right direction.