Gooseberry wine is often passed off for champagne; the very bottles are bought up for the purpose of filling with gooseberry wine, and are then corked to resemble champagne. It has also been made from white and raw sugar, citric or tartaric acid, water, home-made grape wine or perry and French brandy—cochineal or strawberries have been added to imitate the pink. In fact vegetation has been exhausted, and the bowels of the earth ransacked to supply trash for this most vicious practice.
Redding observes, in his valuable and most interesting work on the History and Description of Modern Wines, that the clumsy attempts at wine-brewing made a century ago would be scorned by a modern adept. It is said that when George the Fourth was in the “high and palmy” days of early dissipation, he possessed a very small quantity of remarkably choice and scarce wine. The gentlemen of his suite, whose taste was hardly second to their master’s, finding it had not been demanded, thought it was forgotten, and, relishing its virtues, exhausted it almost to the last bottle, when they were surprised by the unexpected command that the wine should be forthcoming at an entertainment on the following day. Consternation was visible on their faces; a hope of escaping discovery hardly existed, when one of them, as a last resource, went off in haste to a noted wine-brewer in the city, numbered among his acquaintance, and related his dilemma. “Have you any of the wine left for a specimen?” said the adept; “O yes, there are a couple of bottles.” “Well then, send me one, and I will forward the necessary quantity in time; only tell me the latest moment it can be received, for it must be drunk immediately.” The wine was sent, the deception answered; the princely hilarity was disturbed by no discovery of the fictitious potation, and the manufacturer was thought a very clever fellow by his friends. What would Sir Richard Steele have said to so neat an imitation, when in his day he complains that sinister fabrications were coarsely managed with sloe-juice? the science of adulteration must then have been in its infancy.]
FOOTNOTES
[716] Plin. lib. xxiii. cap. 2. Palladius, Octob. 18. edit. Gesneri, ii. p. 994.
[717] Proofs of this will be found in Columella De Re Rustica, lib. xii. c. 19, 20. Cato De Re Rust. cap. cv. and cap. cvii., and Plin. lib. xiv. cap. 21.
[718] Proofs that the ancients mixed their wine with sea-water may be found in Pliny, lib. xxiii. cap. 1. and lib. xiv. cap. 20. Celsus exclaims against it, lib. ii. cap. 25. Dioscorides, lib. v. cap. 7, 9, &c. p. 573. See Petri Andreæ Matthioli Commentarii in sex libros Dioscoridis de materia medica. Venetiis, in officina Erasmi Vincentii Valgrisii, 1553, fol.
[719] Plin. lib. xiv. cap. 20. This method of proof is given more circumstantially in Geopon. lib. vii. cap. 15.
[720] Pallad. August. c. ii. vol. ii. p. 977.
[721] [The solvent action of water upon lead is highly interesting on account of the very general use of leaden pipes and cisterns lined with this metal. From the researches of Lieut.-Col. Yorke, published in the Philosophical Magazine for August 1834 and January 1846, it would appear that a bright leaden vessel containing pure water, such as distilled water, and exposed to the air, soon becomes oxidized and corroded; oxide of lead being readily detected in solution by means of sulphuretted hydrogen and other sensitive tests; but river and spring water exert a much less or no such solvent power, the carbonates and sulphates in such water preventing it. It is on this account that leaden vessels are used with such impunity, the crust which forms upon the metal entirely preventing all further action. However, as this crust consists partially of carbonate of lead, which is a very dangerous poison, great care should be taken on cleaning or scraping such cisterns to avoid using the water in which particles of the salt may have become diffused. Leaden cisterns are sometimes rendered unsafe in consequence of iron or zinc pipes being soldered or let into them, thus giving rise to galvanic action, which greatly facilitates the solution of the lead.]
[722] Plin. lib. xiv. cap. 20. The same author relates a great many arts practised in regard to wine.