Since the Spanish sacks have been common in our taverns, which for conservation are mingled with the lime in the making, our nation complains of calentures, stone, dropsy, and infinite other distempers not heard of before this wine came into common use.
Henderson observes that according to the Custom House Books of Oporto, for the year 1812, 135 pipes and 20 hogsheads of wine were shipped for Guernsey. In the same year, there were landed at the London Docks alone 2,545 pipes and 162 hogsheads from that island, reported to be port wine.
The subject of adulteration is much too large to attempt to do any justice thereto; it must suffice to draw attention to one or two specimens. The authorities shall be disinterested.
The following receipt for Port is from a wine guide:—
Take of good cider 4 gallons; of the juice of red beet, 2 quarts; logwood, 4 oz.; rhatany root brewed, ½ a pound; first infuse the logwood and rhatany root in brandy and a gallon of cider for a week; then strain off the liquor, and mix the other ingredients; keep in a cask for a month, when it will be fit to bottle.
In the Mechanics’ Magazine is given the chemical analysis of a bottle of cheap Port:—
Spirits of wine, 3 oz.; cider, 14 oz.; sugar, 1½ oz.; alum, 2 scruples; tartaric acid, 1 scruple; strong decoction of logwood, 4 oz.
Mr. Cyrus Redding, in his work on Modern Wines, lets us into the secrets of cheap Sherry:—It ‘is mingled with Cape wine and cheap brandy, the washings of brandy casks, sugar candy, bitter almonds, &c. The colour, if too great, is taken out by the addition of a small quantity of lamb’s blood; it is then passed off for best sherry.’
Professor Mulder, in his Chemistry of Wine, tells that during the process of wine-clearing such aids as albumen, blood, cream, gypsum, marble, nutgalls, lime, salt, gum-arabic, sulphuric acid, &c., are furnished.