[TRICKS IN THE WINE TRADE.]
Amongst articles of daily consumption in this and other countries, perhaps none is more adulterated than wine; and although the attention of the public has been from time to time directed to the evil, the evil seems to continue unabated.
Hamburg has long enjoyed a notoriety for the manufacture of sherry—a merely fictitious article, in which no real sherry has any existence, but which, imported to England, passes muster as genuine wine. Latterly, to the discredit of France, false wines have been largely fabricated and vended in that country; for it is as easy, if not easier, to imitate French wines as the wines of Spain or Portugal. It is well known to persons in France, that Nancy, the ancient capital of Lorraine, bears a bad name as having been the first to set the evil example of a systematic adulteration of French wines, white and red. Lorraine, Alsace, and Luxembourg are notoriously the seat of a very extensive manufacture of spurious wines, some of which owe nothing whatever to the vine. Imitations of the most renowned brands of champagne, such as Rœderer or Clicquot, are here concocted from rhubarb-juice and carbonic acid, made cheap and sold dear. Light clarets, strong St Georges, Macon, and the rough red Roussillon, can be turned out to suit all tastes, merely by re-fermenting squeezed grape-husks that have already done duty, in company with the coarse sugar extracted from potatoes. Various colouring matters are added, such as caramel, cochineal, and the more formidable fuchsine, and the highly tinted compound is ready for the market.
Narbonne, nestling amidst her vineyards, is not much behind northern Nancy in audacious falsification of the strong natural wines that form the staple of her trade. It has long been the custom with these south of France wine-growers to press the grapes a second time with the addition of some water, and to brew a light, thin, vinous liquor, which was doled out in rations to the farm-servants, or sold at an exceedingly low rate. It has lately occurred to them that this second-hand commodity, dosed with tartaric acid, thickened with treacle, and artificially coloured, would pass muster with heedless consumers as good ordinaire; and as good ordinaire, or Wine of the Plains, it is accordingly vended. First class and even second-class wines, it is well to bear in mind, are invariably the vintage of some hill-side or mountain slope, but even the low-lying vineyards of a wine-growing country yield a growth which has deservedly a good name with buyers of moderate means. This good name, unfortunately, the landowners and métayers of Southern France seem resolved to throw away, in their hurry to be rich.
What most perturbs, not merely the doctors and scientific men of France, but the French government as well, is the deleterious character of the colouring matters employed in palming off mock or inferior wines on the unwary public. The syndicate of Narbonne have formally complained to the Minister of Agriculture that Portuguese, Italian, and Spanish wines, all coloured by elderberries, enter freely into France. But the growers of the Narbonne district have themselves learned to make liberal use of the elderberry and of other ingredients less innocuous. Fuchsine, which is extracted from coal-tar, and of which immense quantities are employed, is the agent in the worst repute; but it imparts a fine ruby-red, and is therefore in high favour. Fuchsine, which is prepared by adding arsenical acid to aniline, is admitted on all hands to be poisonous, although the authorities have as yet hesitated to take vigorous action with regard to its abuse.
There are other colouring principles less dangerous than fuchsine, but still injurious to health, which are in daily requisition for the manipulation of wines. There is caramel, an extract of mallow; pink althæa; Mexican cochineal; rosaline, derived from tar; colorine, and many a fantastically named essence, sometimes of vegetable, sometimes of mineral, or even animal origin. The ammoniacal cochineal which gives so brilliant a dye to the scarlet cloth of an officer's uniform, is decidedly inappropriate as an adjunct to wine. Each ounce of cochineal, it should be known, represents several thousands of cochineal insects boiled down to a pulp, and was once excessively dear. It is cheaper now; and in the July of last year a single grocer of Narbonne sold ten thousand francs' worth of this scarlet colour to wine-growers of the village of Odeillan alone, for the artificial tinting of poor and pale wines.
M. Paul Massot, who in the French Assembly represents the department of the Eastern Pyrenees, has taken the leading part in a sort of crusade for the repression of the new frauds in the wine-manufacture, and has been able to lay before the government a mass of authentic evidence on the subject. It was proved, for instance, by careful analysis that a quart of one especial kind of wine, reddened by elderberry juice, contained no less than half an ounce of alum. It was proved also that the red extract of coal-tar, known as grenate, and formerly flung away as refuse, now commands a high price as an ingredient in the composition of that fuchsine which is now tossed by the hundred-weight into wine-vats.
The best and readiest means of detecting the presence of artificial colouring in wines we owe to the ingenuity of M. Didelot, a chemist in Nancy. A tiny ball of gun-cotton supplies us with the necessary test. Dip it in a glass of the suspected wine, then wash it, and it will resume its whiteness if the wine be pure; if not, it will retain the ruddy colour due to the treacherous fuchsine. The addition of a few drops of ammonia gives us a violet or a greenish hue when vegetable matters have been made use of to impart the desired colour.
Other and more elaborate tests on a larger scale have been devised; and with the aid of acids and ethers of peroxide of manganese, and notably of chloroform, the tricks of the wine-forger have been completely exposed. Even benzine forms, with fuchsine and its fellows, a red jelly that swims on the surface of the discoloured liquor, and by skilfully conducted processes, a precipitate, varying in colour, can in every instance be obtained. Government and the public have now taken alarm, and it may be hoped that before long the adulteration, by means of fuchsine at all events, will be effectually checked. It must be remembered that growers and dealers were probably in the first instance quite unaware of the dangerous nature of the convenient drug which gave so tempting an appearance to their stock in trade; but publicity, and the recent seizures of falsified wines which have taken place at Paris, Nancy, and Perpignan, may probably serve to enlighten them upon the subject.