142 PASTEUR: THE HISTORY OF A MIND 



action of heat, as we have seen when considering spon- 

 taneous generations. Moreover, there was a chance, 

 and Pasteur had not failed to perceive this possibility, 

 that it might not be necessary to kill the ferments, 

 which, considering the slowness with which they or- 

 dinarily develop, are under unfavorable conditions in the 

 wine. To weaken them by the heating so that they could 

 not multiply would perhaps be sufficient. All this was 

 encouraging. But, on the other hand, the employment 

 of even a minimum quantity of heat appeared to have 

 its grave dangers. Everybody has drunk warm wine 

 and knows that it is no longer wine. Those ancestors 

 whom we invoked a short while back recommended 

 one to drink cooled wine. Only Bordeaux wine, they 

 added, is improved by conveying it into the dining room 

 four hours in advance of the guests. 



Yes, Pasteur might have replied to these objections: 

 but all those wines which one hesitates to heat are wines 

 recently drawn off and aerated. Would it be the same 

 for the bottles which would be heated only after having 

 allowed their contents time to transform into combined 

 oxygen the gaseous oxygen absorbed during the racking? 

 No one could reason more correctly, and it is thus that 

 Pasteur, at the first step, and almost without groping, 

 by proceeding always in the direct light of his former 

 experiments, reached that procedure of heating to 

 55 C. for which such a noble future seemed reserved 

 when it first appeared. 



At this time, in 1867, the prosperity of viticulture 

 was great; France reckoned more than 2 million hectares 

 planted in vines and her wines, the dissemination of 

 which was favored by commercial treaties, seemed 

 destined to reach all the markets of the world. To give 

 to an industry operating upon 50 million hectolitres, 

 and worth 500 million francs, the means of avoiding 



