WINES. 323 



not in their content of sugar. The detection of wines made in any of 

 the above-mentioned ways is rather a difficult matter chemically, and re- 

 quires a knowledge of the composition of the pure product only obtained 

 from large numbers of analyses, extending over many years ; which 

 data, although existing in abundance in European countries, are, as yet, 

 lacking here, owing to the comparatively recent development of the in- 

 dustry and the small amount of work done on the subject. 



PRESERVATION OF WINE. 



The method par excellence for the preservation of wines is Pasteuriza- 

 tion, already alluded to in this report on malt liquors. Thetemperature 

 employed is from 50 to 65 C., and serves to completely destroy all 

 vegetable life in the wine. When a process so unobjectionable in every 

 way answers its purpose so admirably, it furnishes an additional argu- 

 ment in favor of the legal suppression of all chemical means of arrest- 

 ing fermentation by the use of antiseptics, &c. 



In regard to the use of antiseptics for the preservation of wines, I 

 cannot do better than to give the opinion of Prof. E. W. Hilgard, of the 

 University of California, who has probably done more than any other 

 one man towards placing the wine industry of California upon a scien- 

 tific basis, and whose work, published in the Bulletins of the State Ag- 

 ricultural Experiment Station, I shall have frequent occasion to refer to 



in the course of this investigation. 1 



* * # * 



Addition of antiseptics. As before stated, any of the fermentations above referred to 

 may be stopped by the action of the substances known as disinfectants, antiseptics, 

 or poisons. It should be unnecessary to argne regarding the admissibility of addi- 

 tions coming properly under the latter designation ; yet it is true that in Europe such 

 additions have not unfrequently been discovered in wines that, if left to themselves, 

 would soon have become iiusalable. It is not easy to draw the exact line between 

 poisons proper and those substances of which the use to a certain degree, and in a 

 certain way, may be considered admissible for the purpose of stopping undesirable 

 fermentations in wines. There is, however, one point of view which covers the whole 

 ground in connection with the use of wines for hygienic purposes, namely, that 

 whatever impedes fermentations also impedes digestion, which is itself in a great de- 

 gree a process of fermentation. The habitual use of wines containing antiseptics 

 will, therefore, inevitably result in functional derangements; and this is so well un- 

 derstood that in Europe the extreme amounts of those allowed at all is strictly lim- 

 ited by law. Thus in the case of sulphuric acid, one of the germicides most commonly 

 employed, partly in the form of the acid itself, but more commonly in that of plaster 

 (sulphate of lime) added to the grapes, or to the wine itself. The tartaric acid of the 

 wine is thus partially or wholly replaced by the sulphuric, tartrate of lime being 

 thrown down ; and thus badly made wines may be prevented from passing onward 

 into the improper fermentations, and becoming undrinkable. Salicylic acid is effect- 

 ual in much smaller quantities, and at one time it was thought that it would be ad- 

 missible to employ it freely. But while its effects upon the human system are not 

 apparent at first in most cases, yet the decided and unpleasant results often produced 

 in the case of persons of weak digestion have but served to emphasize the general 

 axiom, that wo cannot, with impunity, continue to introduce into the human body 

 substances foreign to the vegetable and animal products that have from time imme- 

 morial constituted the nutriment of mankind. If some persons are able to bear for a 



1 Report of Viticultural Work, 1883-'84, and 1884->85, page 32. 



