PURE YEAST CULTURE. 261 



followers could be made. These statements have, indeed, 

 been refuted ; and some of the opponents have, again, gone 

 too far in the opposite direction. A great fault in recent 

 writers on wine fermentation is, that they have made them- 

 selves only superficially acquainted with the investigations 

 which have been carried out in connection with the fermenta- 

 tion of beer ; for these constitute the groundwork, the greatest 

 advances having been made in this field. 



In 1890 two other Frenchmen, Martinand and Rietsch, 

 published their investigations, which closely followed the lines 

 of those carried out by Marx ; they prepared pure cultures 

 in the same manner as the latter had done. They have 

 established a laboratory for supplying wine-growers with 

 pure cultivated wine yeast of selected races. Kayser sub- 

 sequently published some valuable practical investigations 

 in connection with this subject. 



To Professor Miiller-Thurgau is due the credit of having 

 made the first step towards a rational method in wine fer- 

 mentation in Germany. He was then director of the station 

 for physiology of plants, at Geisenheim on the Rhine. A 

 report of his work in this field appeared in 'Weinbau und 

 Weinhandel, 5 published in Mayence. In 1889 some wine- 

 growers of this district, at his suggestion, selected a portion, 

 of the sound undamaged grapes, and which were, therefore, 

 also free from mould, and the must obtained from these was 

 fermented in the ordinary manner. This fermenting must 

 was then used to pitch the rest of the must. He obtained 

 a rather good result, and thus an advance was made. In 

 the autumn of 1890 the first experiments were made with 

 a pure cultivated yeast and, in fact, with a species which 

 Muller-Thurgau had separated from "Steinberg" wine. It 

 gave a good fermentation, and Schlegel, who reported on 

 it, therefore suggested that several trials should be made 

 with it in practice. With regard to the bouquet of wine, 

 Muller-Thurgau at first held exactly the opposite view to 



