102 MICROBES, FERMENTS, AND MOULDS. 
Wine affected by Ropiness.—White wines, and 
especially champagne, are more often affected by this 
disease than red wines. It is more apt to attack wine 
which has little alcohol and is deficient in tannin, 
and under its influence the liquor becomes turbid, flat, 
and insipid, ropy, like white of egg, and it loses its 
sugar. 
This change is effected by a filamentous microbe, 
Fig. 65.—Disease of ropiness in wine, affecting champagne, and caused by a bacterium 
which assumes two forms: the figure 8, and chaplets. 
even more like the lactic ferment (Fig. 58) than the 
one we have just described, since it is likewise formed 
of very minute globules, united in chaplets, which 
are, however, more attenuated than those of the lactic 
ferment. These filaments form a species of feltwork 
through which the liquid slowly filters; hence its 
oily appearance. It is probably a bacterium (Fig. 55). 
