HEARINGS BEFORE COMMITTEE ON AGRICULTURE. 237 
important one before this committee to-day, because this is one we are 
asking additional money for—another thing which we have examined 
very carefully is wine. .That is another class of imports in which 
adulteration 1s very largely practiced. There are two kinds of adultera- 
tion of wine. One we have not touched at all and the other is the 
chemical adulteration. That is, the addition of preservatives, etc. 
Now, the old Latins were accustomed to hang up before every wine 
house a green bush to show that there was wine for sale. Hence the 
origin of the term, ‘‘A good wine needs no bush,” because when you 
find where good wine is sold people go there anyway. 
So the advertising of the purity of a wine is a stock in trade which 
should be sate-guarded by the persons who are entitled to use it, anda 
good wine does not only need no bush but it needs no preservative. 
So we are perfectly confident by actual experience that the preserv- 
atives are added to the wines which are so poor in quality that they 
will not bear transportation without such preservatives. Hence the 
presence of a preservative in wine, aside from the fact that it is injuri- 
ous to health in itself, is an indication that the wine itself is of inferior 
quality. Therefore, especially in countries where the laws forbid it— 
that is France and Germany, and those are the great wine coun- 
tries—preservatives are not used, and we do not allow any wines to come 
into this country that have a preservative in them, except in one éase. 
There is one case where we do allow a preservative to be used in wines, 
and that is the case of white wines, where the universal treatment has 
been for years to burn sulphur in the cask before the wines are put in. 
That is the universal practice in the case of certain white wines of the 
Sauterne type and others, not only in Italy but in France and in Spain, 
and also in California. We have determined by analysis just how 
much sulphurous acid is introduced in the wine by that process, and 
then we have fixed a standard, under authority of Congress that allows 
the Secretary of Agriculture to do so, above the maximum which we 
have found, so that we certainly include all genuine cases of wines that 
are made in this way. We admit that much sulphurous acid as a cor- 
rect trade practice. 
Mr. Avams. Do you find preservatives in any beer imported into 
this country from Germany ? 
Mr. Witey. We have not taken up that subject at all. 
The CHarrman. I will say, Mr. Adams, that this law has been 
operative only since the Ist day of July, only six months. 
Mr. Winey. We find only 6 or 7 milligrams—to use an_expres- 
sion we are familiar with, and which is allowed by act of Congress 
now, of sulphurous acid or dioxide—the fumes of burning sulphur; 
that is what it is—in 100 cubic centimeters. That is about an ordinary 
glass of wine, such a drink as would ordinarily be taken by a man, in 
a small wine glass; that is the maximum found when wines are treated 
this way. But we have fixed our standard, following the Swiss and 
Austrian and German standards, at 20 milligrams, which allows a 
wide latitude. Now, if white wines come in with more than 20 milli- 
grams to 100 cc. we exclude them, because it is evident that the 
sulphur has been put in there in a different way from the legitimate 
treatment—put in there for the purpose of preserving a poor stuff. 
We have found 60 or 70 or 80 milligrams in 100 cc.; that is we have 
found the wine almost saturated with the sulphurous dioxide; you can 
smell and taste sulphur in it, and it is unfit for use. 
