Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 26.djvu/535

Rh naturally, the more tartrate it contains, and the greater the liability to this source of sickness.

This, then, is the temporary sickness to which I have referred. I have proved the truth of this theory by filtering such sickened wine through laboratory filtering-paper, thereby rendering it transparent, and obtaining on the paper all the guilty disturbing matter. I found it to be a kind of argol, but containing a much larger proportion of extractive and coloring matter, and a smaller proportion of tartrate, than the argol of commerce. I operated upon rich new Catalan wine.

This brings me at once to the source or origin of a sort of wine-cookery by no means so legitimate as the Pasteuring already described, as it frequently amounts to serious adulteration.

The wine-merchants are here the victims of their customers, who demand an amount of transparency that is simply impossible as a permanent condition of unsophisticated grape-wine. To anybody who has any knowledge of the chemistry of wine, nothing can be more ludicrous than the antics of the pretending connoisseur of wine who holds his glass up to the light, shuts one eye (even at the stage before double vision commences), and admires the brilliancy of the liquid, this very brilliancy being, in nineteen samples out of twenty, the evidence of adulteration, cookery, or sophistication of some kind. Genuine wine made from pure grape-juice without chemical manipulation is a liquid that is never reliably clear, for the reasons above stated. Partial precipitation, sufficient to produce opalescence, is continually taking place, and therefore the brilliancy demanded is obtained by substituting the natural and wholesome tartrate by salts of mineral acids, and even by the free mineral acid itself. At one time I deemed this latter adulteration impossible, but have been convinced by direct examination of samples of high-priced (mark this, not cheap) dry sherries that they contained free sulphuric and sulphurous acid.

The action of this free mineral acid on the wine will be understood by what I have already explained concerning the solubility of the bitartrate of potash. This solubility is greatly increased by a little of such acid, and therefore the transparency of the wine is by such addition rendered stable, unaffected by changes of temperature.

But what is the effect of such mineral acid on the drinker of the wine? If he is in any degree predisposed to gout, rheumatism, stone, or any of the lithic-acid diseases, his life is sacrificed, with preceding tortures of the most horrible kind. It has been stated, and probably with truth, that the late Emperor Napoleon III drank dry sherry, and was a martyr of this kind, I repeat emphatically that high-priced dry sherries are far worse than cheap Marsala, both as regards the quantity they contain of sulphates and free acid.

Anybody who doubts this may convince himself by simply purchasing a little chloride of barium, dissolving it in distilled water, and adding to the sample of wine to be tested a few drops of this solution.