Finding time for the finer things in life
Other artisans are regularly employed in staining the lower extremities of bottle-corks with a fine red colour, to appear, on being drawn, as if they had been long in contact with the wine.
The particular and separate department in this factitious wine trade, called crusting, consists in lining the interior surface of empty wine-bottles, in part, with a red crust of super-tartrate of potash, by suffering a saturated hot solution of this salt, to crystallize within them; and after this simulation of maturity is perfected, they are filled with the compound called Port wine.
The preparation of an astringent extract, to produce, from spoiled home-made and foreign wines, a "genuine old Port," by mere admixture; or to impart to a weak wine a rough austere taste, a fine colour, and a peculiar flavour; forms one branch of the business of particular wine-coopers: while the mellowing and restoring of spoiled white wines, is the sole occupation of men who are called refiners of wine.
We have stated that a crystalline crust is formed on the interior surface of bottles, for the purpose of misleading the unwary into a belief that the wine contained in them is of a certain age.
A correspondent operation is performed on the wooden cask; the whole interior of which is stained artificially with a crystalline crust of super-tartrate of potash, artfully affixed in a manner precisely similar to that before stated.
[Pg 80]Thus the wine-merchant, after bottling off a pipe of wine, is enabled to impose on the understanding of his customers, by taking to pieces the cask, and exhibiting the beautiful dark coloured and fine crystalline crust, as an indubitable proof of the age of the wine; a practice by no means uncommon, to flatter the vanity of those who pride themselves in their acute discrimination of wines.
These and many other sophistications, which have long been practised with impunity, are considered as legitimate by those who pride themselves for their skill in the art of managing, or, according to the familiar phrase, doctoring wines. The plea alleged in exculpation of them, is, that, though deceptive, they are harmless: but even admitting this as a palliation, yet they form only one department of an art which includes other processes of a tendency absolutely criminal.
Several well-authenticated facts have convinced me that the adulteration of wine with substances deleterious to health, is certainly practised oftener than is, perhaps, suspected; and it would be easy to give some instances of very serious effects having arisen from wines contaminated with deleterious substances, were this a subject on which I meant to speak. The [Pg 81]following statement is copied from the Monthly Magazine for March 1811, p. 188.
"On the 17th of January, the passengers by the Highflyer coach, from the north, dined, as usual, at Newark. A bottle of Port wine was ordered; on tasting which, one of the passengers observed that it had an unpleasant flavour, and begged that it might be changed. The waiter took away the bottle, poured into a fresh decanter half the wine which had been objected to, and filled it up from another bottle.
This he took into the room, and the greater part was drank by the passengers, who, after the coach had set out towards Grantham, were seized with extreme sickness; one gentleman in particular, who had taken more of the wine than the others, it was thought would have died, but has since recovered. The half of the bottle of wine sent out of the passengers' room, was put aside for the purpose of mixing negus. In the evening, Mr. Bland, of Newark, went into the hotel, and drank a glass or two of wine and water. He returned home at his usual hour, and went to bed; in the middle of the night he was taken so ill, as to induce Mrs. Bland to send for his brother, an apothecary in the town; but before that gentleman arrived, he was dead. An inquest was held, and the jury, after the fullest [Pg 82]enquiry, and the examination of the surgeons by whom the body was opened, returned a verdict of—Died by Poison."
The most dangerous adulteration of wine is by some preparations of lead, which possess the property of stopping the progress of acescence of wine, and also of rendering white wines, when muddy, transparent. I have good reason to state that lead is certainly employed for this purpose.
The effect is very rapid; and there appears to be no other method known, of rapidly recovering ropy wines. Wine merchants persuade themselves that the minute quantity of lead employed for that purpose is perfectly harmless, and that no atom of lead remains in the wine. Chemical analysis proves the contrary; and the practice of clarifying spoiled white wines by means of lead, must be pronounced as highly deleterious.
Lead, in whatever state it be taken into the stomach, occasions terrible diseases; and wine, adulterated with the minutest quantity of it, becomes a slow poison.
The merchant or dealer who practises this dangerous sophistication, adds the crime of murder to that of fraud, and deliberately scatters the seeds of disease and death among those consumers who contribute to his emolument.
If to debase the current [Pg 83]coin of the realm be denounced as a capital offence, what punishment should be awarded against a practice which converts into poison a liquor used for sacred purposes.