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Sophistication of Wine.
During the year at the request of the Public Health Committee I prepared
a report on the sophistication of wine, from which the following is abstracted: —
About 16¼ million gallons of wine are imported into this country every year; 9 millions,
chiefly port, coming from Portugal, 3¼ millions from France, and 3 millions from Spain.
Port and Madeira are defined by the Anglo-Portuguese Commercial Treaty Act of 1914
and the. Amending Act of 1916. The red Spanish wine imported resembles port. Interest
centres chiefly in French wines, which are produced in provinces much more familiar to us
than Spain.
There is abundant French legislation designed to protect the consumer.
Various measures have been passed indicating those vineyards which may use a certain
name such as Champagne and Bordeaux.
As regards the sale of French wines in this country it should be stated that the French
law, which strictly limits the use of designations on the label to their correct places of origin,
does not apply to French wine sold in England.
In 1907 the law declared as fraudulent all practices and manipulations which had had as
an object the alteration of the wine in its natural state in order to deceive the purchaser as
to its real quality or place of origin or to cure any disease present.
To grapes or to the must which is being made into wine, producers are allowed to add
calcium sulphate to the extent of not more than an amount equal to 2 grammes per litre of
potassium sulphate; calcium or ammonium phosphate may be added instead of plaster,
alkaline bisulphites may be added up to the amount of 20 grammes per hectolitre.
To wine itself might be added instead of alkaline bisulphites sulphurous acid not
exceeding more than 350 milligrammes per litre, of which 150 may be in the free condition.
The manufacture, display and sale of substances of unknown composition, whether to
improve or give a bouquet to the must or to wines, or to cure diseases or to make artificial
wines, is forbidden. Wines affected by disease were declared to be unfit for consumption if
they had an abnormal taste and contained more than a certain amount of volatile acid.
The commonest sophistication in France is the addition of water; it may often be
masked by the addition of other substances such as alcohol, organic acid or glycerine;
instead of water, substitutes for wine such as piquettes or vins de sucre or wine made from
raisins are often added. Colouring substances, in some cases derived from dangerous coal tar
products, have been used to colour diluted wine.
Another fraud is the decolouration of red wine to make it into a more expensive white
wine.
No glucose may be added to wines; the only method of sweetening wine permitted is the
addition of wines with must preserved by sulphurous acid. Sugar may, however, be added
to the grapes not beyond a certain stated amount provided that its use is declared.
Saccharine or any other substances such as dulcine and sucramine are not to be used. The