The method par excellence for the preservation of wines is Pasteurization, already alluded to in this report on malt liquors. The temperature employed is from 50° to 65° C, and serves to completely destroy all vegetable life in the wine. When a process so unobjectionable in every way answers its purpose so admirably, it furnishes an additional argument in favor of the legal suppression of all chemical means of arresting fermentation by the use of antiseptics, etc.

In regard to the use of antiseptics for the preservation of wines, I cannot do better than to give the opinion of Prof. E. W. Hilgard, of the University of California, who has probably done more than any other one man towards placing the wine industry of California upon a scientific basis, and whose work, published in the Bulletins of the State Agricultural Experiment Station, I shall have frequent occasion to refer to in the course of this investigation.1

Addition Of Antiseptics

As before stated, any of the fermentations above referred to may be stopped by the action of the substances known as disinfectants, antiseptics, or poisons. It should be unnecessary to argue regarding the admissibility of additions coming properly under the latter designation; yet it is true that in Europe such additions have not unfrequently been discovered in wines that, if left to themselves, would soon have become unsalable. It is not easy to draw the exact line between poisons proper and those substances of which the use to a certain degree, and in a certain way, may be considered admissible for the purpose of stopping undesirable fermentations in wines. There is, however, one point of view which covers the whole ground in connection with the use of wines for hygienic purposes, namely, that whatever impedes fermentations also impedes digestion, which is itself in a great degree a process of fermentation. The habitual use of wines containing antiseptics will, therefore, inevitably result in functional derangements; and this is so well understood that in Europe the extreme amounts of those allowed at all is strictly limited by law. Thus in the case of sulphuric acid, one of the germicides most commonly employed, partly in the form of the acid itself, but more commonly in that of plaster (sulphate of lime) added to the grapes, or to the wine itself. The tartaric acid of the wine is thus partially or wholly replaced by the sulphuric, tartrate of lime being thrown down; and thus badly made wines may be prevented from passing onward into the improper fermentations, and becoming undrinkable. Salicylic acid is effectual in much smaller quantities, and at one time it was thought that it would be admissible to employ it freely. But while its effects upon the human system are not apparent at first in most cases, yet the decided and unpleasant results often produced In the case of persons of weak digestion have but served to emphasize the general axiom, that we cannot, with impunity, continue to introduce into the human body substances foreign to the vegetable and animal products that have from time immemorial constituted the nutriment of mankind. If some persons are able to bear for a time doses of salicylic acid that will completely stop digestion for some hours in the case of others, it is altogether unlikely that even the strongest person could continue its use indefinitely without injury. After some years of toleration, the legal prohibition of its use in articles of food or drink seems, in Europe, to be only a question of time; the more as in the case of wines, the process of "Pasteurizing" removes all legitimate reason for the longer continuation of a doubtful practice, liable to gross abuse.

1 Report of Viticultural Work, 1883-'84, and 1884-'85, page 32.

In view of this fact, it is curious that its use for the conservation of must in the unfermented condition has not only been extensively introduced in this country, but the resulting beverage is especially recommended, as a healthful and harmless substitute for wine, by those who consider alcohol as necessarily harmful in any form and quantity. A few years' experience will doubtless show how unfortunate has been the choice of a substitute in this case.

And again as follows :1

Finally, when wines are not entirely sound - and with the methods of fermentation now in vogue this is a very prevalent condition - the remedy to be applied should not lie in the use of antiseptics, sulphuring, salicylic or boracic acids, and the like, but in the simple and rational heating process devised by Pasteur, and named for him. The "Pasteurizer" should be an indispensable appliance in every wine-house; and its use, if properly understood and practiced, will at once do away with nine-tenths of all doctoring for unsoundness. The universal adoption of this simple and inexpensive expedient will save all losses now sustained in the shipment of our young wines, and will soon do away with the reproach that "California wines will not keep."

If in the face of all these facts and legitimate substitutes for medication there are those who desire to adhere to the old doctoring system, it is at least the right of those who do without them and furnish the consumers the pure product of the grape to have a legalized mode of expressing the fact on the packages.