1919 Home made beverages

Wines and Wine Making

This wine is a much better menstruum and preservative medicine for organic substances than sherry itself. 2. — Gelatine, 1 oz.; distilled water, 10 oz.; sherry wine, 7 gal. Dissolve the gelatine in the water by heating, add the solution to the wine, stir well and allow it to remain 6 hours, then filter. Before using the wine in wine of coca, cinchona or beef, wine and iron, to bring it up to the strength of stronger wine as recommended in the Phar- macopeia, add 6 oz. alcohol to each gallon. Red or white wine may be detannated after the above formula. Detartarization. — Rhenish wines, even of the best growths, and in the finest condition, besides their tartar, contain a certain quantity of free tartaric acid, on the presence of which many of their distinctive properties de- pend. The excess of tartar is gradually deposited during the first years of the vatting, the sides of the vessels be- coming more and more encrusted with it, but owing to the continual addition of new wine and other causes the liquid often gains such an excess of free tartaric acid as to acquire the faculty of redissolving the deposited tar- tar, which thus again disappears after a certain period. The taste and flavor of the wine are thus excited, but the excess of acid makes the wine less agreeable and probably less wholesome. Under these circumstances the best corrective is pure neutral tartrate of potash. When this salt, in concen- trated solution, is added to an acid wine the free acid combines with the neutral salt and separates from the liquid under the form of the sparingly soluble bitartrate of potash. If to 100 parts of a wine which contains 1 part of free tartaric acid we add lj^ parts of neutral tartrate of potash there will separate on repose at 70 to 75° F. 2 parts of crystallized tartar, and the wine will then contain only }4 part of tartar dissolved, in which there is only 0.2 part of the original free acid, 0.8 of the original free acid having been withdrawn from the wine. This method is particularly applicable to recent must and to wines which contain little, if any, free acetic acid. When this 167