Wine bluffs
Miss Vandyke Price is up in arms Against a monstrous Bluff: A book on4naking wines at home
Like some commercial stuff.
What! — make a wine that really tastes Like those one buys and knows,
With concentrate of grape, plus things Like honey, lemons, sloes?
And yet . . . and yet . . . before the claim Provokes her final curse, Just think how wines that fooled the French
Were made with something worse.
"CORSICAN WINE 'SULPHURIC ACID, SUGAR AND WATER'
A fresh blow has struck the reputation of the French wine industry. This time two big wine firms in Corsica are accused of selling wine 'made largely from sugar, glycerine, sulphuric acid and water.' . . . the mixture, allegedly prepared by chemists working with the winegrowers, had no suspicious taste. Indeed . . . recognized wine tasters were asked by officials of the suppression service to try the 'wine.' Unknowingly, they pronounced it 'very satisfactory.'" — The Times, February 26, 1974.
(author of Wine Man's Bluff)
The Lower House, North Aston, Oxon.
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