The best and readiest means of detecting the presence of artificial colouring in wines we owe to the ingenuity of M. Didelot, a chemist in Nancy. A tiny ball of gun-cotton supplies us with the necessary test. Dip it in a glass of the suspected wine, then wash it, and it will resume its whiteness if the wine be pure; if not, it will retain the ruddy colour due to the treacherous fuchsine. The addition of a few drops of ammonia gives us a violet or a greenish hue when vegetable matters have been made use of to impart the desired colour.
Other and more elaborate tests on a larger scale have been devised; and with the aid of acids and ethers of peroxide of manganese, and notably of chloroform, the tricks of the wine-forger have been completely exposed. Even benzine forms, with fuchsine and its fellows, a red jelly that swims on the surface of the discoloured liquor, and by skilfully conducted processes, a precipitate, varying in colour, can in every instance be obtained. Government and the public have now taken alarm, and it may be hoped that before long the adulteration, by means of fuchsine at all events, will be effectually checked. It must be remembered that growers and dealers were probably in the first instance quite unaware of the dangerous nature of the convenient drug which gave so tempting an appearance to their stock in trade; but publicity, and the recent seizures of falsified wines which have taken place at Paris, Nancy, and Perpignan, may probably serve to enlighten them upon the subject.
So long as men are what they are, those who can hit will give blow for blow, literally or metaphorically as the case may be, and standers-by will delight in the passage-at-arms.
Certainly it is pleasant to hear a sayer of ill-natured things put down by an intended victim of his cynical tongue. 'The great assembly,' as Manningham terms it, must have greatly enjoyed the discomfiture of a certain Lord Paget, who, oblivious of his own mean origin, thought to extol his superiority by asking Sir Thomas White what he thought of the quality of the cloak he wore. 'Truly,' replied the worthy alderman, 'it seems to be a very good cloth; but I remember when I was a young beginner, selling your lordship's father a far better, to make him a gown when he was sergeant to the Lord Mayor; and he was a very honest sergeant.'