Note G — PART I. WINES AND SPIRITS.

The crusting of wine in the natural way generally takes place in about nine months; but, among the artizans of the factitious wine-trade, it is accomplished in a much shorter time. Those ingenious gentry line the inside of the bottles they intend to fill with their compound called wine, by suffering a saturated hot solution of super-tartrate of potash, coloured red with a decoction of Brazil wood, to crystallize within them. Others of that honest fraternity, who dislike trouble, put a tea-spoon full of the powder of catechu into each bottle, and by this artifice soon produce a fine crusted appearance of “aged wine.” This simulation of maturity is often accomplished by the humbler dealer by covering the bottles with snow, or by exposing them to the rays of the sun, or by keeping them for a few days in hot water. Where the casks are to be bottled off by the purchaser, or in his presence, they are stained in the inside with the artificial crystalline crust of super-tartrate of potash, as a proof of the age of the wine.