Louis Pasteur, “Études sur les vins. Première partie: De l'influence de l'oxygene de l'air dans la vinification.” Comptes Rendus …, Paris, 1863, volume 57, no 23, pp 936-942 in the issue of pp 925-964; offered with:
____. “Deuxiéme partie: Des altérations spontanées ou maladies des vins, particulièrement dans le Jura”, Comptes Rendus, Paris, 1864, volume 58, no. 3, pp, the paper on pp 142-150 in the issue of pp 141- 180
Both extracts from larger bound volumes of the Comptes Rendus. Good, solid copies. $300
These are the first two publications on Pasteur's practical studies on wine(s) that would culminate in 1866 in the publication of his Etudes sur la Vin (dedicated to Napoleon III) a result of his work from 1856 on the fermentation and spontaneous generation and the study on vinegar and wine. For this work in the ready application of his findings he was awarded the 1866 Gold Medal of the Comite Central Agricole de Sologne.
- “Studies on Wine. In December 1863 Pasteur published the first of the papers that culminated in his Études sur le vin ... In that first paper, dealing with the role of atmospheric oxygen in vinification, he sought to establish that the aging of wine resulted from the slow penetration of atmospheric oxygen through the porous wook casks into which new wine was decanted. By virtue of this slow oxidation, he claimed, new wine grows less harsh and acid to the taste as it becomes clearer and lighter from the to the taste as it becomes clearer and lighter from the precipation of dark coloring matters.
- "In his second paper Pasteur examined the “alterations” or “diseases of wine, especially wine from the Jura, his native department. Reviewing the familiar disease of “turned,” “acid” “ropy” or “oily “ wine, he associated each with a microscopic organism. He summarized the results of his first two papers by nothing that “wine, which is proudced by a cellular vegetation acting as a ferment [namely, yeast], is altered only by the influence of other vegetations of the same order; and once removed from the effects of their parasitism, it is made or matured principally by the action of atmospheric oxygen penetrating slowly through the staves of the casks.”
- “Since the diseases of wine are due to the development of foreign orgnaisms, which are present before the wine becomes sensibly “sick” and the germs of which are bottled with the wine, the crucial task was to find a way of killing these germs without damaging the taste or other qualities of wine. On 1 May 1865 Pasteur told the Académie des Sciences that his attempts to cure diseased wines with chemical antiseptics had been less than satisfying, but that he had found a perfectly reliable and practical procedure for preserving healthy wine: by heating it in closed vessels for an hour or two at a temperature between 60° and 100° C. As a result of small-scale preliminary trials, Pasteurprogressively lowered the temperature to between 50° and 60° C. Within this range, he claimed, wine could be perfectly protected from disease at minimum risk to its taste, bouquet, and color.”---"Pasteur, Louis." Complete Dictionary of Scientific Biography, vol. 10, Charles Scribner's Sons, 2008, p 366.
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