“All persons moderately conversant with the subject are aware, that a portion of alum is added to young and meagre red wines, for the purpose of brightening the colour; that Brazil-wood, or the husks of elderberries and bilberries, are employed to impart a deep rich purple tint to red port of a pale, feint colour; that gypsom is used to render cloudy white wines transparent; that an additional astringency is imparted to immature red wines by means of oak-wood sawdust, and the husks of filberts, and that a mixture of spoiled foreign and home-made wines is converted into the wretched compound frequently sold in this town by the name of _genuine old Port_.... A _nutty_ flavour is produced by bitter almonds; fictitious Port wine is flavoured with a tincture drawn from the seeds of raisins, and the ingredients employed to form the _bouquet_ of high-flavoured wines, are sweet brier, orris-root, clary, cherry-laurel-water, and elder flowers. The flavouring ingredients used by manufacturers, may all be purchased by those dealers in wine who are initiated in the mysteries of the trade. And even a manuscript receipt-book for preparing them, and the whole mystery of managing all sorts of wines, may be obtained on payment of a considerable fee.” (P. 95, 97.) “The particular and separate department in this factitious wine-trade, called _crusting_, consists in lining the interior surface of empty wine bottles, in part, with a red crust of super-tartrate of potash, by suffering a saturated, hot solution of this salt, coloured with a decoction of Brazil-wood, to chrystallize within them.” (P. 101, 102.) But the crusting is not confined to the bottle. “A correspondent operation is performed on the wooden cask; the whole interior of which is stained artificially with a chrystalline crust of super-tartrate of potash, artfully affixed in a manner precisely similar to that before stated. Thus the wine-merchant, after bottling off a pipe of wine, is enabled to impose on the understanding of his customers, by taking to pieces the cask, and exhibiting the beautiful dark-coloured and fine chrystalline crust, as an indubitable proof of the age of the wine; a practice by no means uncommon to flatter the vanity of those who pride themselves in their acute discrimination of wines.” (P. 103, 104) This our readers will excuse, for it is pleasing to read of impositions which are practised on the sagacious. But, says Mr. Accum, “Several well-authenticated facts have convinced me, that the adulteration of wine with substances deleterious to health is certainly practised oftener than is, perhaps, suspected.” (P. 104, 105.)