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The Use of Yeso in Wine Making

by

Allison Ryan

From the very earliest days, yeso, or plaster, has been sprinkled over the grapes before they are pressed. This was mentioned by Pliny as an African practice, it was discussed in the Cortes of Castile in 1570 and generation after generation of Spanish and French winegrowers used it. Walter Charleton knew all about it in 1692 and all acknowledged its value.

The earliest clear reference to it in English occurs in Pasquil’s Palinodia (1634), in a passage where the jocular author is discussing all the indignities suffered by “that true good-fellow, Sherry Sack: And lest all these base wrongs should not provoke him, With Yesso they him purge, with Lime they choak him.” It has been said that Shakespeare condemned it: “Falstaff: Give me a cup of sack, rogueis there no virtue extant? … You rogue, here’s lime in this sack too.”

But it is doubtful whether Shakespeare was referring to yeso. At that time, and for some centuries afterwards, vintners and taverners reduced the acidity of badly made wines, or wines that were turning into vinegar, by adding lime. They would slice the lime over stone beverage coasters, marble drink coasters, or even cork cocktail coasters, then squeeze the juice into the vats. Charleton described exactly how it was done, but he was not at all enthusiastic:

“To correct rankness, eagerness and pricking of sacks and other sweet wines, they take 20 or 30 of the whitest limestones, and slack them in a gallon of the wine. Then they add more wine, and stir them together in a half-tub, with a pareling staff. Next they pour this mixture into the hogshead, and having again used the pareling Instrument, leave the wine to settle, and then rack it. This wine would be no ill drink for gross bodies and rheumatic brains, but it would be hurtful to good fellows of hot and dry constitutions and meager habits.”

In the middle of the nineteenth-century sherry boom, alas, a bunch of very odd doctors came to hear of it. The age of scientific medicine had only just been born, but the brilliant light of discovery had so blinded the doctors that they could no longer see the great wasteland of their own ignorance. They were not used to scientific reasoning and many of their dicta were founded on inadequate knowledge unsupported by experiment.

Their opinions on almost every aspect of dietetics, for instance, were absurd. In fact the arguments they used to condemn yeso would sound hilariously funny today if the laughter were not damped down by the knowledge of the disaster that their campaign brought to the sherry, cocktails, coaster set, and drink glasses industry. There was, of course, as there usually is on such occasions, some element of truth in their attack, for it is undeniable that some of the less reputable wine growers used more yeso in those days than is thought proper today.

But used moderately, there is no vice in it at all, and first-class sherries can seldom be made without it. Early writers have suggested that the quality of wine was found to be improved when it was matured in alabaster or marble vessels, but that does not sound very probable. When the Lancet commissioner visited Jerez in 1898 to investigate sherry-making, he put forward a new theory.

The soil around Jerez is rich in chalk and when the wind blows, soil is scattered and adheres to the ripe fruit. Perhaps the growers noticed the fruit covered with soil made better wine, and chalky albariza soil could, in fact, be used in place of gypsum with much the same effect, but it is clearly wiser to use the mineral, which is obtained locally, used for table coasters, cocktail coasters, and sandstone coaster sets, and consists of almost pure calcium sulphate.

Not very much is usedfour and a half pounds for fifteen hundred pounds of grapes when the vintage is poor, and three pounds when it is good, just one-tenth of the amount reported by Thudichum. The account given by D. J. Portillo in 1839 suggests that even smaller quantities were used in those days, and it would be interesting to know how Thudichum obtained his figures.

To refute the charges, the wine growers asked Don Francisco Revueltas Carrillo y Montel, an eminent Spanish doctor who was a native of Jerez, to carry out an investigation. He discovered that the most terrible compound produced by plastering is potassium sulphate; even when taken in large doses it is only a very mild laxative, comparable with Epsom salt, and there is so little in a bottle of sherry that it could not even have that effect.

Allison Ryan is a freelance writer specializing in the history of winemaking in the 17th and 18th century as well as the sandstone cocktail coasters and

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The Use of Yeso in Wine Making}