ESHS/HSS Annual Meeting

Sweet poison? Sensory knowledge and chemical testing of wines in the eighteenth-century Low Countries

• In Event: Tried and (Con)tested: Sensory Knowledge and Food Production, 900-1800

English Abstract

The seventeenth and eighteenth centuries saw a great increase in the production and consumption of preserved foods in Europe, stimulated by a complex mix of urban growth, global expansion, and technological innovation. While the ability to keep perishable foodstuffs for longer could increase food safety and security, not all food preservation methods were beneficial to health.
Wine for example could be preserved longer by fortification with brandy, but the acrid taste of spoilt wine could also be sweetened by adding lead products. Both processes resulted in sweet wines, but whereas fortified wines were no more harmful than other alcoholic drinks, the consumption of leaded wine could result in potentially fatal lead poisoning. This led to distrust of increasingly popular fortified wines, and to attempts by consumers, producers, traders, and academics to develop both sensory and chemical methods to assess the quality and possible adulteration of preserved foodstuffs like wine.
This paper explores the case study of a Dutch professor of chemistry who published a treatise on a chemical test detecting lead in sweet wines in the vernacular in 1745, and the (lack of) impact this had on the sensory evaluation of sweet wines by consumers, producers and traders. It raises the question if and how such early forms of public outreach brought the plural epistemic worlds of consumption, trade and academia closer, and if they did anything for the public acceptance of a contested science such as chemistry.


The research is part of the five-year ERC Consolidator project PRESERVARE: Large-scale conservation of perishable foodstuffs in the Low Countries, 1600-1800, which started in 2024 and is led by Marieke Hendriksen at the Huygens Institute at the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW).

Author

• Marieke Hendriksen, Huygens Institute, Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW)