What is Brandy?

Abstract

YOUR article published under the above heading in NATURE of November 3 raises some interesting points. The writer clearly fails to appreciate any difference between brandy and alcohol, for he says, “if the brandy is being made from damaged wine the rectification must be most carefully conducted, and may have to be pushed to a point that the alcohol is obtained almost pure, that is to say, almost free from non-alcohol.” Now if brandy is merely alcohol, as is here plainly implied, why produce it from grapes or wine at all? Similarly, why produce whisky from malted barley, or rum from cane sugar? The fact is that the genuine article is, and has always been in history, the product of the pot still. The pot still produces alcohol plus “non-alcohol,” the patent still pure alcohol. It is true that brandy, whisky, and rum contain alcohol, but the alcohol of the patent still or rectifying still is not whisky, brandy, or rum. Pot still spirit from “damaged” or sick wines would be nauseous and undrinkable, but pot still spirit from wines of repute possesses the qualities which distinguish genuine brandy chemically and physiologically from rectified spirit. It is well known that the effects of pure alcohol on the blood pressure and lymph circulation are modified very considerably by the presence of other constituents in spirits. These other constituents are the “non-alcohol” which you describe. To call rectified spirit or patent still spirit brandy is about as reasonable as calling skimmed milk milk. In England the word brandy ought to be confined to a pot still spirit produced from the wine of grapes, and should never be applied to alcohol distilled in a patent still from “damaged wine” or from likely enough worse material. Such a definition, if adopted would be “calculated to facilitate the work of the unfortunate public analysts who may be called upon to express an opinion as to the genuineness of a sample of brandy,” and the question, what is brandy? analytically speaking, would no longer “await solution.” Recent analyses to which you refer have at any rate reduced a large section of the brandy trade to the confession that much of the stuff they sold never had its origin in the grape at all. The public house trade now posts notices in the bars that it cannot guarantee the brandy sold to be genuine grape spirit.