In wine circles, sulfites are often cited as having been in use since antiquity. Yet, when you investigate further, you realize that their use is actually relatively recent. So I thought I should include some of the information on sulfites that I came across while researching this book.
When wine was first “discovered” around 8,000 years ago, somewhere in southern Anatolia (now eastern Turkey) or Transcaucasia (Georgia, Armenia), it didn’t happen with added sulfites. In fact, even the Romans, who appeared on the wine scene around 5,000 years later, still didn’t use it. “I haven’t seen anything definitive,” says Dr. Patrick McGovern, Scientific Director of the Biomolecular Archaeology Project at the University of Pennsylvania and also author of Ancient Wine: The Search for the Origins of Viniculture. “When we have done tests on residues found in amphorae, we have never found elevated sulfur levels that would suggest they were putting it in intentionally.”
Christophe Caillaud, from the Musée Gallo-Romain de Saint-Romain-en-Gal in the Rhône, agrees. “The Ancient World had various uses for natural sulfur. The Romans used it for purification and sanitizing purposes, such as the bleaching of material by the fullers of Pompeii, which Pliny the Elder mentions. Cato mentions its use to combat caterpillars, as well as in a recipe for fixing the coating of wine jars, but it seems that the Ancients missed out on the use of sulfur for the preservation of wine, a practice that only became widespread in the 18th and particularly 19th centuries.”
I even enlisted the help of Hans-Peter Schmidt, a natural grower in the Alps, who started his career as an archaeological ecologist, and his conclusions were much the same. “Wine writers always cite Homer, Cato, and Pliny, but none have specific links to wine except for Pliny’s Natural History (Book XIV, Chapter 25), where he mistakenly cites Cato (About Agriculture, Chapter 39). It would take much more time and research to be sure, but I think sulfur was probably not used in either Greece or Rome for wine conservation or vessel sterilization.” Instead, the Romans used a variety of other additives (including plant concoctions, pitch, and resin) to correct faults or improve wine of poorer quality. As Columella writes in his De Re Rustica, “The most excellent wine is one which has given pleasure by its own natural qualities; nothing must be mixed with it which might obscure its natural taste.”
The earliest references I found to “wine plus sulfites” are in German texts from the Middle Ages and relate to barrel sterilization and not to wine preservation. “Sulfur appears to have been introduced in Germany in 1449 and many attempts were made to control it,” says Paul Frey, an American organic wine producer who has researched the sulfite question extensively. This resulted in its being banned entirely in Cologne in the 15th century, for example, on the grounds that “it abused man’s nature and afflicted the drinker.” At around the same time, in Rothenburg ob der Tauber, the German Emperor decreed against what he saw as “the adulteration of wine and severely restricted the burning of sulfur in barrels. Its use was only permitted for sanitizing a dirty barrel but, even then, you could do it only once, as twice was punishable by law,” continues Frey, “and no more than half an ounce of sulfur [per] tonne of wine could be used.” This amounted to approximately 10mg per liter, which is a minute dose by today’s standards.
What is certain is that by the end of the 18th century, the burning of sulfur wicks—a practice developed by Dutch traders—to shield and stabilize wine in barrel (mainly for transportation purposes) was commonplace. But even then there was hesitation. “I found notes that my great-grandfather Barthélémy kept in around 1868, where he specifically questions the need for using sulfur in wine,” explains Jean-Pierre Amoreau, one of Bordeaux’s few remaining natural growers, whose estate, Château Le Puy, has been organic for the last 400 years and who has produced sulfite-free cuvées since the 1980s. “But the sulfur he used back then was elemental.”
This changed in the late 19th century, as the first oil refineries appeared on the scene and with them the petrochemical industry. Suddenly, sulfites were readily available and this, combined with “advances” in delivery mechanisms in the United Kingdom in the early 20th century—which saw the appearance on the market of liquid and solidified forms known as the Campden Fruit Preserving Solution and Campden Tablet respectively—sealed the future for sulfite use. Now sulfites could be added directly to wine, which remains common practice today.
Many natural growers use no sulfite additions whatsoever. One such is Henri Milan, whose butterfly label red (above) and white wines are totally sulfite-free.