action of heat, as we have seen when considering spon-
taneous generations. Moreover, there was a chance,
and Pasteur had not failed to perceive this possibility,
that it might not be necessary to kill the ferments,
which, considering the slowness with which they or-
dinarily develop, are under unfavorable conditions in the
wine. To weaken them by the heating so that they could
not multiply would perhaps be sufficient. All this was
encouraging. But, on the other hand, the employment
of even a minimum quantity of heat appeared to have
its grave dangers. Everybody has drunk warm wine
and knows that it is no longer wine. Those ancestors
whom we invoked a short while back recommended
one to drink cooled wine. Only Bordeaux wine, they
added, is improved by conveying it into the dining room
four hours in advance of the guests.

Yes, Pasteur might have replied to these objections:
but all those wines which one hesitates to heat are wines
recently drawn off and aërated. Would it be the same
for the bottles which would be heated only after having
allowed their contents time to transform into combined
oxygen the gaseous oxygen absorbed during the racking?
No one could reason more correctly, and it is thus that
Pasteur, at the first step, and almost without groping,
by proceeding always in the direct light of his former
experiments, reached that procedure of heating to
55° C. for which such a noble future seemed reserved
when it first appeared.

At this time, in 1867, the prosperity of viticulture
was great; France reckoned more than 2 million hectares
planted in vines and her wines, the dissemination of
which was favored by commercial treaties, seemed
destined to reach all the markets of the world. To give
to an industry operating upon 50 million hectolitres,
and worth 500 million francs, the means of avoiding

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