🍷 Études sur le vin
Pasteur's 1866 book on wine diseases and heating to prevent them.
Études sur le vin is a book by Louis Pasteur on the causes of wine diseases, published in 1866. Études sur le vin, Studies on Wine, is a book by Louis Pasteur published in 1866. In it the famous French scientist described the diseases of wine and their causes. Before that, nobody knew exactly why wine turns sour, cloudy or spoils.
Pasteur examined wine under a microscope and showed that fermentation is caused by yeasts and spoilage by other microorganisms, such as bacteria. This idea was new and important. Before him, wine was believed to spoil by itself.
The scientist proposed a method of protection: heating wine to about 50 to 60 degrees to kill harmful microbes without ruining the taste. Later this method was named pasteurisation in his honour. The book describes it as a way to preserve wine.
The idea was then applied to other products, including milk, and today pasteurised milk is found in shops everywhere. Although pasteurisation is used only to a limited extent in winemaking itself, Pasteur's work laid the foundations of modern wine science and microbiology.
How it connects to Wine
🍷 Études sur le vin → then → 🍷 Pasteurisation of wine → kind of → 🍷 Winemaking → kind of → 🍷 Wine
Links
- Next step
- 🍷 Pasteurisation of wine
- Part of
- 🍷 Louis Pasteur
- Wine and milk
- 🌡️ Pasteurization
Frequently asked questions
What is Études sur le vin?
Louis Pasteur's 1866 book on the diseases of wine and how to protect against them.
What did Pasteur prove?
That fermentation is caused by yeasts and spoilage by other microorganisms.
What method did he propose?
Heating wine to 50 to 60 degrees, later named pasteurisation.
What to read next
- 🌡️ Pasteurization — 72–76 °C for 15–20 seconds: kills pathogens; keeps ~5–10 days chilled.
- 🍷 Pasteurisation of wine — Brief heating of wine to stop spoilage, first devised by Pasteur.