Cattle blood

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Clarifying or fining a wine was done in ancient times with means that are often obscure for today's terms, for example with milk (this is described in the famous wine book of Johann Rasch from 1580), urine (sic) or even blood. In the Middle Ages, the blood of cattle or oxen (and in some cases pigs or lambs) was also used to adulterate wine, supposedly to give it more colour. Sometimes it was added fresh (still warm from slaughter) or after drying as a grated powder. This was punished at that time already partly with strictest punishments (from drinking the own wine in large quantities up to death on the gallows). Blood consists among other things of proteins (albumin = also contained in egg white, globulin and fibrinogen), which means that this practice could be called a kind of protein embellishment (see under Beautification). At the beginning of 2003 the disagreement between the USA and the countries France and Germany, which reject an Iraq war, also led to the topic "cattle blood in wine". The President of the Republican Parliament, Dennis Hastert, had the import of French and German products restricted.

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Cattle blood

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