A chaptalização do vinho na virada do século XVIII para o XIX: a busca de um padrão para um produto instável

Abstract

The aim of this study is to show how the French chemist Jean-Antoine Chaptal (1756-1832) made his argument in favor of a practice that consisted of adding sugar to must obtained from immature grapes in order to increase the alcohol content in wine during fermentation. Up to these days regulated and adopted in several countries, this procedure, which would become later known as chaptalization, has as its primary goal to generate a more stable wine, with a minimum standard of quality, especially in areas with cold weather and prone to poor harvests. The defense of the practice was made in a book called L'art de faire le vin, which is often described, in a simplistic approach, as the first work of what would be a modern enology. In this study, we show that Chaptal relied on studies of other men of science from the nascent modern chemistry of the XVIII century to propose this practice, but he did not completely denied the knowledge of ancient authors. This perception of a total rupture with the past may have been propagated by writings that disseminated the work of the chemist, like a normative instruction from the French government that is analyzed in this study