The Oxford Companion to Spirits and Cocktails Definition of adulteration

adulteration , as it applies to distilled spirits, refers to the process of amending any liquor with artificial coloring, flavoring, or other additives, typically to stretch cheap spirits and confuse the consumer. Adulterated spirits may have merely been diluted with water, but in many instances began with a young, high-proof neutral spirit mixed with cheap ingredients to add color, flavor, and sometimes additional pharmacological effect, often to mimic traditional types of spirits, especially aged whiskies and brandies.

Now quite rare in most developed countries, adulterated imitation spirits were common in the second half of the nineteenth century around the world, prompting legislation that articulated legal classifications for many spirits, especially spirits that are typically aged. As with milk, butter, sugar, and other common commodities, advances in chemistry and industrial production in the era of rapidly increasing mechanization and urbanization created financial incentives for manufacturers to use chemistry to improve yields and costs of traditional spirits. One of the most important of those advances was the introduction of truly neutral spirit, made possible by the column still. The product from these stills, while inexpensive to produce, was often flavorless, or nearly so—comparable to today’s vodka. Distillers would sell this almost-pure alcohol, sometimes called Cologne spirits or Berlin spirits (Germany was a prime producer), for a variety of beverages, but also for industrial purposes such as perfumes, solvents, and medicines.

For beverage purposes, distillers rarely sold products to consumers directly before 1900, but rather to rectifiers, whose job, among other things, was to produce spirits at a variety of price points, chiefly by stretching out the relatively expensive pure spirits produced by traditional means with this high-proof spirit and water, making up the difference between this compound spirit and the pure one with colorings, sugar, and flavoring agents. See whisky, blended. Less scrupulous rectifiers would go further than blenders by dispensing with the pure spirits altogether and using artificial colors and flavors to imitate the traditional whiskies and brandies. These imitation spirits would then be sold as wholesale products, typically by the barrel, for distribution to taverns, saloons, and public houses, whose proprietors might further dilute or adulterate the spirits.

In England, the 1860 Act for Preventing the Adulteration of Articles of Food or Drink began to address what had widely been perceived as a problem. After the act proved to be mostly unenforceable, an amendment in 1872 began to address the situation more seriously. Publicized testing of consumer spirits found high concentrations of methanol (toxic but inexpensive), sulfuric acid, lead, copper, and zinc. Arthur Hill Hassall’s 1855 and 1876 books on adulterations in food and beverages also brought attention to the issue and forced some political attention to the problem, which affected gin, rum, brandy, and whiskies. In 1872, the North British Daily Mail tested thirty samples of whisky, and only five came back described as pure whisky, but only two of those samples were not “excessively diluted” with water.

The problem was just as severe on the other side of the Atlantic. For example, a recipe for imitation bourbon, published in 1860, calls for 40 gallons of proof spirits, tincture of hickory nut, 1 gallon domestic brandy, 1 pint wine vinegar, and 1 pound white glycerin with 12 drops oil of cognac. Caramel coloring was added according to preference. This example is one of the more reputable recipes. Other rectifiers added prune juice, burnt sugar, wood shavings, acetic acid, creosote, and other chemicals. Heavily diluted whisky can become cloudy as alcohol-soluble fusel oils and esters drop out of suspension and emulsify at lower proof. So alum, carbonate of potash, and lead acetate might be added to help clarify the liquid.

In the United States, growing sentiment against adulterated foods found common cause with an aggressive political temperance movement, as well as a progressive movement that wanted to see social reforms, curbs on unscrupulous business practices, and more government oversight of food, beverages, and drugs. Leading the movement was H. W. Wiley, a charismatic chemist whose advocacy dovetailed with the Kentucky distillers, led by Col. E. H. Taylor Jr., whose traditional, unadulterated whisky was being undermined in the marketplace by imitation spirits. See Wiley, Harvey W., and Taylor, Col. E. H. Above all, both sides wanted the government to define, once and for all, what could be labeled as whisky. Although the resulting 1897 Bottled-in-Bond Act didn’t quite do that, it nonetheless set a government-backed standard for pure whisky, while still allowing other kinds to be sold. See bottled in bond. Along with the subsequent 1905 Pure Food and Drug Act, it set a policy of defining but not prohibiting: you could sell adulterate (but not poisonous) whisky, but you would have to tell people what was in it and couldn’t call it anything it wasn’t—only pure bourbon could be called bourbon.

In the United Kingdom, the 1908 Royal Commission on Whiskey and Other Potable Spirits served a similar purpose, setting definitions and labeling requirements without outlawing blending or preventing column-still spirit from being labeled as whisky.

While the makers of traditional whiskies often aligned themselves with the pure food movement, suggesting that American straight whiskies or scotch single malt were more authentic and traditional and therefore “healthier,” rectifiers pointed to the fact that pot-distilled whisky often has more congeners—the chemicals that create flavor but are difficult for the body to metabolize and contribute to hangovers. See congeners. But in the intervening years, and through decades of marketing, the authenticity argument has prevailed. Simulated or imitation whiskies are far less popular than sugar substitutes, margarine, and other categories of synthesized food alternatives.

Today, outright adulteration is rare, at least in legal spirits. When adulteration does occur, it is generally connected either to counterfeiting of spirits to avoid high taxes or to unscrupulous or lax production of moonshine. All too often, bootleggers have added chemicals like methanol in an effort to cheaply stretch a spirit. Deaths have been reported in India, Haiti, and eastern Europe from this kind of adulterated, bootleg alcohol. See moonshine.

Mainstream spirits are not, however, entirely free from manipulation: for many categories, additives are permitted up to a certain threshold that varies by country. In the United States, products labeled vodka can contain trace amounts of sugar or citric acid without disclosing those ingredients on the label. Rye whisky (but not straight rye whisky) made in the United States may have up to 2.5 percent of its volume as “harmless coloring/flavoring/blending materials” without disclosing those ingredients on the label. Even single malt scotch, perhaps the most constrained category of whisky anywhere, can still have coloring added.

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