The record-union. [volume] (Sacramento, Calif.) 1891-1903, 1896-07-27
FOOLS BUYERS OF WINE.
A Frenchman Employs Spiders to
Spin Webs Over Fresh Bottles.

There is new wine trick in town. and
1t is the cleverest ever concocted to de-
ceive the lovers of ancient vintage. Spi-
ders play the leading role The indus
trious little creatures are turned loose
by the thousand into wine cellars, and
allowed to spin their webs over the new
ly corked bottles, thus giving them the
appearance of having been stored for
years.
Simple as the trick is, it has put thou
sands Of dollars into the pockets of
some large merchants, and has also
played an important part in the recent
stocking of the cellars Of some New
York millionaires.
The story came out last week, through
the boastings of the spider raiser, who
was feeling extra jubilant He had lust
made big contract, and as he walked
around the wine district 1t was hard for
him to keep his good fortune pent I'D.
He had shown the liquor trade how to
make money quickly, and felt that he
was entitled to some congratulations.
You see" said he, sits awful hard for
wine merchant to sell new goods.
The public won't have them, and he
must have cellarful of twenty-year
goods or get out Of the business. Now,
L am Frenchman and was raised in
the wine cellars of my native place. I
have been in nearly every cellar in
France, and know just the labor and
expense that are necessary to produce
twenty-year old goods. 1t takes all the
gilt off the profits.
One day [ was standing in one of the
biggest wine vaults in Paris, when sud-
denly / noticed an immense spider lower
himself from the ceiling and settle
down upon the neck of a bottle. I was
accustomed to spiders, for we have
plenty of them there, but the great size
Of this one attracted me
Slowly he moved from one cork to
another, spinning his web as he went,
until he had made a complete chain.
Marveling at his work, but disguised
with his ugliness, I picked up stick to
smash him when the proprietor caught
my hand. Don't do that he said, you
will ruin my business
Thinking he was joking, laughingly
asked him how his business depended
upon such an intruder, and you may
imagine my surprise when he answered
that his business had really been built
up by those little crawlers.
You see those bottles?' he said.
They look as if they had lain there for
forty years, don't they? Well, they have
been there just two months I saw
through it at once. The next day be-
gan collecting spiders, and in another
month sailed with several boxes of them
for America.
Il began the breeding at once, and
to-day have twenty customers In this
city who take all the spiders can give
them. I only sell them in hundreds and
to the wholesale merchants, whose
vaults are always filled with new stock.
With my aid one of these merchants
can stock a cellar with new, shining,
freshly labeled bottles and in three
months see them yelled with cobwebs,
so that the effect of twenty years of
storage is secured at a small cost The
effect upon a customer can be imagined
and is hardly to be measured by dol
lars and cents. 1t is a trif1ing matter to
cover the bin with dust. That is easy
to the most inexperienced in the trade,
but cobwebs spun from cork to cork
with cobwebs that drape the slender
necks with delightful lace-the sign of
years of slow mellowing-that is an
other story. Letter to St Louis Globe
Democrat.