"Tom" > wrote in message
...
> I would love to read about it if you dig anything up. I have always
> wondered how they physically were using SO2 in early wine making.

One simple way is by "mechage". That entails burning a sulfur candle in the
container before putting in the wine. That's not a very well controlled
method because some of the SO2 gets blown out, and you never really knew how
much you started with in the first place. Another (better) way is by
bubbling the fumes from burning sulfur through cold water to make sulfurous
acid, and then adding that to the wine. That's much easier to control, and
you can calculate how much you're adding by measuring the specific gravity
of the acid solution and the volumes of the wine and the addition. I know
that sounds like too modern a method, but it's pretty simple chemistry and
has been known for hundreds of years.

Tom S