04/27/2026
Nothing like spoiled wine to spur innovation! 😂
In 1862, French microbiologist and chemist Louis Pasteur and his colleague Claude Bernard were conducting an experiment to test their theory that germs did not spontaneously generate and that microbial contamination could be prevented by heating liquids, but without the necessity of boiling them. After keeping two vials of blood and urine heated at a steady temperature for six weeks, on April 20 they opened them at a meeting of the French Academy of Sciences, revealing that neither sample had putrefied.
In 1863 French winemakers faced a serious problem. Much of the wine they were exporting to Great Britain was spoiling en route. Pasteur was convinced that the problem was caused by microbial contaminants, which he soon proved in his laboratory, and that the spoliage could be prevented by his heating process. In April 1865 Pasteur filed a patent for “a process for the preservation of wine,” in which he described his “simple, practical” heating method. “Wine does not spoil,” he wrote, “if the microbes are killed beforehand.”
Pasteur’s method soon came to be called pasteurization and was eventually used to preserve numerous other food products, including, most famously, milk. Today it is a commonly practiced food safety technique, which is estimated to have saved hundreds of millions of lives around the world.
The illustration, from about 1900, depicts Pasteur studying wine in a cellar in his hometown of Arbois.
