I read today about "sweets" or vegetable juices added to wines to 
"improve" them in early nineteenth-century America. I'm aware that 
the wines of early America were nothing like the ones we have today, 
but this was the first I had heard of the use of vegetable juice in 
their preparation.

What vegetable juices were used? I can imagine that beet juice, for 
example, might have been useful to the wine merchant who wanted to 
double his stock by mixing in rain water, rye whiskey, etc. Does 
anyone know any more about this practice?

Jon