The sweetness of lead

From the BBC website"
The fatal attraction of lead

Meanwhile, glassmakers learned that adding in some lead oxide would yield glassware such as wine decanters that would glisten, because the lead refracted the light in a distinctive way.
Unfortunately, a leaded crystal wine decanter turns out to be a singularly bad idea, according to Andrea Sella, chemistry professor at University College London, especially if the wine (or sherry, port or brandy) is held in it for a long time.
"The lead slowly dissolves out into the wine itself. The intriguing thing is that you get a compound that used to be known as 'the sugar of lead'."
This compound, lead acetate, not only looks like sugar, it also has an intensely sweet flavour, Prof Sella explains.
"One of the curious things is that the drink that you would put into your decanter would over time gradually become sweeter."
But lead, of course, is also toxic. Once inside the body, it interferes with the propagation of signals through the central nervous system, and it inveigles its way into enzymes, disrupting their role in processing the nutritious elements zinc, iron and calcium.