What is in your wine
 

What, it is just grapes, with maybe some sulfites? Yah, right.

Most of this list isn't news to me.

Incidentally, I recall being at a small winery where one of the worker bees told one of the higher-ups "I'm going out to get the chemicals."

Eggs, milk, and a good dose of wood bits, with a few vials of chemistry project. That is why your famous chard-o-nay-nay tastes the same, vintage after vintage.

http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/CFR-201...-sec24-246.xml

Of course, you don't need to drink this way. You just have to search it out. And of course, you might not like the natural product as much. [Note, I did not use the term Organic.]

I think many folks can tell the difference. I'm convinced I can detect the taste of wood chips. I am not that sophisticated.

when new oak barrels got expensive, people started putting new oak staves in old oak barrels to add flavor (particularly to chardonnay). almost all wines have sulphur in them to stop further fermentation, and use egg whites to collect residue. the oak stave practice went to oak chips in a bag(more surface area). it is not difficult to tell when a wine has been oaked. it is difficult to tell how it was done.

It is a lot lot lot more than wood chips being thrown in to make oaked chardonnay.

Sulfites? Many wines have them thrown on the grapes to kill the natural yeasts so that they can then add a particular yeast.

No wild fermentation? I like the premium wineries in South Australia that have open concrete vats.

Apparently suphites are a natural byproduct of fermentation though that level is very low. Add to that its use as a fungicide.

Unfortunately people like consistency and won't tolerate vintage variations. Also a lot of wines start to taste the same when the consulting winemaker uses the same technique everywhere.

Mondovino is a good movie to watch.

i would worry more about what is in my saussage than what is in my wine. if people suffer from sulphide problems, don't drink wine(eat sausage, with offal)

It's true - what's in most sausage is pretty offal

I quite liked the hint of antifreeze they used to put in the wine back in the 80's.

i recall italian and austrian antifreeze into wine scandles. there was the burgundy mix sugar and water plus a couple other things to make good wine. the most recent i know of, a group of growers or negoatiants sold grapes(juice) to gallo that they used to produce their french pinot noir. the frenchies were caught, as very little pinot grew in the district from which the juice was sold. as far as i know, no one ever complained that the wine did not taste like pinot. wine spectator gave the wine pretty consistent 88's as i recall. gallo was happy with the arrangement, as their landed price for the juice was around 1 euro per 10 liters(or some such), and the wine brought $10 a bottle.

At least the Gallo Bicyclette Pinot Noir and Burgundy chaptalization scandals did not involve poisonous product - just cheap plonk passed off as more costly wine. It's one thing to take a few dollars extra cash from ignorant customers who fancy themselves wine snobs but don't know what they're drinking - it's quite another to blind them or kill them.

So as not to start another thread (although maybe I should have), relief that the Gallo purchase of many low/mid tier Constellation wine brands is now complete, as a most interesting part of the business couldn't be part of the sale. To avoid antitrust concerns, the grape concentrate and high color concentrate (and related products) could not be part of the sale, so another Central Valley company purchased them.

Vie-Del Company (Vie-Del), the oldest family-owned grape processor and supplier of bulk juices, concentrates, brandy, wine and spirits in California, announced today the completion on December 29, 2020 of the acquisition of the Canandaigua Concentrate High-Color Concentrate (HCC) and standard grape concentrate business lines from Constellation Brands U.S. Operations, Inc. (CBUSO), a wholly-owned subsidiary of Constellation Brands, Inc. (Constellation). The transaction was approved by the Federal Trade Commission on December 23, 2020.

"Gallo and Constellation are also the country’s two largest producers of high-color concentrates, a grape-based syrup used widely by wineries to adjust the color and flavor of wines. Constellation must now sell its concentrate business to the only other producer of concentrate in the U.S., Vie-Del Co."
https://www.sfchronicle.com/wine/art...s-15848584.php

Yum.

For anyone who still had any doubt about what a farce so much of domestic USA wine is made out of (oh, this vintij, that appulashen), there you go. It isn't that I likely don't drink a fair amount of totally manipulated grape juice when I'm out and about, or refilling the home's "bargain bin," but ... "oh that Syrah is beautiful, and look at the legs on it" probably means "look at that high color concentrate and glycerin soup."