Tuesday, February 12 2008

Wine Labeling

The large print giveth, and the small print taketh away

Labeling is a different kettle of fish for commercial winemakers than it is for wine kit companies. While they have to contend with approvals for their pictures, AVA designations, wine names and things like sulphite and alcohol warnings on their labels, they've never had to account for the actual content of their bottles. By contrast Winexpert is considered a food processing company, so we've always had to list the contents of our kits, including grape juice, concentrate, bentonite, yeast, etc.

But now, one winery in the USA has decided to declare exactly what's on the inside of the bottle, a first in the industry. Like a lot of other firsts, this one is coming from Bonny Doon, the eccentric winery founded by Randall Grahm, perhaps the most amusing winery owner in the world.

(Full disclosure: I once won a prize in Randall's Gutwrenching Parody of Staggering Silliness contest for my bit, "Specific Gravity's Rainbow", although I don't know what it was since they couldn't send it to Canada).

According to Wine Spectator Magazine as of January 2008 Bonny Doon will list both basic ingredients (grapes, sulphite) and processing agents (yeast, bentonite, tartaric acid, etc) which may or may not have any residue in the wine (fining agents such as bentonite don't stay in the wine, but they are used to process it). Grahm characterises the change as 'internal discipline', meaning perhaps that it's there to remind the winemaking team of the commitment they made last year to biodynamic and organic winemaking techniques. For the most part the wine media seem to accept this as just another bit of Grahm antics. He does, however, concede that 'We do hope other winemakers will be encouraged to adopt less interventionist practices and rely less upon an alphabet soup of additives to "improve" their wines.'

Ho ho ho! Looks like someone has an axe to grind. There are a lot of wines on the market right now that have been "improved" with the addition of exogenous polyphenols and flavouring agents and processing aids that would sound pretty esoteric and perhaps troubling to a buying public if they read them on the label. Grahm is seizing the high ground here to show off the purity and integrity of his wine, clever fellow.

Of course, if you wanted to know what was in your wine in the first place, you'd probably already be making it yourself.

Posted by Tim AT 12:08AM

1 Comment

Post A Comment

Email