Tuesday, January 6 2009
Gumming Up the Works
Mmm, there's nothin' like home cookin'
One of the things I hear from consumer winemakers is that their home wines sometimes don't measure up to their expectations (well, I hear that a lot, actually, from people who are tasting it during primary fermentation or from the carboy, a week or so after pitching the yeast. 'It tastes sharp and funny! What's wrong?' Well sir, perhaps if you took a pork roast out of the oven when it was half-cooked and tried to cut yourself a slice, you'd find it odd-tasting as well).
I've talked to folks about which wines they're comparing, and to find out what their expectations are, but advice on ageing, storage, decanting and assessment don't always cut it. In some cases, there are folks who prefer vastly different styles from those we offer. And that's okay: if you like Loire Chenin in all it's glory, or botrytis-affected Reisling, or Mavrodaphne, those are things we just don't have in our cellars.
In others expectations may have been distorted by the wonders of modern winemaking. A common perception of commercial wines is that of a natural beverage, made in the vineyards by gruff grapegrowers and olde-worlde artisan winemakers. Unfortunately, that isn't quite correct. Industrial wine is as much a creation of the chem lab as is industrial beer. Grain and hops supplies the raw materials for one, grapes for the other, but both are engineered to within inches of disappearing into a pit of chemical additives.
Case in point is gum arabic, made from the hardened sap of the Acacia Senegal tree.
Ya big sap
It's in a lot of the processed foods you consume every day, from jellybeans to syrup to packaged drinks. To quote gum arabic promoter Charles O Cecil,
Gum arabic is unique among the natural gums because of its extreme solubility in water and its lack of taste. As a food additive, it has been extensively tested and appears to be one of the safest for human consumption. In beverages, gum arabic helps citrus and other oil-based flavors remain evenly suspended in water. In confectionery, glazes and artificial whipped creams, gum arabic keeps flavor oils and fats uniformly distributed, retards crystallization of sugar, thickens chewing gums and jellies, and gives soft candies a desirable mouth feel. In cough drops and lozenges, gum arabic soothes irritated mucous membranes. Many dry-packaged products, such as instant drinks, dessert mixes and soup bases, use it to enhance the shelf life of flavors. In cosmetics, too, it smoothes creams, fixatives and lotions.
Sounds pretty happily benign--and it mostly is, coming under the heading of GRAS (Generally Recognised As Safe) by the FDA. But what about GA and wine? It's added to commercial wines as a thickening agent, giving them body and heft way beyond what a wine made only from grapes can achieve. It's sold ostensibly as a 'stabiliser' to prevent colloidal material from leaving a sediment in the bottle. Surrrrrrre. It enhances mouthfeel and makes the wine perceptibly sweeter, and that's why it's used: to cheat.
In the last six or seven years I've also heard a lot of talk about tannins in red wines. A significant minority of folks want higher levels of tannin in their reds. I'm much more in favour of balance in my reds, enough tannin to meet the fruit and wrestle it to happy homeostasis, but I can understand wanting a bit more boldness--that's why we make our Crushendo kits. There's an inviolable rule, however, if you want a tannic red, you have to wait for it to come back from the edge of crushing astringency and bitterness, and this takes a couple of years. The French even say, 'the worse, the better', of their Rhone reds, noting that if it's a palate crusher in youth, it'll come around all the better when the rough edges rub off.
But there are some inexpensive reds out there, being sold only a year after harvest, that have strong, fully developed tannins and smooth profiles. How in the heck to they do that? Better living through chemistry, I'm afraid. There are very new, very interesting classes of polyphenolic compounds available from winemaking chemical supply houses these days. They make the old winemaking tannins we used to use in ancient times (the 80's, I think) look the way an F1 car makes a Model T look. They deliver precisely balanced levels of highly refined, long and medium-chain tannins that exactly replicated the flavour profile of well-aged wine, and they're ready to drink ten seconds after you add them.
I say after you add them because they're added post-fermentation, like mixing up a packet of Kool-Aid into your wine to change the flavour. Some of these tannin products aren't even made from grape material--ellagitannins are made from wood-chips!
Ask me how I really feel. Photo by Chris Colby
What's the upshot? I'm concerned that industrial winemakers are bizarrely altering the perceptions and expectations of consumers. I'm not saying that it's necessarily evil, or that any of their practices are harmful or illegal (after all, they're sanctioned by governmental control). But I'm not pleased with the kind of flavours I'm getting out of plain old table wines any more. Some, from countries only coming to the wider world stage recently, like Portugal and parts of Spain, seem to have dodged this bullet, making wine-flavoured wines in an approachable price category. But others seem to be deep in the chemistry set, dumbing down flavours and thickening up wine until it's like drinking pancake syrup with booze and fake tannin in it.
Note that I'm not railing against the use of traditional additives and processing aids: acid, tannin, finings agents, stablisers (like sulphite) oak, even added sugar all have their place in making good wine--and centuries of use to back them up. What's getting me is wines that are greater than nature can provide--more mouthfeel, more tannin, more of everything than a grape could deliver, all from the vials of the chemical company shelves--it's like athletes and steroids: where's the honour?
Gregg knew he had pushed it too far when his armpits disappeared
What do I suggest you do? Glad you asked: the best way to assert your rights as a consumer is to be informed, and the best way to do that is to learn more about the winemaking process and what goes into a traditionally made beverage. Now if only there were some company selling home winemaking products that you could give your money to . . .
Okay, huckstering aside, the best way to protect yourself is to ask questions and taste with your palate on full alert. Taste too good to be true? Probably is.
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