Tuesday, November 4, 2008

To tell the truth

Wow. Wine sure has been getting a hatchet job from some of the European journalists of late. What a turnaround. Americans used to be the puritans who spoke disdainfully of the vino but now we are set to become the largest consumers of wine in the world.
Meanwhile in France they are battling to be able to advertise wine and facing declining consumption rates.
The American Millenial generation has embraced wine at a younger age than any other Generation (skipping all those ugly years of cheap shots at the bar hopefully).
Meanwhile, that same generation in France has slowed their wine consumption compared to their parents.
Check out this article for latest attack against wine.

But while I believe that the specific article above was based on shoddy thinking, this doesn't mean that all wine is always as pure and wholesome as one would wish.
I find myself in Randall Graham's camp when it comes to listing wine ingredients on wine labels.

“Randall [Graham, owner of Bonny Doon] feels that it’s important to openly share with consumers any additions made to the wine, and by extension to make other winemakers responsible for [acknowledging] their own additions and interventions,” explained Alison Davies, marketing associate at Bonny Doon. “We hope for a number of results: by stating all the ingredients, this could lead the industry in the direction of full disclosure and encourage winemakers to be more hands-off and less interventionist.”

I don't think all wines should be made in any one style. I thrive on diversity, in my life as well as with my wine consumption. But nevertheless, it would be helpful for consumers to better understand whats in that bottle of wine.

Now this label won't be helpful if there actually were excessive levels of heavy metals and/or pesticide residues ( an assertion from another article earlier this year) in your wine. But I think it is safe to say that those are relatively rare occurrences.

2 comments:

Ward Kadel said...

Hey there Amy! Thanks for the comment on my blog and I had a total blast hanging out with you at Quivira, as well...it's always refreshing to find someone else with a healthy dose of sarcasm in the wine world!
Thanks for this post. I had trouble with the link to the article, but I certainly catch the drift. I think this takes organic wine-making or even "winegrowing" to the next level. Now the wineries can/have to post that they truly are just producing the fruit of the land, or their manipulating it to just construct a wine for a general palate.
Thanks for the article!

Anthony Nicalo said...

Hi Amy,

Taking the pesticides, chemicals, tannin powders, yeast enzymes, artificial yeasts, and many more artificial and manipulative practices out of wine will make it more diverse, not less. Instead of wines being made in a laboratory, we will see wines that are representative of the farming practices and flavors of the grapes. In some instances, removing the polishing aspect will make a wine taste worse because the people are not capable of or choose not to farm for sustainable quality. But then, they would be free to add whatever they wanted to "fix" it. This is essentially what happens in the status quo, but noone has to disclose. Basically, the world is backwards when natural farmers have to prove they aren't using chemicals and manipulation, but industry (boutique and factory) doesn't have to disclose a thing.