Last week, we showed you how winemakers trying to compete on the new global wine market are using techniques that wind up removing coveted flavors and textures, if not outright demolishing the “gout du terroir” that makes a wine great.
As we like to say: there’s a reason that modern wineries look more like oil refineries than the old “chateaux” behind legendary wines like Lafite or LaTour…
But the dirtiest secret of the industrial wine industry is not what has been removed… but what has been added…
To discover why… keep reading below… but first be sure to check out your weekly tasting with French winemaker Julien Miquel… (don’t worry: if you click on the video, you’ll be able to keep reading on the next page)
Everything You Need to Know About Cabernet Sauvignon
When they can’t afford oak barrels… they add oak “flavoring” and other additives
When the wine isn’t dark enough… they add purple dye called “Mega Purple” (far more common than you think)
When the wine comes out cloudy with sediment from the soil and air… they use “fining agents” like potassium ferrocyanide (yes “-cyanide”)
When the aroma’s not “big” enough… they add enzymes
When it’s too flimsy or sugary… they add acids (which destroy any subtlety in flavor)
And that’s not including the chemicals that find their way into wine from the industrial growing process…
Did you know that a 2013 study from France found traces of pesticides in 90% of wines sold in supermarkets?
And a lab test of 10 Californian wines found the weed-killer glyphosate in every single bottle (the World Health Organization recently determined that glyphosate, the main ingredient in RoundUp, may potentially promote cancer).
You can see why the alcohol industry fights tooth and nail to keep ingredients off of labels, spending as much as $30 million for lobbying last year.
They’ve stripped out all the challenge… the richness… the variety… everything that you want in your wine… and then added a lot of stuff that you don’t want!
There is a saying in France that a wine does not reflect the grapes it was made from, but the character of the man who made it…
What we are witnessing today is a crisis in character.
That’s why we’re so passionate about searching for small batch winemakers who aren’t afraid to shun the current fashion.
They exist. And delicious, complex wine, made with tradition and care, is out there to be found.
You may need to climb 10,000 feet. You may need to spend long afternoons with old winemaking families convincing them to sell you their wine. You might need to brush up on your Spanish, France, or Italian (only to find that they speak a separate dialect spoken nowhere else).
But once you taste the result you’ll know it was worth it.
Until next time…
