Thanks. The sugar added is fermented out and thus isn’t in the wine any longer. Currently, I believe, is that an ingredient is something that remains in the wine.
Another example would be this…yeast, be it indigenous or added, is in the wine. But if the wine is filtered, it no longer contains any yeast cells. So is it an ingredient in the wine?
And another example, tartaric acid is in all wines…and is the main acid in all wines. Should it be listed on all labels as an ingredient or only when it is added?
One of the things I mention in my blog is differentiating clearly between ingredients and additives.
Don’t know if you’re in the industry Ben A. but bravo! You obviously get it. I’m amazed that people who write about wine for a living want to treat it like a jar of peanut butter. Wine is unique, something they should understand.
Thanks, Adam. But I think you are arguing for a different standard than that used in food labeling. For example, the FDA-required ingredient label on many baked goods will list sodium bicarbonate, a leavening agent, as an ingredient. Yet, just as the sugar in your example no longer exists in the finished wine, it is near certain that no sodium bicarbonate remains in the finished baked good - it has either reacted with an acid to form a different sodium salt (and release carbon dioxide), or thermally degraded into sodium carbonate (releasing carbon dioxide).
Or perhaps I am arguing for the same standard as drink labeling, where Velcorin (DMDC) is added to sports and juice drinks, but because it doesn’t exist any longer in the product, it isn’t listed. – Trust me, one thing I am not saying is that Government regulations are consistent or that they make sense.
The capacity of the public to understand chapatilization etc is not relevant.
Whether they do understand, is. And they do not. Therefore, it would confuse the vast majority.
The public is “capable” of understanding this, the majority just understandably do not have the “interest” to learn the absolute minutiae of a subject that is not either 1. their business, or 2. their primary hobby. Just like you and I do not care to learn the minutiae of details that go into another subject someone else may very well find extremely interesting and important.
Educating the public is an important part of the wine business, and my life in particular. The back of a wine label is not the place to do it, particularly as it would confuse far, far more than help. There are other places that would help inform, and not confuse, the public on the particulars of a given producers winemaking.
I understand that some people want to know exactly what goes into their mouths. I am still against requiring a list of ingredients on wine labels. Just increased govt regulation that will cost more money and cause more confusion than enlightenment. Anyone recall how much time was wasted explaining sulfites? And most of the wine-buying public probably still doesn’t understand it.
If you’re concerned enough to want all the details of how a wine was made, talk to the winery or the retailer or someone in the distribution chain. Don’t make me pay to satisfy your curiosity.
As far as I can see, the study Adam Lee links to does nothing to debunk the idea that sulfites may, in some consumers, lead to headaches (and skin rashes.) Therefore, it doesn’t actually argue that consumers are wrong in thinking this. Rather it’s more concerned with marketing strategy – how to market wine to that population who hold the belief (whether rightly are wrongly) that sulfites are deleterious to their health.
Indeed, it concludes with a statement that suggests that consumers might actually be correct when they ascribe the ill effects of wine to sulfites in it: “Perhaps more importantly, our results indicate clear evidence that good quality wines with lower potential to induce headaches will grant access to a substantial niche of consumers.”
The article emphatically doesn’t argue that consumers are mistaken in their perception of what wine additives(specifically sulfites) do or don’t do.
FWIW my personal experience at least in my wife’s case is that it’s not “rare” and not a misconception; certain red wines cause my wife to develop a severe rash and/or hives…this never occurs with producers known to make very low sulfite wines e.g. Puffeney and Lapierre. We haven’t done allergy testing for this but it’s a likely cause. It isn’t going to happen but I wish producers would qualify “contains sulfites” with the PPM.
That’s the thong about statistics, if it happens to you it’s not rare…
The article to me reads entirely differently than it did to Katrina. It shows that consumer misperceptions about sulfites opens a marketing opportunity to play on those misperceptions.
Well, the article never says what the the statistics on sulfite sensitivity (as opposed to what one might call wine hypochondria) are. And that’s because, (at least according to my read), it’s not interested in that question. It’s interested in marketing to a population who (rightly or wrongly) think they are affected by wine sulfites.
It says that “More than a third of the total sample (34.08%), reported experiencing headaches after consuming even moderate amounts of certain wines” but argues that the number of patients with true sulfite sensitivity is much lower.
Again, it never says what that “true” number is (because it’s irrelevant to the point of the paper).
So I guess that close to 34% of wine consumers must be mistaken about their own symptoms. Here’s a novel thought. Why don’t we just assume that that people are NOT mistaken about their symptoms and give credence to their experiences? And Label stuff so that we can make our own choices. Leaving it to the experts ("this is all far too complicated for you to understand, my dear, so don’t you worry your pretty little head’) hasn’t often turned out to be a very good idea.
And, FWIW, I count myself as on of those “wine hypochondriacs” or “wine hysterics”. Cheap white wine (along with many kinds of fruits) brings me up in a livid neck and chest rash.
It’s probably a fair assumption that active members of the Wineberserkers board do not serve as a good representative sample of the general wine buying public.
I am sorry. I was under the impression that it was relatively well known that the general consensus out there was that what is known as a “red wine headache” isn’t cause by sulfites. Here’s an article to that effect from the Wall Street Journal, http://guides.wsj.com/wine/wine-tips-and-tricks/why-do-i-get-headaches-from-wine/, but I believe there are plenty of others out there showing the same thing.
I also am sorry, as I don’t want to dismiss or take lightly true allergies to sulfites…which, given the rash you describe, and what Stan’s wife suffers from, seems horrible…and most likely sulfite reactions. I am certainly not saying that people are mistaken about their symptoms nor do I think the paper suggests that…rather that some people are mistaken about the causes of their symptoms and, because sulfites are chosen to be labeled on wine (but not on dried fruit, mysteriously to me) people associate their symptoms with what is listed on the bottle. —
I address wine histamines on my blog (at least briefly)…but one interesting thing there is that a cause for some praise on ingredient labeling (saying that the wine goes through an uninnoculated malolactic fermentation) may actually lead to an increase in histamines…though it sounds far more natural. Adding certain ML strains tend to reduce histamines and may well result in fewer headaches.
Our local whole foods does label its dried fruit according to whether or not it contains sulfites. I guess it’s voluntary though.
But more to the point, the article that you cite (written by two wine writers rather than by a medical professional) isn’t definitive at all. The authors say:
"Nothing here is absolutely clear, or without controversy…Mark A. Daeschel, head of the Wine Institute, says “There’s really nobody out there who wants to support the type of research that needs to be done to definitely nail all of this down,” he told us. “We can’t go to the federal government. They’ll say ‘just stop drinking.’ And wineries are hesitant because they don’t want to raise the issue that there may be a problem. But it’s a complex situation. It’s a combination of things and also the physiology of the consumer. Some people’s triggers go off quicker than others’.”
So, why not just label wines with everything that is in them or that went into their composition (including ML strains, as in your interesting example). Then the 34% of consumers who experience a reaction can narrow down for ourselves what is causing reactions rather than having to blindly ascribe it to “white wine”, “red wine”, “sulfites” or “histamines” or whatever.
I’ve always been led to believe that, more often than that, people who complain of sulfites giving them headaches, rashes, etc. are actually having a reaction to naturally occurring histamines, or dehydration and that the number of real allergic reactions to sulfites is rather low.
I am not interested in blindly ascribing symptoms to substances. Rather, I think it is far more productive and far more likely for people to live a happy and healthy life, if it can be determined what causes issues for them. As someone who suffers occasionally from migranes myself, I am far more interested in determining what causes them, and correlating those tests with my experiences.
A list of all ingredients in all substances isn’t helpful to me nor is it practical for winemakers to do so and still stay in business (particularly given the number of states that we have to license new labels in, in addition to deferral label approvals).
I disagree. As a Type II diabetic, I read ingredients on packaging and select against things that list sugar as an ingredient. However, that is inapplicable to Adam’s wines, which I own and which cause me no blood glucose issues. Sugar, when fully vinified, is not an ingredient. It is more like a process, or a catalyst, that goes away.
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