Mega Purple and Pinot Noir

In the past few months I have been served 2 PN that must have used Megapurple, Elouan and Angeline. Both very dark, dense and a little sweet. There was a sameness in the profiles.

Yuck!

A terrible accusation, but not necessarily false.
But maybe some Syrah and a few drops of fructose solution as the culprits?

Dan Kravitz

Why not mention the specific wineries and let’s see what we can find out?

How do you know they didn’t blend in Napa Gamay or some other very dark variety instead?

Cheers

Megapurple is for color and tannin, as I recall. I don’t think it would make a wine sweet.

Perhaps just very overripe fruit?

Most likely concentrate added - not uncommon with large volume pinot and red blend producers . . .

Cheers

He did name the wineries I thought.

You are correct. The first one is an OR winery owned by Joe Wagner, who created the Meiomi brand. The second one is owned by Martin Ray Winery, who is owned by ???

We all probably know that Meiomi was and continues to be known for a riper style of Pinot that has a considerable amount of RS - is it from sugars left over after fermentation or from concentrate being added? No one knows for sure . . .

Cheers.

Larry, PN isn’t the color of Meomi. :wink:

These were both dark wines, no transparency. There was a perceptible sameness that was just not PN like.

From wikipedia

"Mega Purple is a grape juice concentrate by Canandaigua Concentrates of Madera, California, a division of Constellation Brands. It is used as a food additive. The process used for producing the additive is proprietary. Based on the descriptions of effects to wines by winemakers it is likely produced by a series of processes such as vacuum distillation, fractional distillation, and solvent extraction. The product is one of a series of concentrates marketed as kosher additives for food with names such as Mega “Cherry Shade” Grape Juice Concentrate, Mega Purple Grape Juice Concentrate, Mega Red Grape Juice Concentrate

In winemaking
There has been some discussion in the industry regarding the use of additives such as Mega Purple to bolster or enhance sensory attributes such as color, taste and mouth feel. It is reported that as much as 20% of the total production of such additives is related to wines. According to journal reports, Mega Purple is used by almost every low- to moderate-value wine producer (below $20US per 750 ml bottle) to help standardize the bottled product ensuring a more uniform product.[1]

It is produced by concentrating the teinturier grape Rubired, a cross between Alicante Ganzin and Tinta Cão, has 68% sugar and sells for approximately $135 a gallon."

Plenty of more on line articles out there.

Pinot that is very ripe and oaky tastes like that. For some reason, critics of the style seem drawn to the idea that it must be chemicals or syrah or something secretly added in, but I’ve seen little evidence or other reason to think that.

Anyway, it’s easy enough to avoid if it’s not your thing.

Just my $.02:

Mega-purple should be banned from any AVA based wine production. It’s a grape concentrate and unless your fruit is Languedoc based, adding a concentrate is definitely not being true to place.

Lots of it is being used in production and not all is for inexpensive wines. Many people may smell an over ripe Pinot Noir and think it’s the product of an addition of a concentrate…and sometimes they are right.

Except that the widespread use of concentrate (at least as reported by the except cited above) and, indeed, its very existence as a product would suggest that it is being used, and probably quite a bit. The type of wines that are mentioned here seem to me like the exact target of these products. They appeal to a taste for noticeably sweet and fruity wines, and they help provide consistency in the product. This isn’t so much a value judgment, as these wines are marketed towards casual wine drinkers.

Now, if people want to make that accusation regarding more expensive, arguably “serious” CA pinots I could see why you’d take issue. I would think the use of these products is more kept to the lower end of the market.

Although, isn’t it true that CA allows you to blend in 20% (25?) of other grapes without disclosing that information? To me that would always tend to make it an open question of what is in the wine, particularly if it is not true to the expected grape’s characteristics, such as very dark and fruity pinot.

Except that a number of winemakers have posted here and, years back, on the Parker board saying that it is used in a number of high-end wines. So your assumption that this is limited to high-volume wines may simply be wrong.

Any wine labeled with a grape variety must be at least 75% that grape, so it’s 25% that can be anything. It’s federal, not state law.

I’m not really assuming it isn’t used in higher end wines, just that it’s much more widespread in the cheaper stuff. Chris seemed to be taking the position that any suggestion of concentrate use is really just thumbing one’s nose at purple drank. And while there is some of that I was attempting to distinguish between the types of wines the OP was discussing and higher-end wines made in a very ripe style. Again, this stuff doesn’t exist for no reason at all, it is clearly being used, so to say there’s no evidence of its use is rather silly IMO.

As for percentage, can AVAs require a higher percentage of the grape or more stringent labeling? If so, kind of surprised some of the more serious and smaller AVAs, particularly those dedicated almost entirely to cabernet or pinot, haven’t done so. What about Oregon? Do they have a state law on this? I’ve never heard of the same practice there.

There are some state rules that supplement the federal ones, but the AVAs are a creature of federal law, and they are defined solely geographically; they’re not like European appellation rules, most of which are both geographic and varietal. California law tracks federal law on the variety: only 75% of the grapes have to be of the labeled type.

Here’s a summary of the California rules. It appears that the major difference is that the county must also be shown for some AVAs.

It could have to do with some kind of concentrate like Mega Purple, but there are also other ways of achieving that style. You can’t know for sure unless someone involved in making the wine is honest about what they do.

Oregon’s law is that for it to be labeled Pinot Noir it has to be 90% Pinot Noir. However, I am assuming (and probably correctly) that that 90% refers to Pinot Noir in relation to other grapes varieties being added in. Elouan could be using 100% Pinot Noir grapes and have 30% of the volume be MegaPurple (I am sure that is not the ratio but I am using it as an example) and still call it Pinot Noir. Here is the law. I don’t know how much MP is added but I am pretty sure a little goes a LONG way so even if an additive was part of the law they would not come close to violating the standard.

“Oregon also has stricter regulations than other U.S. regions when it comes to labeling the varieties used in a wine. Federal regulation states that at least 75% of grapes used to make a wine must be of the declared variety in an identified appellation of origin. In Oregon, 90% or more of the wine must be from the named variety, including Oregon’s most widely produced wines: Pinot noir, Pinot gris, Chardonnay, Pinot blanc and 50 other varieties known to grow in Oregon.”

I’m going to attempt to ask this question without being a dick but I may fail.

This is a style of wine that people in this thread, myself included, dislike and don’t buy. So why is it important to you whether there is Mega Purple or syrah added into these wines? If there were or were not those things in some cheap Joe Wagner pinot, what difference would that make to any of us?

I guess it feels to me like there is some need people feel to go beyond just disliking this kind of wine, and additionally to demonize the motives and practices of the people who make it. They’re doing it deliberately to get scores from Parker, they’re secretly adding chemicals, they’re sneaking syrah into it, they’re using wood chips, they’re violating the regulations.

It starts to feel like cable news / internet era political discourse. You can’t just disagree with some politician or party and support the other side, you have to feel like everyone on the other side are bad people with nefarious motives and so on.

Sorry, I probably failed and ended up sounding like a dick. I’ve just never understood the witch hunt for Mega Purple and syrah in the pinot and all that. Someone explain to me why that ought to be important and I’ll listen respectfully.

When I buy or taste a PN I expect it to taste like PN. These 2 wines did not likely due to an additive.