Wine made from natural substances

In a lab.

It’s called Gemello. The author has a point though. If you can identify the molecules you need, why copy a $6 wine instead of a $250 wine? Maybe they were just going for proof of concept with their first one.

I tasted both products a couple months ago at an Idlewild Sunday School that was attended by employees of the firm. Products were quite good overall and being manufactured consistency is not an issue. Some real innovation taking place there.

The problem with matching a cheap jug wine or DRC is not the flavors, in relative terms the volatile flavor components is one of the easiest parts of the product to match. It’s the non-volatiles where it becomes difficult. The non-volatile acid-tannin-mouthfeel complex is impossible to match. In fact it is nearly impossible to even identify all the non-volatiles.

Let me give you an analogy to understand it better. We had a Peanut Butter flavor that was widely considered the very best in the business. It was a perfect match for Jif. Yet if you took that flavor and put it in a typical fat base like Crisco (just an example), it didn’t taste anything like Jif Peanut Butter. It tasted like peanut but not like Jif.

It is the same for other very complex products such as coffee, chocolate etc.

Tom
PS: Disclosure. My entire career was Flavor Creation for a leading Flavor and Fragrance company.

Of course, to make it seem like real wine, you’d have to bottle it under natural cork. Bingo! There goes your manufacturing consistency.

Now thats funny!

Interesting stuff Tom. Thanks for the info.

But I’m curious - wouldn’t they be able to tweak things like mouthfeel by using powdered tannins, and other solids/emulsifiers/etc.? Isn’t that partly what those things are for anyway?

Off topic - I get that they won’t get shortening and peanuts to taste quite like the Jif brand, but I was under the impression that most supermarket peanut butter was essentially hydrogenated fats and peanut powder, with some additional sugars and flavorings to make each one slightly unique. None of the national brands are like fresh-ground peanut butter you can make at home.

For sure you can tweak things like powdered tannins but what you wind up with are tannins that give some effect but are not “natural” in the sense of how they release, onset, how they interact with flavor components, how they finish etc. They are simply different then the naturally occurring tannins. Then comes the acid complex (it is way more than just tartaric) and of course non-volatile texture and mouthfeel (not alcohol). It is so complex.

Your second question is an excellent one. Roasted peanuts is still the majority ingredient in Peanut Butter such as Jif and that is the problem. Peanuts and worse roasted peanuts are extremely complex containing more than 200 ingredients, many of them not considered GRAS (generally regarded as safe). Then there is the mouthfeel of roasted peanuts (non-volatiles) which leads to similar problems as you have with wine.
I’m simplifying things a lot just not to get too geeky.

You might ask then “how was the Peanut Butter flavor a match for Jif”. In a simple base such as sweetened whole milk the flavor (only the flavor) was a dead on match for Jif confirmed by large scale sensory panels.

Tom

Interesting. Cool job to have.

Greg, cool is an understatement. Sure there were deadlines and pressure like any job but loved every minute of it.

Gemello was a rather fine winery back in the day.

-Al

Thanks for that info Al. Just read a good article on the history of the Gemello Winery.

Tom

It was an awesome winery. Would hate to see the name co-opted for solyent shit.

-Al

Link?

Yes, offensive they’re using the name.

Not in a position to get the link but it was from the SF Chronicle

Tom

Very interesting…