What is Mega Purple? Some sort of hyper concentrated slurry the wine making team includes to add color, lower acidity and softer mouth feel?
Concentrated Rubired grape must that is officially used to add color to the wine (a small addition can make the wine look very deep purple, almost opaque), but since it is syrupy stuff with sugar level of ~600 g/l, even a small addition can sweeten the wine quite a bit - even a 1% addition to a fully dry wine brings the rs level up to approximately 6 g/l. Since it is so concentrated, it really doesn’t lower acidity at all, but it certainly adds sweetness, softer mouthfeel and aromatics in addition to color, if used in excess.
If you want to see how it tastes like, pick up a bottle of Yellow Tail Shiraz. To my understanding the key to its color, consistency and taste is a liberal addition of Mega-Purple.
No big-$ winery in California has admitted to using MP, but the hearsay is that many cult Cabs and the likes show character that is quite consistent with MP additions - and seeing how much of the stuff is sold around California, it wouldn’t be a surprise if some of it ended up in the prestige-level wines as well.
I would certainly not purchase wines with additives other than sulphur and maybe yeast
I’ve tasted yellowtail Shiraz quite a few times, and I don’t think the color has ever been particularly deep. It definitely wasn’t the most recent time I had the wine. I remember that very clearly because it was compared to another Aussie Shiraz and we talked about how much lighter and less concentrated the color was on the yellowtail.
I think Michael David wines use it as well - Earthquake Zin and the like. And those wines aren’t really that bad for the style. I suppose it would be different if a label said the wine contained say, 5% Rubired, but since it’s the concentrate, it’s a bad thing.
BTW, it’s also considered a Kosher addition.
Thanks for the heads up. Pretty much what I thought. I would guess quite a bit of wineries, including those in the $8-$20 range use it often. I would also guess, that from time to time, though very seldom, you may find it used in higher priced wines. I call it manipulated. You can tell when you go to Safeway and pick up a bottle of $12 California Cab that its got “Mega Purple” in it. You can tell 500,000 gallons of central coast fruit doesn’t make wine that tastes like it does without the “mega purple”.