Study That Embarrassed Wine Experts Across the Globe (2014)
realclearscience.com
realclearscience.com
Apparently wine distributors are not required to declare contents and they can use up to 60 approved ingredients, ecological wine had 30 or 40 approved ingredients.
And the issue is with the industrial yeast that they use. This is apparently tailored yeast to give the wine flavor like mango or pomegranate. The flavors listed by the manufacturer of the industrial yeast often match what is later seen in the store where the wine is sold.
Essentially distributors buy wine from a country like south africa or germany for example. Then they process it, often here in Sweden or in another european country. And that's where they add things like oak flakes to fake oak cask maturing, and of course the industrial yeast to add other flavors.
The flavors differ between different european countries, catering to that population and culture.
A bottle of "fake" wine can cost between 8 and 14 euro, a bottle of natural wine can cost 30 euro or more.
I've completely stopped buying the generic wine from our national alcohol store after seeing this.
Imho almost all of the wine we have available to buy should be called something like "wine drink" instead of wine. The EU is working on leglislation to force distributors to reveal their ingredients but so far they're very secretive.
1. What you call industrial yeast are simply isolated yeast strains used because of their favorable characteristics like quick fermentation or the creation of secondary flavors and aroma's. The alternative is spontaneous fermentation by whatever is already on the grapes or in the barrels, in which case you're going to have a bunch of different kinds of yeast and the end product is less predictable. But isolated strains of yeast and wild yeast are all just yeast. In beer brewing, almost all yeast comes from isolated strains, except for some unique sour styles like Belgian Lambic. Picking the right yeast for a particular kind of grape or a particular kind of wort is an art form and there is nothing industrial about it. We could call wheat "industrialized grass", but is that really more informative?
2. Oak flakes are sometimes added to fake oak cask maturing, but really only in cheap wine, and ultimately you have to ask yourself: do I enjoy the flavor or not? Barrels certainly have that warm fuzzy "authentic" and "artisanal" thing going for them, but using flakes, extracts and what-not can often be used to make a product that's almost as good at a fraction of the price, and that's great because it means more people get to enjoy good wine (maybe not great, but good and predictable, e.g. Jacob's Creek). Adding actual fruit flavorings is very rare and generally not allowed in the EU.
3. The list of 60 approved ingredients contains mostly preservatives like sulfites, without which it is very hard to keep the wine stable (I enjoy natural wines very much but every bottle is different), or finings like isinglass, gelatine or egg white to get the yeast and other particles to drop out of the wine and of which trace amounts might make it to the bottle.
Buy what you like, don't let your purchasing decisions be influenced by FUD.
For 1) the problem is not that the companies use industrial yeast, but that they take already perfectly good wine, and "reyeast" it to fake how and where it was made.
For 2) as well, surely people are allowed to enjoy wine made with oak flakes, but the producers should be honest about it.
More transparency and labels such as the suggested "wine drink" can only help consumers.
Is there really any evidence to suggest that is going on? It doesn't make a ton of sense as an (admittedly amateur) wine and beermaker. I mean, I suppose adding more yeast is possible, but it seems like it would work... very poorly, especially into finished wine. You'd have to use a much more alcohol-tolerant strain than the original fermentation, but not if the original wine contained sulfites (which stop fermentation -- that's the major reason why they're added)... It doesn't seem to make a ton of sense.
Rather, I think what is perhaps going on is a misunderstanding, or even a sort of mendaciously inaccurate description, of how modern winemaking works, where you -- just like beermaking has for centuries -- put in (aka: "pitch") yeast, selected to be consistent with the type and style of wine you want to make. The alternative would be to make the winemaker depend only on the randomly-occurring yeast in an area. (Which I suppose is a sort of 'terroir', but it's not the sort I think most people would appreciate.)
But I want to reply by saying that the evidence was provided mostly by one of the 10 wine distributors that the journalists requested the content declaration from. They asked the 10 largest distributors sold in Swedish alcohol stores and one replied.
Through that information they were able to track down the company that sells the flavored yeast and make the connection from the flavors listed in their marketing all the way to the actual wine on the shelf in the store.
The other distributors refused multiple times to give out any information and some said they would gladly await the EU regulations about content declaration that are in the works, and would follow them, but still refused to say anything about the content.
2.Oak flakes vs barrels is very obvious if you know what to look for. The rounding out of flavors via microoxygenation is apparent on a bottle that's seen barrel time.
This study was for beginning wine students. Of course they're going to try to pass the test with the information that had just been provided them (red==this, white==that).
Could it be that the producer take cheap wine and add additional sugar and yeast?
(2) It might be out there, but I've never seen cheap wine advertising that it's been put in this or that kind of barrel for a particular amount of time. At most, they might put a barrel on the label to evoke the idea, which is fairly innocuous as far as false advertising goes.
If your interpretation of the OP is closer to what he meant, then really what you both are talking about is fraud, not common practice nor legal and definitely not likely to be true of the majority of "generic wine from our national alcohol store".
And those waiting for legislation for ingredients on wine bottles might have to wait for a while more. It has been in the works for 35 years. The industry really dont want to dispell our beliefs in the traditional wine barrel.
Unfortunately the article and documentary are both in Swedish. [1]
About the yeast, I'm a layman so I don't know what industrial yeast is but this was the term used by the journalist.
The report showed that a company dedicated to producing and selling flavored yeasts were marketing specific yeasts with flavors. And these flavors then turned up in the liqour store on the wine where the yeast was used. So the yeast was used as direct flavoring.
My point is that it's processed wine and this isn't clear to the consumer. Maybe it should have been when we suddenly were flooded with so many different types of cheap wines but I was too young at that time.
Before the 60s wine was not as available as it is today in sweden, or as cheap.
So clearly processing wine has become a way to make more money and that's when I get concerned.
But as you say, drink what you want. I've made the choice to stop drinking processed wine. And I'll gladly await the EU decision on whether or not wine distributors will have to declare contents.
1. https://www.svt.se/nyheter/granskning/ug/vill-inte-uppge-vad...
Yeast is a strain of microorganisms that consume the sugar in the juice, and produce a number of complex organic chemicals including alcohol, but also a number of others, some of which provide, yes, fruity flavours. When we find a strain that provides a flavour profile we like, we isolate it, breed more, and then, yes, package them and sell them to vintners that want it.
> And these flavors then turned up in the liqour store on the wine where the yeast was used.
Yeah, that's one of the key pointS of winemaking. All winemaking. Everywhere. All types. You pick an appropriate strain of yeast to yield the finished product you want; it's a critical step in the process.
> So the yeast was used as direct flavoring.
...no. Yeast does not end up in the finished product, and is not used as a direct flavouring.
> My point is that it's processed wine and this isn't clear to the consumer.
All wine is processed wine; wine making is one of the oldest industrial processes, dating back six thousand years. Was there some specific part of how this wine is processed you have an issue with? And if so, what? And why?
> And I'll gladly await the EU decision on whether or not wine distributors will have to declare contents.
But they've got the same ingredients right? Grapes, yeast, maybe some extra sugar and water? What are you expecting to see on the "bad" wine label that you won't see on "good" wine?
Edit: Looking at your other comments, it seems you're mostly upset about the idea that some wines might have two seperate fermentation stages. But this is a traditional wine making technique for centuries; it's a defining trait of the champagne and governo methods. So I'm not sure what you're arguing here. Wine is a heavily processed product; what's wrong with these particular processes?
What processing aids and additives are used. A list of allowed chemicals is found here: http://redax.tv4.se/kallafakta/LISTA%20TILLSATSER_ALLERGENER... I don't care one way or another but "wine snobs" claim some of these are giving them headaches.
Example: A traditional fining agent in that list is egg albumen (aka egg whites). No detectable traces remain in the finished product. Is that a problem? Why? That list highlights it as an allergen in red, but again, it's not in the wine and (unsurprisingly) studies show they do not cause allergic reactions.
If there are specific concerns about specific additives, then 1) they should probably be banned from all products, not just wine and 2) we should be having a conversation about those specific additives. General concern about "additives", in general, just comes across as scaremongering.
But this was about someone saying they only wanted to drink "real" wine and hoping for a law that would require ingredients to be listed. But traditional wine production often uses fining agents such as egg whites, and it's not an ingredient, is not present in the final product, and would not be listed on a list of ingredients. So I don't really see the relevance.
(If it helps, pretend I said Polyvinylpolypyrrolidone instead, which has no vegan concerns. Is its use as a fining agent a problem? Why?)
> In addition, the law allows the use of powdered or ground hops and hops extracts, as well as stabilization and fining agents such as PVPP. Top-fermented beer is subject to the same rules, with the addition that a wider variety of malted grains can be used, as well as pure sugars for flavor and coloring.
That sounds like the exact sorts of things the original commenter was upset about with wine. And many of the things in the list the guy you were replying to linked are "stabilization and fining agents".
Ummh not sure if this is sarcasm but most of the time, rightfully so. Especially when you add the last two words.
Sure, take a look at https://www.wyeastlab.com/beer-strains/, one of the big yeast providers for brewers (though they do sell wine yeasts as well.) You'll see that each yeast is described by what it contributes to the finished product: "fruity" or "earthy" or "neutral" or "grainy", even referencing particular types of fruit. I'm not sure what the problem here is. The flavor and aroma of any wine results from the interaction of must, yeast, fermentation vessel, temperature and time.
https://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/31/magazine/the-wrath-of-gra...
Same as in beer: the particular yeast strains are highly influential in the taste of the final product. I don't really see why you cast this as an adulteration, or a deceptive processing.
(I am Italian, my family used to own a small vineyard so I have some hands-on experience on wine making, albeit we made it only for our own family).
I find the part about "yeasts" a bit difficult to believe, but I have been wrong in the past so I would like to find out more.
In other words: "the plural of anecdote is not data" - I would like to get to the source and understand better the "flavored yeasts" claims. And also see what countries the article was talking about.
Here are some yeasts and some of their flavor effects:
They are also used in some breads so they stay soft for weeks.
The OP seems to imply that different yeasts are prominent in industrial-size wine production (again, this may very well be the case: as I mentioned I have been proven wrong about industrial winemaking at least once in the past) so I would like to learn more about that, and I would be even more interested in understanding how different countries go at it.
[1] https://eurekabrewing.wordpress.com/2014/09/26/hello-my-name...
That's a classic but lately a swedish journalist uncovered that the wine we drink in Europe is largely bogus.
So I wanted to understand better what "Europe" means in his/her mind.
If you add yeast to wine that's already finished it's secondary fermentation (which it has, if it's being called wine), it won't do anything, because there's no sugar left. You could add more sugar at the same time, but you'll send the alcohol percentage to the moon in the process. Wine yeast is likely to cap out at ~17% if you keep adding sugar (although it's hard to start a fermentation targeting above ~%12, to hit higher percentages you usually have to feed some sugar during primary fermentation).
TL;DR your explanation doesn't make sense. If you mean they're buying /must/ from south africa or germany and adding yeast then....yeah, that's how cheap wine is made. You didn't think the guys who made goonsacks had their own artisnal fruit presses, did you?
It's just cheap but high-ABV wine, cut down with water and flavoring (to something like 5% ABV).
(The other path to roughly the same end product is by taking cheap beer and running it through a charcoal filter, then flavoring the result. Neither process would make sense if you could just sell an ethanol+water mixture without getting a tax break for not having distilled anything to get there.)
... why? If you couldn't tell by taste and needed to hear about it from an investigative journalist, doesn't that mean it's an equivalently-good product for way cheaper?
Custom liquor production, including wine, can be outsourced. Frank-Lin Distillers's Products in Fairfield, CA, makes most of the low-end liquor on the west coast. They have their own brands, and also do contract manufacturing. They used to make Skyy Vodka; the company behind Skyy was purely a marketing operation with no manufacturing capability. (Skyy was sold to Campari, which has their own plants, and they moved manufacturing in-house.) Ethanol comes in by rail in tank cars, it's re-distilled, de-ionized water and flavoring are added, and the product is bottled. Most of the effort goes into bottling and labeling; they fill a huge variety of bottles with about a thousand different labels, but only have about a hundred different recipes.
So once you get your wine formula working and passing blind taste tests, give them a call and have them start cranking it out.
[1] https://www.newscientist.com/article/2088322-synthetic-wine-...
It's a highly recommended experience, it's really interesting.
Winemaking is more about chemistry than flavor profiles.
I believe one such demonstration of such was done on John Cleese's wine for the confused.
For the red and white wines I usually drink there's no confusion. They're very differentiated, and just smell is enough to tell them apart. It's not even difficult, thy're just so different. So I take all these stories about "red vs. white", as if there were homogeneous categories, with a big chunk of salt.
I don't have a journal article handy, but here's a news report about it: http://www.news.com.au/technology/science/japan-diet-glasses...
Have you ever been focused on an activity and had more than one beverage at hand, and picked up the wrong one? For example, while coding, I had a freshly opened cold coke and yesterday's room temperature coffee both in reach. Focused on my screen, I took the coffee when I intended to pick up my coke. The mismatch between expectation and reality was very unpleasant when it hit me, but what was interesting was there was some fraction of a second after I took the sip before my consciousness was aware (painfully, painfully aware) that what I was drinking was not a fresh, cold coke.
Perception is interesting. What we see and what we expect are big influencers on what we perceive. I'm curious whether our other perceptions (touch, smell, hearing) can influence what our visual perception as strongly.
That being said, there is also something annoying about this study, because it so much misses what the experience of wine tasting is about - all senses work together, and of course you can fool them by providing falsified input (e.g. wrong color). There are many ways to fool the senses, ranging from artificial flavors to stage magicians' tricks. But it's much nicer to be surprised by a wine when you're not being fooled or tricked by someone, and with some experience it's possible to describe and agree with others on some of the objective features of wines - whether you then like the wine or not is purely subjective. What I like about wine is that you never really know for sure what you get, if you vary the vineyards, grapes and years each time.
Yes, enologists mostly lack coherence in their job and created for themselves a nice little niche of uncriticizable people that look at themselves with the highest regard.
But, let's not get into the fallacy of saying that because of that all wines are made the same. Wine quality varies greatly and some vineyards are very clearly better than others.