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> No problem with any of those parameters: low sugars could be fixed by infusing sucrose, acid could be removed by using potasium bicarbonate, tanin structure could be improved by using artifical tanins (or tanins extracted from wood), color could be fixed by acetaldehyde (cause of headaches, together with high SO2 levels) and whole structure might be balanced by using reverse osmosis.

This is process chemistry for formulated products. And the only difference between that and cooking is that process chemistry actually cares about quality and consistency of the final product.

Not to mention, whether talking about cheap wine or McDonald's burgers, chemical additives are a bit of a red herring - the goals of the process are achieved as much, if not more, by being in control of how ingredients are mixed, heated, vapourised, deposited or otherwise processed. That's what all this bulky equipment does. Vats that keep the oil within a fraction of degree of a set temperature. Presses and dryers that ensure specific granularity and surface area, combined with conveyors precisely timed to have the half-product lose exactly enough moisture. All other kinds of hardware that doesn't add new chemical compounds, just keeps natural reactions and phase transitions under control. All in a tight loop with automated and manual laboratory testing, that checks both for process parameters and presence of contaminants.

The whole thing is an exercise of minimizing variance in the process, so that the end result hits desired metrics. It carries the usual dangers of optimization systems - the choice of metrics and of things that are not optimized for. But it's not as simple as "more processed = more chemicals = more bad".

> the choice of metrics and of things that are not optimized for. But it's not as simple as "more processed = more chemicals = more bad".

True, but in practice that is how it goes.

Because the McD patties and buns are optimized for shelf-life, for consistency, for being quick to cook, for "cheap taste". Hence high levels of sodium, stabilizers, etc

Yes, "more chemicals" is not necessarily bad, but it depends.

I think it's been some years since I could stomach a McD meal without feeling sorry afterwards.

Your whole argument seems to boil down to "it's not natural, they add chemicals", which is a weird argument to make on a tech news site. The only additive you actually make a case against is acetaldehyde, which occurs naturally in cheap booze anyway.

The details of the process are certainly interesting, it's just weird you framed them as "problem".

At the point we have all that stuff in there are we really drinking "wine", or are we drinking some kind of alcoholic mixed drink? I personally would not expect, regardless of price point, that something I buy called "wine" has anything other than grapes and yeast, with maybe a bit of added sugar or honey.

After reading that article and the above comment I think I'd rather just mix some grape juice and vodka than some of that really cheap wine.

Agreed, it is a thing to consider. Problem is (at least in the EU) there's no requirement to put any of the ingredients on the label, other than - I believe - "contains sulfates". It's hard for consumers to know this is really some pseudo-wine.

"Contains sulfites" is awesome label as it is impossible to make wine without it: small amount of sulfites are created as by-product of fermentation.

Sounds like the Cookie-law of wine making.

Yeah. There is also no requirements here in the US because alcohol is regulated by the BATFE (Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives) rather than the FDA (Food and Drug Administration) or USDA (Department of Agriculture). The regulatory scheme here is more about making sure taxes are paid and bootleggers are caught and punished than creating transparency of product or consumer protection.

Most of the time I just want to get tipsy or drunk with my friends and I don't really care how many hours have the grapes been grazing the sun. If it's ok taste, isn't too unhealthy and gets the job done, it works for me. And I'm pretty sure that's everyone who buys 2€ wine

something I buy called "wine" has anything other than grapes and yeast

Virtually no wine, no matter how expensive, is just grapes and yeast. All wine you can buy in a store contains at least some additives.

This is not true, "natural wine" is exploding and there are quite a few wines out there that do not contain any added SO2. We get people in asking for them all the time.

However, the vast majority of wines do contain at least a small amount of added SO2.

There are plenty of expensive wines out there with lots of manipulative additives (sucrose, acidification or deacidification, oak powder, etc) as has been outlined above, but it is much more common in less expensive wine.

There is a scale between wine as a mass produced industrial product and as an artisanal, site-specific hand crafted product, and there are wineries/brands/specific wines that fill in every conceivable spot on that spectrum.

Oftentimes, individual wineries will have different lines of products made in different ways or even in different facilities. Estate grown vs purchased fruit. Physical wineries vs "private labels" made at custom crush facilities. A little tangential perhaps...

I think OP perfectly explained the trade offs of buying a 2$ bottle. I wish it was so well explained for other things!

The problem is calling those highly procesed products as being wine. I would call those wine-like drinks in the same way McD burger is burger-like product.

Personally I would be worry of pesticide residues in wines. Not just those bottom cheap bottles, but from all mass and non-bio certified producers. Few years ago there was high level of arsenic found in two-buch Chunk, but it is very common across the board: "Together the 34 bottles of conventional wine contained 148 pesticide residues. All 34 bottles contained at least one pesticide, while the mean number of pesticides per bottle was more than four. The highest number of residues found in a single bottle was 10."[0].

Those traces are probably not going to kill you, but let just not see all wines as being created equal.

[0] https://www.wineanorak.com/pesticideresiduesinwine.htm

Mcdonalds and other fast food burgers are the same kind of burgers people buy at the grocery store. The patties are 100% beef, not soy filler and chicken and whatever else makes something a burger like product

The real problem here is that to get your raw materials to produce your wine as cheap as possible (think your BOM), you have only one option: high density, low manual work and very high levels of chemicals to compensate the high density.

This results directly into degraded ecosystems because you basically use the land as a life-less substrate to produce your grapes and all the chemicals which are not degraded or bound to the grapes are ending in the soil.

That afterwards you do a lot a chemical work to convert the grapes into wine is another story.

Note that my salary is coming from both sides. I work as consultant to both the big agro companies and the ones doing food additives and fragrances.

Everybody on the line know very well the real cost of a $2 bottle of wine. But the buyers do not see that on the label only the money they have in the pocket or not.

I think the idea that the pressure to produce your wine as cheap as possible is only there for cheap wines is fiction. For expensive wines the same pressure is there, they want to make a profit. So while with expensive wines, potentially due to the high price they might have the resources to do better, you have no guarantee whatsoever that they actually will.

It depends. I am not that familiar with US, but in most of Europe you do have layered system. Basic table wine rules are quite relaxed, but then you have higher levels with more or less strict rules for farming practices, yield and vinification practices. Those practices are then checked by governing body or goverment.

The difference between cheap and expensive (luxury) products is the margin. Manufacturers of cheap wine have to sell a lot to make a profit because they can't afford to charge any premium. This means going as fast, cheap, and low quality with the ingredients as they legally can. This is how the race to the bottom looks like and it's almost universally applicable in just about every field.

A $2 bottle of wine is less wine and more creative engineering. And that's ok as long as the customers understand what they're getting.

It is very hard to create luxury wine in the middle of nowhere so the price of land is big factor in cost of wines in premium and luxury segment. 1 hectare of good plot in top regions like Barolo, Bordeaux, Champagne or Burgundy starts around 1 to 2 millions of euros, but top plots goes much further than that, 10 millions of euros for hectare of Burgundy Grand Cru is not unheard of. You are making around 4000 litres of wine per year on 1 hectare.

I'm sure all that is true. That's exactly why competition is so strong in the low end and why it's a race to the bottom for quality and price. The most accessible ways of making a product cheaper are mass production, and replacing the expensive components with something you can mass produce cheaply.

The bar for entry at the high end is impossibly high. And those who are already up there have to offer something that cannot be cheaply obtained. A unique natural taste, the image (and protected brand), tradition, etc.

On the other end of the spectrum you have the cheap wines that have no choice but to try to replicate some of that by artificial means while competing with an almost literal flood of competition doing the exact same. The target there is to stay as cheap as humanly possible while minimally meeting regulation in the food sector, and offering wine-like taste.

See the wine like a battery. The cheapest and the most expensive ones look the same and might superficially act the same. And they'll certainly feel the same if you just test them with your tongue. They're on the same spectrum of products but there's a reason why they're at different ends.

This sounds like some great marketing.

“Don’t buy the $2 Trader Joe wine, buy our $20 wine not because it tastes better because we “we don’t use the land as a life-less substrate””

Isn't that the same for most products? One big difference between the super cheap mass produced product and the more expensive 'artisanal' product is that the more expensive product has less negative externalities . When I buy the more expensive local meat as opposed to the the super cheap imported meat, part of what I'm paying for isn't just a better product, but also supporting certain farming practices I prefer.

Farming practices? Sure.

Externalities? Not necessarily. The organic, small farmer raised tomato probably has a much higher CO2 footprint than a corporate farm tomato from Mexico - efficiency at scale can be enormous.

It is great marketing but also way of life.

This is the same as quality vs. quantity. Consume less but better. Buy less food, more expensive, but do not throw it away. Buy a good pair of shoes which you can get fixed and use for many years....

Same subject, more or less, which I really enjoyed reading:

"I’ve tracked every piece of clothing I’ve worn for three years": https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25869464

How does that work with wine? A bottle of cheap wine doesn’t last longer than a bottle of expensive wine.

Another perspective to this is that Trader Joe's is owned by Aldi. Aldi's model used to be to provide a limited inventory of good and cheap goods.

I don't know if that's still the case, but it definitely used to be what they were doing.

It is what Aldi-branded stores still do to some extent in at least Germany/CH and the US. They still have many consistent store-brand products, however.

Trader Joe's is really a different animal. It has a interesting rotating selection of specialty items, usually more global or seasonal in nature with biweekly or monthly "themes," along with a fairly consistent store brand selection of reasonable quality that doesn't just optimize for a low price. Most stores around the nation will have similar items around the same time, and they will be seasonally relevant, so they're not just stocking what was left over in that geographic region.

Yep, a $2 wine flavored and colored artificial drink. The math is math, like saying "natural cheese" when the price is much lower than the cost of milk required to make it. For $2 people should know not to expect much: you need bottles, caps, store margins, taxes, distribution in addition to the rest of stuff.

Added sugar is a huge no-no for me. I wish wineries and spirit makers were forced to disclose in plain terms a lot of this stuff, especially after a price point.

I was skeptical of this comment and went googling - found this: https://vinepair.com/articles/trader-joes-target-wines-cheap...

I also found: https://www.kalw.org/post/evaluating-taste-and-cost-two-buck...

But I haven't read it yet, so I am not sure if it is worth it.

> There are many other factors that go into the making of super value wine, but the bottom line is this: You get what you pay for. And if you’re not paying much for Two Buck Chuck or California Roots, you’re not getting much, either.

A long article which ends at the default lie of all "premium" products: If the price of something is high it is because of better quality. And: We would never, ever put additives into our premium products like these cheap manufacturers.

And if you believe that .. it's bridge selling time.

Having seen the production process of some premium wine, and having friends that own wineries/beer breweries, and having had industry experience providing software for food manufacturers, I'd say your cynicism does NOT necessarily correspond to reality there.

Do you know if organic wines are safe from those chemical additives? I generally expect organic products to be expensive than the regular products, but that's not the case for wines. I find many $10 organic wines in Trader Joes as well as custom local organic green shops.. the price range is very similar to the traditional wines.

I am not familiar with US legislative, but in EU the organic certification describe viticulture part only. Secret to cheap organic winemaking is having fruit from some places like Chile or Argentina that have harsh climate for diseases

If cheap wine can pass ABX tests, then is it really worse?

> Burger from McD taste pretty good as well, right?

That’s something I could never comprehend. To me, it doesn’t taste any good.

Like two-buch Chuck, right?