The Necessity Of Wine Ingredients Labeling
In his recent article arguing against wine ingredient labeling, Adam Lee is on the wrong side of history and, unfortunately, logic.
Hi, my name is Adam Leigh Huss. I’m a small winery owner and winemaker. I'm also fond of anyone with my name or its homophones, and I think Adam Lee argues from a good place – that of protecting the small winery. But his arguments against wine ingredients labeling are short-sighted and fallacious.
I would even take it further. I think wine should be required to list the chemicals that are sprayed on the vineyard or vineyards from which the wine is produced. But let’s come back to that.
Lee argues that various state labeling laws make it onerous for small wineries to adapt to a potential 50 variations in label laws. He brings up Connecticut, which charges $200 per label. Other examples include topless women on labels and orange juice formulas.
What any of this has to do with truthfully stating what a winemaker has added to the raw material of grapes is hard to see. The logic is nearly nonsensical.
What those of us who want ingredients on labels are asking for is simply this: tell us everything you added while making the wine.
We don’t care if it gets eaten by yeast, or already exists in the raw must, or gets broken down into other substances. We want to know what you did to manipulate and adulterate the wine.
Did you add water? We want to know. Did you add sugar? We don’t care that it’s now alcohol. We want to know that you chose to add it. Did you add tartaric? Don’t care that it already existed in the grapes. We want to know. Did you add Velcorin? Don’t care that it’s now other chemicals. We definitely want to know. Diammonium Phosphate? We don’t care that the yeast ate it. We want to know that you added it.
The actual compounds that make up “wine” are myriad. We aren’t asking for a listing of the chemical analysis of what is in the bottle. We want to know what you added. That’s what’s behind the desire for ingredients labeling: a desire to know the values and story behind the winemaking.
Every bottle should list “Ingredients added during winemaking” which will at least include “grapes.” Whatever else is listed besides “grapes” tells us something about the winemaking philosophy of the winemaker.
But grapes don’t come into the winery naked. They arrive coated with the residues of whatever was sprayed on them during the growing season, and containing whatever sprays the vines took in from the soil. What sprays were used in the vineyard also tells a story, and it may be the most important story we can tell about wine.
This is why I also recommend a vineyard ingredients list. Would it need to include “owl pellets” or “gopher poop?” No. That’s like listing “iron” as a wine ingredient. Human intervention wasn’t responsible for it.
“Ingredients added during wine growing” might be a good title for this list of ingredients.
Did you add Glyphosate? I want to know, and I definitely would opt not to buy your wine solely based on that one “winegrowing ingredient.” Did you add ammonium nitrate or worm castings? It definitely makes a difference to me, and I think it says a lot about you. Did you spray with sulphur and stylet oil, or chlorpyrifos and norflurazon? It absolutely matters.
The vineyard is where the real skeletons of the wine industry are kept. Sure, industrial winemaking has its ugly side, and labeling every bottle with “Ingredients added during winemaking” would immediately reveal a significant portion of that. But for far too long information about what happens in the vineyard has been kept from consumers. The vineyard is where the deep, dark, bee-killing, toxic-runoff-producing, cancer-causing secrets of the wine industry have been kept.
Here’s the great thing: winemakers can voluntarily list all ingredients added already. If you have nothing to hide, why don’t you?
I just went through 4 COLA approvals with the TTB. You can apply for COLA approval for a wine label in about 5 minutes online (not including account set-up). And it can take less than a week to get the application approved if all your info is in order.
That’s it. Done. Pretty simple and fast. Including ingredients lists! And it’s completely free. That’s the main label approval process that winemakers have to endure. Somehow it doesn’t seem like a burden to small wineries to me.
So let’s not pick on Ridge for listing more ingredients than they really need to when they’re also listing everything they should. And let’s stop making outlier-case arguments against ingredients labeling, or playing stupid about what ingredients count as ingredients.
Bring on the federally regulated requirement to list all ingredients added during winemaking. And while we’re at it, let’s also bring on the federally regulated requirement to list all ingredients added during winegrowing.
Then, sure, knowing how much shit [sic] many wine producers put in both the vineyard and the wine, I can see why they’d need a QR code to link to a place that has a lot more room for ingredients than a wine bottle label.
- Adam Leigh Huss