Wine Vs. Wine Beverages

With this many ingredients, would you consider the wine to be natural?

I often tell people that I believe every wine should be required to have an ingredients list. More often than not when I say this, I'm met with a confused stare.

"What ingredients would you list? Isn't wine just, like… grapes?"

Nope. At least not 99% of the time.

Take the photo above as an example. From my experience, this producer did not list their ingredients voluntarily. The use of organic claims on the label often leads the TTB - the federal agency regulating alcohol labeling - to require an ingredients list (which I think is great). And while I whole-heartedly applaud the farming that is behind the wine pictured, it is also an example of a pretty common, and long, list of ingredients used in conventional winemaking.

Is this still a wine? Or is it a wine beverage?

The ingredients pictured above and more are common in nearly all of the wines that most consumers drink regularly.

Let me put it this way: Nearly every wine that is available for easy purchase for the average consumer contains more ingredients than Coca-Cola.

(There are seven ingredients in Coke, though one of them is "flavorings," which is plural, and we don't know how many types of flavorings are included in Coke. Similarly, the single ingredient "yeast nutrients" is plural and includes, minimally, vitamins, minerals, and yeast hulls).

Now some would argue that the Coke analogy is unfair, because Coke's ingredients actually end up in the bottle of soda that you consume, while wine's ingredients are mostly settled or filtered out. However, some of those ingredients used in winemaking do stay in solution in small amounts.

But more importantly: every one of them affects the flavor of the resulting beverage. They aren't just neutral catalysts used to facilitate the process of fermentation. They actually change how the wine tastes.

Every one of the ingredients shown in the photo impacts the flavor and/or appearance of a wine, some by adding things thought to be pleasant, others by removing things thought to be unpleasant.

And there are often processes used, in addition to additives, to change the flavor of wine.

Most wines are fined. Fining is a process of removing proteins from the wine so that it appears clear. It also affects the textural flavors of a wine, or the way it feels in your mouth. That's why the animal product "gelatin" is in the ingredients list in the photo. Gelatin is commonly used to fine wine, as are egg whites and bentonite clay. Isinglass is another fining agent, less often used, from fish bladders.

Fining is why most wines are not vegan.

Also, most wines are filtered - a majority undergoing what is known as "sterile filtration." This is another removal process, meant to eliminate any microbes in the wine. It also strips color and flavor - maybe not a lot, but a noticeable amount.

There are many more processes that are regularly used in most of the wine you see on grocery and liquor store shelves as well.

I'm not saying we should be morally opposed to these practices. None of them make the beverage unsafe or toxic. I'm just saying that the more ingredients and practices used to add, alter, and remove flavors and textures and colors, the further we are getting from what I believe the average wine drinker would consider to be, well, wine.

What if this producer hadn't been required to list ingredients?

That’s actually the case for most wines. Ingredients labeling isn’t required, so you’re unlikely to ever see a list like this on a label.

Most consumers clearly assume that, in the absence of an ingredients list, wine is as natural as lettuce.

But the moral of this story is: Don't.