'Huge Array Of Compounds And Chemicals' In Average Bottle Of Wine, But Not All
SONOMA (KPIX 5) -- While some California vintners craft their wines the old fashioned way, without additives – that's not the case for your average bottle.
"The perception is you are drinking fermented grape juice, and the reality is that is not exactly the truth," Wired Magazine's Christopher Null told KPIX 5's Wilson Walker.
The additives are more common than most wine drinkers might think.
"The reality is there are over 200 additives that are allowed in wine today, and none of them, except for sulfites, are required to be disclosed on the label," Null said.
The additives alter taste, bolster color, and give the wine legs in the glass.
"Liquid tannin, velcorin, tartaric acid, gum Arabic, mega purple, and go on from there," Alice Feiring, author of For the Love of Wine said.
Feiring says the additives are all about control over the wine.
"As the wine industry got bigger, like any industry that gets bigger, you need more control. So, it really is about the need for control over the product," Feiring said.
Pulling off that control is getting increasingly difficult. Owning vineyard land and running a winery is getting more expensive, while the average price for a bottle of wine is less than $8. To churn out that cheap wine, vintners are having to get more creative.
"When you drink a glass of wine, especially a relatively inexpensive wine, you are drinking a huge array of compounds and chemicals that you have no idea are present in the wine," Null said.
That's one reason the American wine industry has fought efforts to require ingredient labels on bottles, like what consumers see on food packaging.
"There's no doubt about it, the United States is very far behind," Feiring said.
But, some wineries still make their wines without additives, like Tony Coturri of Coturri Winery.
"It's very simple. We add absolutely nothing to the grapes when they come in. We use the natural yeast that forms on the berries. That's the beauty of it, and that's the complexity of it. The hardest thing in the world to do is to do nothing," Coturri said.
