FoodBanter.com - View Single Post - What's in Wine--you don't wanna know -- Vinovation's Smith Scoffs at Noxious wine-additives Spi suggestions

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From: NewsMax Health

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6. Whats in Wine? (You May Not Want to Know)

You know the old saw about sausage the one that says if you love it,
you should never watch it being made. Well, it turns out the same
thing may be true about wine, and the government may end up being as
heavily in involved in policing the making of wine as it is in the
grinding of sausage: Federal regulators are contemplating changing the
rules for wine labels, and after you read a new label or two, you may
never drink another drop.

It turns out that labels may have to tell whats really in that fancy
bottle, and common ingredients in wine are (no joke) fish, milk,
chicken, and wheat products. Sometimes an agent called Mega Purple is
thrown in for coloring. (It comes in purple, red, pink, and white.)
Sometimes oak chips are added, and other additives may include grape
juice concentrate, tartaric acid, oak gall nuts, citric acid,
dissolved oxygen, water, copper, and other items too numerous to
mention.

No one doubts that such labeling would tend to take the romance and
mystery out of buying wine, since current labels focus on things like
special soils, ideal climate conditions, and the arcane knowledge and
ancient skills of little old winemakers. Current rules only require
that labels disclose alcohol content and whether sulfites are present,
and must warn against drinking when pregnant or while driving. And
this is the way the Wine Institute, which is the industrys primary
lobbying arm, says it should be.

The Wine Institute says ingredient labels would bring traditional wine-
making practices into public controversy for no good reason. Clark
Smith, chairman of Vinovation, a California firm that uses additives
to turn not-so-great vats of wine from over 1,000 winery clients into
salable goods, said, Why freak out the ignorant when we are adjusting
something that is already there in the wine?

On the other hand, industry consultants like Leo McCloskey, president
of Enologix, a California company that has analyzed over 70,000 wines,
disagreed and said that the best wines dont rely on additives. The
wine industry is completely unregulated, he said. It would be useful
to have labels that detail everything in a wine. It would tell the
consumer what they are drinking.

The squabble stems from a 2004 congressional mandate which requires
labeling to disclose allergens, including specifically labeling for
alcoholic beverages. Currently, derivatives from milk, chicken, wheat,
and fish are allowed in wine, and the feds say people need to be
warned. These derivatives are used as fining agents during the wine-
making process (e.g., albumen from egg whites may be added to remove
tannins), and the Wine Institute says there is no way to prove the
allergens are actually present in wine.

Is there some slight trace of these agents left in the wine? It is
very difficult to detect, said Gordon Burns, co-founder of ETS
Laboratories, another California analysis company. How many wineries
practice some sort of fining? Burns says almost all of them to some
extent.

Before the 2004 mandate, the last attempt at labeling was when Jimmy
Carter tried to stick his nose in the vintners business. By the time
his administration got the regulations ready to roll out, however,
Reagan was in the White House and rescinded them with a stroke of the
executive pen before they could take effect.

Whos pushing for labeling this time around? A coalition of consumer
groups led by a well-known organization that many regard as suspect in
its intentions if not downright deceptive: the Center for Science in
the Public Interest. Proposed rules are expected to be published later
this year by the Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau.

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ps;

and ps: campagna floated bad wine as bulk alcohol wihtout licensure
already and its out there and maybe vinovation perked it and because
campagna paid $2,000 for bush jr's primary in alexandria va and got
his phoney blue-blooded virginians to do likewise, he's getting a free
pas from the ttb? or so it seems.

doesn't swharzenegger know that bad practices can lead to the death of
an industry? he should ask his bootlegging relatives (the kennedy's )
about this or is smith a kennedy just following on ihe family
tradition?

so much for the california wine industry.