An excellent essay in The New York Times explains how mass market wine is made to suit mass market tastes, often...
An excellent essay in The New York Times explains how mass market wine is made to suit mass market tastes, often with great precision.
More than 60 additives can legally be added to wine, and aside from the preservative sulfur dioxide, winemakers aren’t required to disclose any of them.
This should have been the ultimate turnoff. Where was the artistry? The mystery? But the more I learned, the more I accepted these unnatural wines as one more way to satisfy drinkers and even create new connoisseurs.
For one thing, winemaking has long fused art with science, even if that’s not the story drinkers are told. Ancient Romans doctored their wines with pig’s blood, marble dust, lead and sulfur dioxide. Bordelaise winemakers have been treating their wines with egg whites for centuries. And though the chemicals dosed into wine can sound alarming, some, like tartaric acid, already occur naturally in grapes. The only difference is that today’s winemakers can manage the process with more precision.
This technological revolution has democratized decent wine. Thanks to pumps and powders, drinkers who can’t splurge no longer have to settle for plonk. The gap between fine wine and commercial wine is shrinking as producers use chemical shortcuts not only to avoid blatant flaws, but also to mimic high-end bottles. They can replicate the effects of oak for a fraction of the price of real barrels, correct for inferior climates and keep quality high in crummy vintages. “It is one of the ironies of the wine market today,” the wine critic Jancis Robinson writes, “that just as the price differential between cheapest and most expensive bottles is greater than ever before, the difference in quality between these two extremes is probably narrower than it has ever been.”
The correlary is that "fine wine" (i.e. expensive wine) is a Vebeln good, made by deliberately antiquated procedures to give its consumers an illusion of artistry and laborious craft.
As a rule, I don't spend more than $15 a bottle on wine.
https://mobile.nytimes.com/2017/03/17/opinion/sunday/ignore-the-snobs-drink-the-cheap-delicious-wine.html?_r=0&referer=
More than 60 additives can legally be added to wine, and aside from the preservative sulfur dioxide, winemakers aren’t required to disclose any of them.
This should have been the ultimate turnoff. Where was the artistry? The mystery? But the more I learned, the more I accepted these unnatural wines as one more way to satisfy drinkers and even create new connoisseurs.
For one thing, winemaking has long fused art with science, even if that’s not the story drinkers are told. Ancient Romans doctored their wines with pig’s blood, marble dust, lead and sulfur dioxide. Bordelaise winemakers have been treating their wines with egg whites for centuries. And though the chemicals dosed into wine can sound alarming, some, like tartaric acid, already occur naturally in grapes. The only difference is that today’s winemakers can manage the process with more precision.
This technological revolution has democratized decent wine. Thanks to pumps and powders, drinkers who can’t splurge no longer have to settle for plonk. The gap between fine wine and commercial wine is shrinking as producers use chemical shortcuts not only to avoid blatant flaws, but also to mimic high-end bottles. They can replicate the effects of oak for a fraction of the price of real barrels, correct for inferior climates and keep quality high in crummy vintages. “It is one of the ironies of the wine market today,” the wine critic Jancis Robinson writes, “that just as the price differential between cheapest and most expensive bottles is greater than ever before, the difference in quality between these two extremes is probably narrower than it has ever been.”
The correlary is that "fine wine" (i.e. expensive wine) is a Vebeln good, made by deliberately antiquated procedures to give its consumers an illusion of artistry and laborious craft.
As a rule, I don't spend more than $15 a bottle on wine.
https://mobile.nytimes.com/2017/03/17/opinion/sunday/ignore-the-snobs-drink-the-cheap-delicious-wine.html?_r=0&referer=
ReplyDeleteI'm glad of a good vin de pays at an even better price, but I'd be scared to death to hover at that price point.
That's impressive.
Investing in a great glass pays dividends, too.
ReplyDeleteI doubted this initially; I've since recanted.
{had to get a wine pun in there}
I'm serious, though; I'm convinced a good glass, and the right glass, makes wine taste best.
rare avis many years ago I did a somewhat controlled study of the shape of wine glasses on my ability to discern the aroma of wine. Indeed, the shape of the glass was quite important, with highly different subjective impressions of the same wine when presented in different glasses. However, the expensive Riedel glasses all broke over the years and I'm now sipping from cheap and simple stemless tableware.
ReplyDeleteKosher wine is probably missing a lot of those additives, in favor of sugar; especially in the out-of-town (NY) US favorite of Manishevitz.
ReplyDeleteJoshua Lee I know Kosher wineries are trying to be good, to get beyond the Manashevitz stigma; I just never feel like I can trust that they'll be good.
ReplyDeleteI've never had a stellar Kosher wine.
I do agree that if one is looking for fewer additives or more transparency, they are a good route to go.
Not inexpensive by any stretch, though...