Issue link: http://read.dmtmag.com/i/100792
END POST TYLER COLMAN Not So Fast on Ingredient Labeling 142 V I N EYARD & WINERY MANAGEMENT | Consumers certainly deserve to know what���s in various foods and drinks, especially if it involves allergens that remain in the finished food or beverage (the industry should adopt minimum standards for the presence of egg whites or milk proteins in finished wines that almost entirely precipitate out of wine, if used, and label accordingly). But for wineries to start voluntarily listing ingredients runs the risk of scaring people more than informing them; it���s a case of too much information and not enough knowledge. In my experience, lots of wine drinkers have enjoyed a few too many glasses of wine and woken up with a headache the next morning, only to reach the conclusion that they must have a sulfite allergy. (In fact, only a tiny percentage of the population has a reaction to sulfites, and it often is quite severe, including anaphylaxis.) Consider the back label on Bonny Doon Vineyard���s Contra red blend, which reads, in part: ���Ingredients: Grapes, tartaric acid, and sulfur dioxide.��� For those in the know, it���s a remarkably short list and does not raise any eyebrows. The list continues: ���Other ingredients used in winemaking: Indigenous yeast, yeast nutrients, and oak chips.��� Now the casual consumer might be a bit confused ��� what is tartaric acid and why were oak chips in contact with the wine? Again, nothing nefarious here, it���s just that there���s not enough space on the back label to go into what all this stuff does. If anything, it could become a litmus test for some consumers, prejudging a wine on how it was made, not how it tastes in the glass. But mostly, as laudable as Bonny Doon���s voluntary effort is to list ingredients on the labels, a recent story in The New York Times noted Jan - Feb 2013 that consumers are largely indifferent. Moreover, only a handful of other wineries have joined in voluntary disclosure and they are very conscientious wineries, too, with little to hide. Wineries that produce wine on a large scale add bags of sugar, tannin, Mega Purple, conventional yeasts, enzymes or whatever may be construed as ���unnatural��� wine, are never going to voluntarily put their ingredients on the label. If the whole industry is required to list ingredients, then the shorter the list, the more virtuous a producer appears. And, if mandated, the ingredient listing would have more credibility since it wouldn���t just be something that the marketing department chose to put on the label instead of the yada-yada about berries and food pairings. Unfortunately, as many label terms such as place or vintage don���t have to be fully true, it���s hard to see how some producers could get used to stating ingredients accurately, even if required. So while transparency is good, if not inevitable, when it comes to wine labels, ingredient lists would be more effective with third-party verification. And mandating disclosure would certainly be a boon for wine writers, since there would be a lot more explaining to do. (Opinions expressed in this column do not necessarily reflect those of Vineyard & Winery Management.) ransparency is the order of the day. But not so with wine labels since the Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau (TTB), the federal regulatory authority, does not require ingredient labeling. Nonetheless, some wineries are voluntarily placing ingredient lists on their back labels. Is this a good idea? Not always. While it���s hard to argue against transparency, shedding some historical light on the issue bears importance in today���s debate. We all know that there���s a large swath of America that doesn���t drink alcohol. In 1972, the Center for Science in the Public Interest pushed to have ingredient lists on wine labels. According to Thomas Pinney in his commanding ���A History of Wine in America��� (volume 2), the issue got bounced around between various federal agencies, a weak standard was promulgated, industry objected, and a court struck it down in 1986. By that time, neoprohibitionism was on the rise. Seizing on the failed campaign for ingredient labels, various organizations started pushing for health warnings to appear on wine labels. Pinney writes that in their new effort, ���Their intent was not to inform, but to frighten.��� These organizations found a champion for their cause in Sen. Strom Thurmond of South Carolina. In 1987, the ���contains sulfites��� wording appeared on wine labels and was soon followed by the government warning that takes up so much valuable real estate on the back label. Of course, foods such as dried fruits and salad bars that contain elevated levels of sulfites do not contain warning labels ��� I guess there is no anti-dried-fruit lobby. Tyler Colman, author of the wine blog Dr. Vino, teaches wine classes at New York University and the University of Chicago, and wrote the book ���Wine Politics: How Governments, Environmentalists, Mobsters, and Critics Influence the Wines We Drink.��� Comments? Please e-mail us at feedback@vwmmedia.com. w w w. v w m m e d i a . c o m