Is it the greatest myth in the world of wine that wine is a natural product? If you collect grapes and dump them into a container, sooner or later there will be fermentation to turn juice into wine. Fair enough. But in the natural course of events, that wine will have only a transient existence. Acetobacter will convert the alcohol into acetic acid, and—voilà!—you have vinegar.
You cannot stabilize the wine without adding some external agent. If we take a long historic view, winemaking has evolved step by step by introducing agents to stabilize the wine or to affect its character. What is the line that distinguishes this from adulteration? Time embellishes long-established practices with a wonderful sheen of authenticity, whereas new practices may attract criticism of interference with the natural process.
Minimal-interference illusory
Let’s follow a grape from harvesting through to its conversion into wine that is offered to a consumer. Grapes are harvested as bunches and typically dusted with sulfur to prevent oxidation before they go into the vat. Is it more natural to ferment them as bunches or to destem so that only grapes go into the vat? The purity of winemaking might argue that wine should come from grapes and only grapes, but we can concede the point that the stems are a natural part of the bunch.
Difficulties in deciding what is natural start when the grapes go into fermentation. For red wine, a series of decisions involve whether to hold the grapes at low temperature to delay the start of fermentation, how often and how to macerate the skins with the juice, whether and how much to control the temperature of the fermentation, and whether to let maceration continue after the fermentation has finished. These are all stylistic choices, but not a single one of them could qualify for the description of “minimal interference” that is favored by so many “natural” winemakers.
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Yeast has as much, if not more, influence on the style of wine as any of these decisions. I do not think inoculation with yeast to control fermentation can be described as “adulteration” as such, but the ability to choose yeast to strongly influence the character of the wine can cross the same line. What’s the difference in the result between using yeast that increase levels of the thiols 4MMP or 3MH that contribute to the varietal character of Sauvignon Blanc, as distinct from actually adding the compounds to the fermenting brew?
The only way to make a truly natural wine would surely be to ferment the grapes and age the wine in a completely neutral container, but I do not know of anyone who makes wine exclusively in glass. I suppose stainless steel comes close in terms of neutrality—but the moment you age wine in wood, especially if there is any new or young wood, you are adulterating the wine with compounds leached from the oak. Aromas of vanillin (vanilla), eugenol and isoeugenol (cloves), 4-methylguiacol (spice and smoke), guaiacol (char), 4-methylfurfural and furfural (butterscotch), and lactone (coconut) are not natural to wine. History is the only guide as to whether this is generally regarded as adulteration. Using oak barrels to age the wine has been hallowed by centuries of practice. Adding oak chips or powdered oak is adulteration. Is barrel-fermentation for white wines the extreme of adulteration with oak? There is scarcely a great white wine from Burgundy’s Côte d’Or that does not depend on leaching flavors from oak.
It is common to add sulfur at any or many of the stages of production to protect the wine against oxidation. The current fashion for reducing or even eliminating sulfur certainly produces mixed results. (It is not really possible to produce completely sulfur-free wine, because small amounts of sulfur compounds are always naturally present after fermentation.) I have mixed feelings about the trend to reduce sulfur. It is true that whenever I have had the opportunity to compare two wines made under identical conditions, where sulfur was used for one but not the other, I have seen increased purity in the fruit spectrum in the sulfur-free wine. All of these comparisons, however, have been at the producer, where the wines have not been subjected to the vicissitudes of transport. On the other hand, I have a suspicion that the decade of premox (premature oxidation) of white Burgundy could have been largely avoided had producers used a little more sulfur in their white wines. Spoiled wines are too high a price to pay for purity.
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I suppose it’s not really adulteration when you mix one batch of wine with another of different character to achieve some particular style, but I do wonder why rosé Champagne is treated differently from all other pink wines in Europe. You can make rosé Champagne in either of two ways: saignée, when juice is taken off red grapes after a very short period of skin contact; or assemblage, when red wine is mixed with white base wine before the second fermentation. I do not know anyone who claims to be able to distinguish reliably the two styles by taste. So, if there is no implication of a difference in quality, why is it illegal to produce still rosé wine by mixing a small amount of red wine with white wine?
Alcohol is a thorny issue in the world of adulteration. Increasing or decreasing alcohol levels is perhaps the most common manipulation in winemaking. But whether this is regarded as adulteration depends on where you are in the world. In the traditional cool-climate regions of Europe (at least before the era of climate change), increasing alcohol levels by adding sugar during fermentation (chaptalization) was routine. In hot regions, it is illegal and regarded as adulteration. Well, this is really unreasonable: Either a compound is natural in wine, or it is an artificial additive. Climate may affect practical considerations, but if adding sugar in hot climates is adulteration, we have to admit that it may be necessary to adulterate the wine in cool climates.
Bound by the chains of history
The other side of this issue is the rising level of alcohol resulting from the increasing temperatures. It is arguable that climatic conditions, especially when there is drought, deprive the vine of water, so why not add that water back to a must that is overly concentrated? In areas where it’s permitted to irrigate, of course, that water can be provided to the vines before harvest. What’s the difference between irrigating vines just before harvest to bump up water in the grapes and adding water just after harvest? Universally regarded as adulteration that cheats the consumer by diluting the wine, watering back is illegal everywhere (though it’s reputed to be widely used in California).
Water is the ultimate adulterant, but the attitude to water is schizophrenic in Europe. It is legal to install miles of drainage under your vineyards to take off excess water. It is illegal to protect the ground against accumulation of water—for example, by putting down tarpaulins before rain. It is illegal almost everywhere to irrigate in Europe. Doesn’t this reflect a somewhat one-sided view of what’s natural?
Imagine an alternative history, one in which the ancient Greeks or Romans had discovered how to make stainless steel and had used it to produce wine. Then suppose that centuries later—in the early 20th century, say—some bright spark had introduced oak barrels. Would there not have been cries that this was adulterating the purity of wine by introducing foreign flavors? It is very likely that the use of oak would have been banned when the appellation contrôlée system was introduced in France, with the ambition of maintaining purity and typicity.
Are we not too bound by the chains of history? Of course we need to protect the consumer against manipulation that turns wine into an artificial product distant from the results of fermenting grapes. But we should recognize at the same time that many current practices are accepted only because of historical precedent. In fact, it is all but impossible to make wine (at least if you want to have wine that persists long enough to be enjoyed by consumers) without interference, if not adulteration.
