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That's a classic but lately a swedish journalist uncovered that the wine we drink in Europe is largely bogus. Apparently wine distributors are not required to

That's a classic but lately a swedish journalist uncovered that the wine we drink in Europe is largely bogus. Apparently wine distributors are not required to declare contents and they can use up to 60 approved ingredients, ecological wine had 30 or 40 approved ingredients. And the issue is with the industrial yeast that they use. This is apparently tailored yeast to give the wine flavor like mango or pomegranate. The flavors listed by the manufacturer of the industrial yeast often match what is later seen in the store where the wine is sold. Essentially distributors buy wine from a country like south africa or germany for example. Then they process it, often here in Sweden or in another european country. And that's where they add things like oak flakes to fake oak cask maturing, and of course the industrial yeast to add other flavors. The flavors differ between different european countries, catering to that population and culture. A bottle of "fake" wine can cost between 8 and 14 euro, a bottle of natural wine can cost 30 euro or more. I've completely stopped buying the generic wine from our national alcohol store after seeing this. Imho almost all of the wine we have available to buy should be called something like "wine drink" instead of wine. The EU is working on leglislation to force distributors to reveal their ingredients but so far they're very secretive.

athom 9y ago
I remember, here in the United States, we used to have "wine coolers" back in the mid to late '80s. Was never much of a drinker myself, and underage back then anyway, so can't say much about the quality, but your "wine drink" remark brought that back to mind. Thanks!
- Kadin 9y ago
  Wine coolers are just an alternate path to what Europeans call "alcopop", but via the US's oddball tax structure. It's just cheap but high-ABV wine, cut down with water and flavoring (to something like 5% ABV). (The other path to roughly the same end product is by taking cheap beer and running it through a charcoal filter, then flavoring the result. Neither process would make sense if you could just sell an ethanol+water mixture without getting a tax break for not having distilled anything to get there.)
  - dmurray 9y ago
    Wine coolers also exist in Europe. I don't know whether they are motivated by the same tax concerns. E.g https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/West_Coast_Cooler https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/West_Coast_Cooler
mc32 9y ago
That's pretty insidious. It's like Orange Juice flavor packets[1] but way more sophisticated. Instead of wanting a uniform predictable flavor across regions and seasons, here, instead they want to mimic local preferences and terroir. [1]http://unclematts.com/resources/flavor-packet-faqs/ http://unclematts.com/resources/flavor-packet-faqs/
Pamar 9y ago
Source, please? (I am Italian, my family used to own a small vineyard so I have some hands-on experience on wine making, albeit we made it only for our own family). I find the part about "yeasts" a bit difficult to believe, but I have been wrong in the past so I would like to find out more.
- Double_a_92 9y ago
  Yeasts are like "nano bots" that you can program to create very complex chemicals. In this case they are used to create specific taste molecules. They are also used in some breads so they stay soft for weeks.
  - Pamar 9y ago
    Thanks, I do know what yeasts are. My point is that (most probably due to the very small quantity of wine we produced) we never added any yeast to the grapes. I.e. fermentation was catalyzed by kloeckera-apiculata [1] which is normally found in nature (small deposits on the grapes, etc.). The OP seems to imply that different yeasts are prominent in industrial-size wine production (again, this may very well be the case: as I mentioned I have been proven wrong about industrial winemaking at least once in the past) so I would like to learn more about that, and I would be even more interested in understanding how different countries go at it. [1] https://eurekabrewing.wordpress.com/2014/09/26/hello-my-name-is-hanseniaspora-uvarum-aka-kloeckera-apiculata/ https://eurekabrewing.wordpress.com/2014/09/26/hello-my-name...
    - ghostDancer 9y ago
      I guess that in countries like Italy, Spain or France that produce and consume their own wines mostly , the "tricks" and manipulation won't be as much, i have some friends who work in the wine industry and never heard of those things either, other countries that import most the wine probably the distributors would manipulate it to please and to get more market. Here you can find good wines from 5-6 euros the bottle, of course there are more expensive ones but for everyday. I'm from Spain. Edit: corrected some misspelling.
stdbrouw 9y ago
This seems to be conflating a number of different things. 1. What you call industrial yeast are simply isolated yeast strains used because of their favorable characteristics like quick fermentation or the creation of secondary flavors and aroma's. The alternative is spontaneous fermentation by whatever is already on the grapes or in the barrels, in which case you're going to have a bunch of different kinds of yeast and the end product is less predictable. But isolated strains of yeast and wild yeast are all just yeast. In beer brewing, almost all yeast comes from isolated strains, except for some unique sour styles like Belgian Lambic. Picking the right yeast for a particular kind of grape or a particular kind of wort is an art form and there is nothing industrial about it. We could call wheat "industrialized grass", but is that really more informative? 2. Oak flakes are sometimes added to fake oak cask maturing, but really only in cheap wine, and ultimately you have to ask yourself: do I enjoy the flavor or not? Barrels certainly have that warm fuzzy "authentic" and "artisanal" thing going for them, but using flakes, extracts and what-not can often be used to make a product that's almost as good at a fraction of the price, and that's great because it means more people get to enjoy good wine (maybe not great, but good and predictable, e.g. Jacob's Creek). Adding actual fruit flavorings is very rare and generally not allowed in the EU. 3. The list of 60 approved ingredients contains mostly preservatives like sulfites, without which it is very hard to keep the wine stable (I enjoy natural wines very much but every bottle is different), or finings like isinglass, gelatine or egg white to get the yeast and other particles to drop out of the wine and of which trace amounts might make it to the bottle. Buy what you like, don't let your purchasing decisions be influenced by FUD.
- thomasahle 9y ago
  I think you misunderstood some of OP's points. For 1) the problem is not that the companies use industrial yeast, but that they take already perfectly good wine, and "reyeast" it to fake how and where it was made. For 2) as well, surely people are allowed to enjoy wine made with oak flakes, but the producers should be honest about it. More transparency and labels such as the suggested "wine drink" can only help consumers.
  - bathMarm0t 9y ago
Nursie 9y ago
Yeast doesn't work like that. Different yeasts do indeed produce different flavours, but to produce them you add them for the fermentation stage, not afterwards as flavouring components.
saiya-jin 9y ago
I find some of your comments hard to believe. Not going to write a novel, just a single point about pricing - In most expensive part of Switzerland - 'Swiss riviera' and Unesco world heritage site - Lavaux, you can buy wine directly from owners of the wineries you walk through (it is one of most beautiful places I have ever seen, can't recommend enough). Literally from their backyard starting 10 metres from the house. Every house sells their own variety. You can see original wooden wine presses that are used just next to houses, with heaps of empty bottles stashed in early autumn. This wine starts on maybe 7- euros for non-blended single type. So your statement from much, much less expensive countries having a 'natural' wine for > 30 euros just doesn't make sense. (I am not a wine expert though, I can be happy with well-chosen 5 euro french wine)
Sir_Substance 9y ago
>Essentially distributors buy wine from a country like south africa or germany for example. Then they process it, often here in Sweden or in another european country. And that's where they add things like oak flakes to fake oak cask maturing, and of course the industrial yeast to add other flavors. If you add yeast to wine that's already finished it's secondary fermentation (which it has, if it's being called wine), it won't do anything, because there's no sugar left. You could add more sugar at the same time, but you'll send the alcohol percentage to the moon in the process. Wine yeast is likely to cap out at ~17% if you keep adding sugar (although it's hard to start a fermentation targeting above ~%12, to hit higher percentages you usually have to feed some sugar during primary fermentation). TL;DR your explanation doesn't make sense. If you mean they're buying /must/ from south africa or germany and adding yeast then....yeah, that's how cheap wine is made. You didn't think the guys who made goonsacks had their own artisnal fruit presses, did you?
geofft 9y ago
> I've completely stopped buying the generic wine from our national alcohol store after seeing this. ... why? If you couldn't tell by taste and needed to hear about it from an investigative journalist, doesn't that mean it's an equivalently-good product for way cheaper?
cylinder 9y ago
What is a "generic wine?"

athom 9y ago

I remember, here in the United States, we used to have "wine coolers" back in the mid to late '80s. Was never much of a drinker myself, and underage back then anyway, so can't say much about the quality, but your "wine drink" remark brought that back to mind. Thanks!

Kadin 9y ago
Wine coolers are just an alternate path to what Europeans call "alcopop", but via the US's oddball tax structure. It's just cheap but high-ABV wine, cut down with water and flavoring (to something like 5% ABV). (The other path to roughly the same end product is by taking cheap beer and running it through a charcoal filter, then flavoring the result. Neither process would make sense if you could just sell an ethanol+water mixture without getting a tax break for not having distilled anything to get there.)
- dmurray 9y ago
  Wine coolers also exist in Europe. I don't know whether they are motivated by the same tax concerns. E.g https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/West_Coast_Cooler https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/West_Coast_Cooler

mc32 9y ago

That's pretty insidious. It's like Orange Juice flavor packets[1] but way more sophisticated. Instead of wanting a uniform predictable flavor across regions and seasons, here, instead they want to mimic local preferences and terroir. [1]http://unclematts.com/resources/flavor-packet-faqs/ http://unclematts.com/resources/flavor-packet-faqs/

Pamar 9y ago

Source, please? (I am Italian, my family used to own a small vineyard so I have some hands-on experience on wine making, albeit we made it only for our own family). I find the part about "yeasts" a bit difficult to believe, but I have been wrong in the past so I would like to find out more.

Double_a_92 9y ago
Yeasts are like "nano bots" that you can program to create very complex chemicals. In this case they are used to create specific taste molecules. They are also used in some breads so they stay soft for weeks.
- Pamar 9y ago
  Thanks, I do know what yeasts are. My point is that (most probably due to the very small quantity of wine we produced) we never added any yeast to the grapes. I.e. fermentation was catalyzed by kloeckera-apiculata [1] which is normally found in nature (small deposits on the grapes, etc.). The OP seems to imply that different yeasts are prominent in industrial-size wine production (again, this may very well be the case: as I mentioned I have been proven wrong about industrial winemaking at least once in the past) so I would like to learn more about that, and I would be even more interested in understanding how different countries go at it. [1] https://eurekabrewing.wordpress.com/2014/09/26/hello-my-name-is-hanseniaspora-uvarum-aka-kloeckera-apiculata/ https://eurekabrewing.wordpress.com/2014/09/26/hello-my-name...
  - ghostDancer 9y ago
    I guess that in countries like Italy, Spain or France that produce and consume their own wines mostly , the "tricks" and manipulation won't be as much, i have some friends who work in the wine industry and never heard of those things either, other countries that import most the wine probably the distributors would manipulate it to please and to get more market. Here you can find good wines from 5-6 euros the bottle, of course there are more expensive ones but for everyday. I'm from Spain. Edit: corrected some misspelling.

stdbrouw 9y ago

This seems to be conflating a number of different things. 1. What you call industrial yeast are simply isolated yeast strains used because of their favorable characteristics like quick fermentation or the creation of secondary flavors and aroma's. The alternative is spontaneous fermentation by whatever is already on the grapes or in the barrels, in which case you're going to have a bunch of different kinds of yeast and the end product is less predictable. But isolated strains of yeast and wild yeast are all just yeast. In beer brewing, almost all yeast comes from isolated strains, except for some unique sour styles like Belgian Lambic. Picking the right yeast for a particular kind of grape or a particular kind of wort is an art form and there is nothing industrial about it. We could call wheat "industrialized grass", but is that really more informative? 2. Oak flakes are sometimes added to fake oak cask maturing, but really only in cheap wine, and ultimately you have to ask yourself: do I enjoy the flavor or not? Barrels certainly have that warm fuzzy "authentic" and "artisanal" thing going for them, but using flakes, extracts and what-not can often be used to make a product that's almost as good at a fraction of the price, and that's great because it means more people get to enjoy good wine (maybe not great, but good and predictable, e.g. Jacob's Creek). Adding actual fruit flavorings is very rare and generally not allowed in the EU. 3. The list of 60 approved ingredients contains mostly preservatives like sulfites, without which it is very hard to keep the wine stable (I enjoy natural wines very much but every bottle is different), or finings like isinglass, gelatine or egg white to get the yeast and other particles to drop out of the wine and of which trace amounts might make it to the bottle. Buy what you like, don't let your purchasing decisions be influenced by FUD.

thomasahle 9y ago
I think you misunderstood some of OP's points. For 1) the problem is not that the companies use industrial yeast, but that they take already perfectly good wine, and "reyeast" it to fake how and where it was made. For 2) as well, surely people are allowed to enjoy wine made with oak flakes, but the producers should be honest about it. More transparency and labels such as the suggested "wine drink" can only help consumers.
- bathMarm0t 9y ago

Nursie 9y ago

Yeast doesn't work like that. Different yeasts do indeed produce different flavours, but to produce them you add them for the fermentation stage, not afterwards as flavouring components.

saiya-jin 9y ago

I find some of your comments hard to believe. Not going to write a novel, just a single point about pricing - In most expensive part of Switzerland - 'Swiss riviera' and Unesco world heritage site - Lavaux, you can buy wine directly from owners of the wineries you walk through (it is one of most beautiful places I have ever seen, can't recommend enough). Literally from their backyard starting 10 metres from the house. Every house sells their own variety. You can see original wooden wine presses that are used just next to houses, with heaps of empty bottles stashed in early autumn. This wine starts on maybe 7- euros for non-blended single type. So your statement from much, much less expensive countries having a 'natural' wine for > 30 euros just doesn't make sense. (I am not a wine expert though, I can be happy with well-chosen 5 euro french wine)

Sir_Substance 9y ago

>Essentially distributors buy wine from a country like south africa or germany for example. Then they process it, often here in Sweden or in another european country. And that's where they add things like oak flakes to fake oak cask maturing, and of course the industrial yeast to add other flavors. If you add yeast to wine that's already finished it's secondary fermentation (which it has, if it's being called wine), it won't do anything, because there's no sugar left. You could add more sugar at the same time, but you'll send the alcohol percentage to the moon in the process. Wine yeast is likely to cap out at ~17% if you keep adding sugar (although it's hard to start a fermentation targeting above ~%12, to hit higher percentages you usually have to feed some sugar during primary fermentation). TL;DR your explanation doesn't make sense. If you mean they're buying /must/ from south africa or germany and adding yeast then....yeah, that's how cheap wine is made. You didn't think the guys who made goonsacks had their own artisnal fruit presses, did you?

geofft 9y ago

> I've completely stopped buying the generic wine from our national alcohol store after seeing this. ... why? If you couldn't tell by taste and needed to hear about it from an investigative journalist, doesn't that mean it's an equivalently-good product for way cheaper?

cylinder 9y ago

What is a "generic wine?"