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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 c

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
  1. Isn't "reyeast"ing only going to work if there's still significant sugar content in the must? If so, then it's just like any other wine company importing/sourcing their fruit, and then adding their yeast in-house. This is VERY common practice. I vint in central california, and if a bottle of wine doesn't explicitly say "estate" on the bottle, they're sourcing their grapes from somewhere off-site (usually still in the same region, but not always. as the label gets larger, the chances increase that you're going out of the region). 2.Oak flakes vs barrels is very obvious if you know what to look for. The rounding out of flavors via microoxygenation is apparent on a bottle that's seen barrel time. This study was for beginning wine students. Of course they're going to try to pass the test with the information that had just been provided them (red==this, white==that).
  - belorn 9y ago
    Is there a distinction between grapes, must and wine? As ingredients we could treat all of them as synonyms, but it seems unhelpful. Parent post said "perfectly good wine", which I have a hard time imagine would be regular must that is being sold as wine. Could it be that the producer take cheap wine and add additional sugar and yeast?
    - stdbrouw 9y ago
      Must is grape juice (sometimes still mixed in with the peels) before or at the start of fermentation, just as wort is malty sugary water but becomes beer when yeast is added and fermentation begins. At the end of fermentation very little sugar remains, so these are definitely not interchangeable liquids. These terms have a legal definition in most places, because wine and beer is taxed heavily but grape juice is not.
- stdbrouw 9y ago
  (1) would make zero economic sense because you're adding an extra step to the process when you could just instruct the winemaker from which you import to do things the way you like, and as bathMarm0t notes it would require the addition of sugar or fruit juice so the yeast has something to work with, in which case you definitely cannot legally call it wine anymore. (2) It might be out there, but I've never seen cheap wine advertising that it's been put in this or that kind of barrel for a particular amount of time. At most, they might put a barrel on the label to evoke the idea, which is fairly innocuous as far as false advertising goes. If your interpretation of the OP is closer to what he meant, then really what you both are talking about is fraud, not common practice nor legal and definitely not likely to be true of the majority of "generic wine from our national alcohol store".
INTPenis 9y ago
It was actually 63 substances allowed by the EU, I just found out now while re-reading the article. Unfortunately the article and documentary are both in Swedish. [1] About the yeast, I'm a layman so I don't know what industrial yeast is but this was the term used by the journalist. The report showed that a company dedicated to producing and selling flavored yeasts were marketing specific yeasts with flavors. And these flavors then turned up in the liqour store on the wine where the yeast was used. So the yeast was used as direct flavoring. My point is that it's processed wine and this isn't clear to the consumer. Maybe it should have been when we suddenly were flooded with so many different types of cheap wines but I was too young at that time. Before the 60s wine was not as available as it is today in sweden, or as cheap. So clearly processing wine has become a way to make more money and that's when I get concerned. But as you say, drink what you want. I've made the choice to stop drinking processed wine. And I'll gladly await the EU decision on whether or not wine distributors will have to declare contents. 1. https://www.svt.se/nyheter/granskning/ug/vill-inte-uppge-vad-vinet-innehaller https://www.svt.se/nyheter/granskning/ug/vill-inte-uppge-vad...
- WillPostForFood 9y ago
  Ultimately, wine is processed by definition - unprocessed wine is grape juice. But like you, I think less manipulated is better, otherwise you end up with boring but pleasant homogenous tasting wine. The now defunct In Pursuit of Balance really pushed this. https://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/31/magazine/the-wrath-of-grapes.html https://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/31/magazine/the-wrath-of-gra...
  - belorn 9y ago
    Technically, wouldn't natural wine be processed grape juice? Processed wine would be cheap wine that get enhanced by an additional process like added ingredients or heat/pressure.
    - jhbadger 9y ago
      Some versions of Protestantism in fact use grape juice for communion under the argument that the wine that Jesus was said to have made was "new wine" and thus unfermented. Which makes one wonder why the miracle wasn't told as turning water into juice.

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
1. Isn't "reyeast"ing only going to work if there's still significant sugar content in the must? If so, then it's just like any other wine company importing/sourcing their fruit, and then adding their yeast in-house. This is VERY common practice. I vint in central california, and if a bottle of wine doesn't explicitly say "estate" on the bottle, they're sourcing their grapes from somewhere off-site (usually still in the same region, but not always. as the label gets larger, the chances increase that you're going out of the region). 2.Oak flakes vs barrels is very obvious if you know what to look for. The rounding out of flavors via microoxygenation is apparent on a bottle that's seen barrel time. This study was for beginning wine students. Of course they're going to try to pass the test with the information that had just been provided them (red==this, white==that).
- belorn 9y ago
  Is there a distinction between grapes, must and wine? As ingredients we could treat all of them as synonyms, but it seems unhelpful. Parent post said "perfectly good wine", which I have a hard time imagine would be regular must that is being sold as wine. Could it be that the producer take cheap wine and add additional sugar and yeast?
  - stdbrouw 9y ago
    Must is grape juice (sometimes still mixed in with the peels) before or at the start of fermentation, just as wort is malty sugary water but becomes beer when yeast is added and fermentation begins. At the end of fermentation very little sugar remains, so these are definitely not interchangeable liquids. These terms have a legal definition in most places, because wine and beer is taxed heavily but grape juice is not.
stdbrouw 9y ago
(1) would make zero economic sense because you're adding an extra step to the process when you could just instruct the winemaker from which you import to do things the way you like, and as bathMarm0t notes it would require the addition of sugar or fruit juice so the yeast has something to work with, in which case you definitely cannot legally call it wine anymore. (2) It might be out there, but I've never seen cheap wine advertising that it's been put in this or that kind of barrel for a particular amount of time. At most, they might put a barrel on the label to evoke the idea, which is fairly innocuous as far as false advertising goes. If your interpretation of the OP is closer to what he meant, then really what you both are talking about is fraud, not common practice nor legal and definitely not likely to be true of the majority of "generic wine from our national alcohol store".

INTPenis 9y ago

It was actually 63 substances allowed by the EU, I just found out now while re-reading the article. Unfortunately the article and documentary are both in Swedish. [1] About the yeast, I'm a layman so I don't know what industrial yeast is but this was the term used by the journalist. The report showed that a company dedicated to producing and selling flavored yeasts were marketing specific yeasts with flavors. And these flavors then turned up in the liqour store on the wine where the yeast was used. So the yeast was used as direct flavoring. My point is that it's processed wine and this isn't clear to the consumer. Maybe it should have been when we suddenly were flooded with so many different types of cheap wines but I was too young at that time. Before the 60s wine was not as available as it is today in sweden, or as cheap. So clearly processing wine has become a way to make more money and that's when I get concerned. But as you say, drink what you want. I've made the choice to stop drinking processed wine. And I'll gladly await the EU decision on whether or not wine distributors will have to declare contents. 1. https://www.svt.se/nyheter/granskning/ug/vill-inte-uppge-vad-vinet-innehaller https://www.svt.se/nyheter/granskning/ug/vill-inte-uppge-vad...

WillPostForFood 9y ago
Ultimately, wine is processed by definition - unprocessed wine is grape juice. But like you, I think less manipulated is better, otherwise you end up with boring but pleasant homogenous tasting wine. The now defunct In Pursuit of Balance really pushed this. https://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/31/magazine/the-wrath-of-grapes.html https://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/31/magazine/the-wrath-of-gra...
- belorn 9y ago
  Technically, wouldn't natural wine be processed grape juice? Processed wine would be cheap wine that get enhanced by an additional process like added ingredients or heat/pressure.
  - jhbadger 9y ago
    Some versions of Protestantism in fact use grape juice for communion under the argument that the wine that Jesus was said to have made was "new wine" and thus unfermented. Which makes one wonder why the miracle wasn't told as turning water into juice.