6 ms·

Your whole argument seems to boil down to "it's not natural, they add chemicals", which is a weird argument to make on a tech news site. The only additive you a

Your whole argument seems to boil down to "it's not natural, they add chemicals", which is a weird argument to make on a tech news site. The only additive you actually make a case against is acetaldehyde, which occurs naturally in cheap booze anyway. The details of the process are certainly interesting, it's just weird you framed them as "problem".

rjbwork 6y ago
At the point we have all that stuff in there are we really drinking "wine", or are we drinking some kind of alcoholic mixed drink? I personally would not expect, regardless of price point, that something I buy called "wine" has anything other than grapes and yeast, with maybe a bit of added sugar or honey. After reading that article and the above comment I think I'd rather just mix some grape juice and vodka than some of that really cheap wine.
- rapnie 6y ago
  Agreed, it is a thing to consider. Problem is (at least in the EU) there's no requirement to put any of the ingredients on the label, other than - I believe - "contains sulfates". It's hard for consumers to know this is really some pseudo-wine.
  - dejv 6y ago
    "Contains sulfites" is awesome label as it is impossible to make wine without it: small amount of sulfites are created as by-product of fermentation.
    - mekkkkkk 6y ago
      Sounds like the Cookie-law of wine making.
  - rjbwork 6y ago
    Yeah. There is also no requirements here in the US because alcohol is regulated by the BATFE (Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives) rather than the FDA (Food and Drug Administration) or USDA (Department of Agriculture). The regulatory scheme here is more about making sure taxes are paid and bootleggers are caught and punished than creating transparency of product or consumer protection.
- kungito 6y ago
  Most of the time I just want to get tipsy or drunk with my friends and I don't really care how many hours have the grapes been grazing the sun. If it's ok taste, isn't too unhealthy and gets the job done, it works for me. And I'm pretty sure that's everyone who buys 2€ wine
- dagw 6y ago
  something I buy called "wine" has anything other than grapes and yeast Virtually no wine, no matter how expensive, is just grapes and yeast. All wine you can buy in a store contains at least some additives.
  - veggieburglar 6y ago
    This is not true, "natural wine" is exploding and there are quite a few wines out there that do not contain any added SO2. We get people in asking for them all the time. However, the vast majority of wines do contain at least a small amount of added SO2. There are plenty of expensive wines out there with lots of manipulative additives (sucrose, acidification or deacidification, oak powder, etc) as has been outlined above, but it is much more common in less expensive wine. There is a scale between wine as a mass produced industrial product and as an artisanal, site-specific hand crafted product, and there are wineries/brands/specific wines that fill in every conceivable spot on that spectrum. Oftentimes, individual wineries will have different lines of products made in different ways or even in different facilities. Estate grown vs purchased fruit. Physical wineries vs "private labels" made at custom crush facilities. A little tangential perhaps...
nerbert 6y ago
I think OP perfectly explained the trade offs of buying a 2$ bottle. I wish it was so well explained for other things!
dejv 6y ago
The problem is calling those highly procesed products as being wine. I would call those wine-like drinks in the same way McD burger is burger-like product. Personally I would be worry of pesticide residues in wines. Not just those bottom cheap bottles, but from all mass and non-bio certified producers. Few years ago there was high level of arsenic found in two-buch Chunk, but it is very common across the board: "Together the 34 bottles of conventional wine contained 148 pesticide residues. All 34 bottles contained at least one pesticide, while the mean number of pesticides per bottle was more than four. The highest number of residues found in a single bottle was 10."[0]. Those traces are probably not going to kill you, but let just not see all wines as being created equal. [0] https://www.wineanorak.com/pesticideresiduesinwine.htm https://www.wineanorak.com/pesticideresiduesinwine.htm
- gnopgnip 6y ago
  Mcdonalds and other fast food burgers are the same kind of burgers people buy at the grocery store. The patties are 100% beef, not soy filler and chicken and whatever else makes something a burger like product
Loic 6y ago
The real problem here is that to get your raw materials to produce your wine as cheap as possible (think your BOM), you have only one option: high density, low manual work and very high levels of chemicals to compensate the high density. This results directly into degraded ecosystems because you basically use the land as a life-less substrate to produce your grapes and all the chemicals which are not degraded or bound to the grapes are ending in the soil. That afterwards you do a lot a chemical work to convert the grapes into wine is another story. Note that my salary is coming from both sides. I work as consultant to both the big agro companies and the ones doing food additives and fragrances. Everybody on the line know very well the real cost of a $2 bottle of wine. But the buyers do not see that on the label only the money they have in the pocket or not.
- samvher 6y ago
  I think the idea that the pressure to produce your wine as cheap as possible is only there for cheap wines is fiction. For expensive wines the same pressure is there, they want to make a profit. So while with expensive wines, potentially due to the high price they might have the resources to do better, you have no guarantee whatsoever that they actually will.
  - dejv 6y ago
    It depends. I am not that familiar with US, but in most of Europe you do have layered system. Basic table wine rules are quite relaxed, but then you have higher levels with more or less strict rules for farming practices, yield and vinification practices. Those practices are then checked by governing body or goverment.
  - buran77 6y ago
    The difference between cheap and expensive (luxury) products is the margin. Manufacturers of cheap wine have to sell a lot to make a profit because they can't afford to charge any premium. This means going as fast, cheap, and low quality with the ingredients as they legally can. This is how the race to the bottom looks like and it's almost universally applicable in just about every field. A $2 bottle of wine is less wine and more creative engineering. And that's ok as long as the customers understand what they're getting.

rjbwork 6y ago

At the point we have all that stuff in there are we really drinking "wine", or are we drinking some kind of alcoholic mixed drink? I personally would not expect, regardless of price point, that something I buy called "wine" has anything other than grapes and yeast, with maybe a bit of added sugar or honey. After reading that article and the above comment I think I'd rather just mix some grape juice and vodka than some of that really cheap wine.

rapnie 6y ago
Agreed, it is a thing to consider. Problem is (at least in the EU) there's no requirement to put any of the ingredients on the label, other than - I believe - "contains sulfates". It's hard for consumers to know this is really some pseudo-wine.
- dejv 6y ago
  "Contains sulfites" is awesome label as it is impossible to make wine without it: small amount of sulfites are created as by-product of fermentation.
  - mekkkkkk 6y ago
    Sounds like the Cookie-law of wine making.
- rjbwork 6y ago
  Yeah. There is also no requirements here in the US because alcohol is regulated by the BATFE (Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives) rather than the FDA (Food and Drug Administration) or USDA (Department of Agriculture). The regulatory scheme here is more about making sure taxes are paid and bootleggers are caught and punished than creating transparency of product or consumer protection.
kungito 6y ago
Most of the time I just want to get tipsy or drunk with my friends and I don't really care how many hours have the grapes been grazing the sun. If it's ok taste, isn't too unhealthy and gets the job done, it works for me. And I'm pretty sure that's everyone who buys 2€ wine
dagw 6y ago
something I buy called "wine" has anything other than grapes and yeast Virtually no wine, no matter how expensive, is just grapes and yeast. All wine you can buy in a store contains at least some additives.
- veggieburglar 6y ago
  This is not true, "natural wine" is exploding and there are quite a few wines out there that do not contain any added SO2. We get people in asking for them all the time. However, the vast majority of wines do contain at least a small amount of added SO2. There are plenty of expensive wines out there with lots of manipulative additives (sucrose, acidification or deacidification, oak powder, etc) as has been outlined above, but it is much more common in less expensive wine. There is a scale between wine as a mass produced industrial product and as an artisanal, site-specific hand crafted product, and there are wineries/brands/specific wines that fill in every conceivable spot on that spectrum. Oftentimes, individual wineries will have different lines of products made in different ways or even in different facilities. Estate grown vs purchased fruit. Physical wineries vs "private labels" made at custom crush facilities. A little tangential perhaps...

nerbert 6y ago

I think OP perfectly explained the trade offs of buying a 2$ bottle. I wish it was so well explained for other things!

dejv 6y ago

The problem is calling those highly procesed products as being wine. I would call those wine-like drinks in the same way McD burger is burger-like product. Personally I would be worry of pesticide residues in wines. Not just those bottom cheap bottles, but from all mass and non-bio certified producers. Few years ago there was high level of arsenic found in two-buch Chunk, but it is very common across the board: "Together the 34 bottles of conventional wine contained 148 pesticide residues. All 34 bottles contained at least one pesticide, while the mean number of pesticides per bottle was more than four. The highest number of residues found in a single bottle was 10."[0]. Those traces are probably not going to kill you, but let just not see all wines as being created equal. [0] https://www.wineanorak.com/pesticideresiduesinwine.htm https://www.wineanorak.com/pesticideresiduesinwine.htm

gnopgnip 6y ago
Mcdonalds and other fast food burgers are the same kind of burgers people buy at the grocery store. The patties are 100% beef, not soy filler and chicken and whatever else makes something a burger like product

Loic 6y ago

The real problem here is that to get your raw materials to produce your wine as cheap as possible (think your BOM), you have only one option: high density, low manual work and very high levels of chemicals to compensate the high density. This results directly into degraded ecosystems because you basically use the land as a life-less substrate to produce your grapes and all the chemicals which are not degraded or bound to the grapes are ending in the soil. That afterwards you do a lot a chemical work to convert the grapes into wine is another story. Note that my salary is coming from both sides. I work as consultant to both the big agro companies and the ones doing food additives and fragrances. Everybody on the line know very well the real cost of a $2 bottle of wine. But the buyers do not see that on the label only the money they have in the pocket or not.

samvher 6y ago
I think the idea that the pressure to produce your wine as cheap as possible is only there for cheap wines is fiction. For expensive wines the same pressure is there, they want to make a profit. So while with expensive wines, potentially due to the high price they might have the resources to do better, you have no guarantee whatsoever that they actually will.
- dejv 6y ago
  It depends. I am not that familiar with US, but in most of Europe you do have layered system. Basic table wine rules are quite relaxed, but then you have higher levels with more or less strict rules for farming practices, yield and vinification practices. Those practices are then checked by governing body or goverment.
- buran77 6y ago
  The difference between cheap and expensive (luxury) products is the margin. Manufacturers of cheap wine have to sell a lot to make a profit because they can't afford to charge any premium. This means going as fast, cheap, and low quality with the ingredients as they legally can. This is how the race to the bottom looks like and it's almost universally applicable in just about every field. A $2 bottle of wine is less wine and more creative engineering. And that's ok as long as the customers understand what they're getting.