By Arjun Ramachandran from the Sydney Morning Herald, September 18, 2008
Australian wine experts today rubbished a UK documentary on "Frankenstein wines".
The Channel Four Dispatches show said many winemakers use artificial flavourings and additives to mask the use of inferior grapes.
It named two of Australia's best known winemakers, Jacob's Creek and Hardy.
The documentary, screened on Monday, asserted that wine is now so industrially processed that it is little more than dressed-up alcopops.
"Many, many wines are no better than a sort of alcoholic cola. You get artificial yeasts, enzymes, sugar, extracts, tannins, all sorts of things added," a wine writer, Malcolm Gluck, says in the documentary.
The program's reporter, Jane More, wrote in The Sun that she was "shocked to discover the unpalatable truth" about what winemakers used in wine production.
This included the use of "artificial flavourings and additives to mimic the taste of the grape", she said.
She names two prominent Australian wine producers - Hardy and Jacob's Creek - in the story.
"But when asked, Hardys told us they add yeast to their merlot red wine and use egg, milk and gelatine to fine their product and make it less cloudy," she wrote in The Sun.
"Jacob's Creek admitted they added tartaric and ascorbic acid to their chardonnay and also used clay, enzymes and milk powder as a fining agent."
Both Hardy and Jacob's Creek have been contacted for comment.
But the local wine industry watchdog, the Wine and Brandy Corporation, stepped in with a vigorous defence.
Steve Guy, the body's general manager of compliance and trade, said: "I think it's a beat up ... I think [likening most wines to alcopops] is a throwaway line."
Many of the examples of apparent wrongdoing by Australian companies were accepted, legal and sometimes necessary steps in wine-making, he said.
"Of course they add yeast. Yeast is the organism that turns sugar into alcohol. It's totally misdirected to critic wine makers for using yeast."
Both ascorbic and tartaric acid were naturally present in grapes, he said. Similarly, eggs, milk and gelatine, were "natural things" known to be "used in wine production for centuries", he said.
"It's like saying 'shock horror, cars are made of metal and plastic' - what do people expect?"
The Herald's wine writer, Huon Hooke, also said it was "outrageous and completely wrong" to believe Australian winemakers misled quaffers with artificial flavours.
The documentary also detailed the seizure of 70 million litres of adulterated wine in Italy - labelled in the documentary as "Frankenstein wine" - which contained just 20 per cent wine, and was "bulked up" with water, sugar and other harmful ingredients such as hydrochloric acid and fertilisers.
Both Hooke and Mr Guy expressed their disapproval of the use of hydrochloric acid.
Hooke said the addition of sugar or water in wine making was also illegal in Australia, but he was not aware of widespread breaches.
"It doesn't mean there's not the occasional wrong-doer, but there's so many ways they can get caught, especially if you want to export wine".
Mr Guy said examples of local winemakers breaching the rules were few and far between, due to a "culture of compliance" and a climate typically favourable to making good wine.
Local winemakers who sold to both local and export markets also went through a rigorous assessment and auditing process to ensure they complied with regulations, he said.
The most recent example of a winemaker who broke the rules was in 2000, when Kingston Estate Wineries was found to use silver nitrate in its wine, Mr Guy said.
The finding resulted in a national audit of all Australian wines.
Both Mr Guy and Hooke said the UK documentary story exposed a lack of understanding about how wine was made, and how it has been made for years.
There was also some reverse snobbery at play, Hooke suggested.
"I think a lot of members of the press think wine is a silvertail drink, and if they can shout it down with a story [they will]," he said.
Note from Boutique Wineries: UK's Channel 4 is best known as a
polemic television station, and often puts to air controversial, questionable stories on a wide range of topics. One of their memorable publishings was a film called "The Great Global Warming Swindle" by film maker Martin Durkin - a frequent creator of polemics. A polemic is often written specifically to dispute or refute a position or theory that is widely viewed to be beyond reproach. Whilst a polemic is a vital part of healthy debate between two intelligent consenting humans - it enables alternative view points to be analysed - when used in the one-way communication medium of television, a polemic's use is primarily to increase ratings through it's controversy. The main concern with using television to display polemics is that documentary television is viewed as a "truth" medium. Combined with the inability of an audience to participate in the information exchange, they are often unable to discern fact from the fiction that a polemic often is.
