Not a whole lot to quibble with on the face of that... but... there is an issue or two lurking beneath it, that means the article first begins to expose the issues, but then sort of proceeds to miss the point...
"People — on the whole — tend to favor wines that are less alcoholic" is pretty wildly incorrect... at least, it is not anywhere near the mark if what you're addressing is demonstrated consumer taste preferences rather than the consumer decisions that get made purely based on looking at the labels plastered on the bottles as they're sitting there on store shelves.
Yours is a lot closer with: "lie....to placate the public's idea of what should be". I also agree with your stated preference: "I'm in favor of knowing the actual, not some made up number"... but, that still leaves a whole lot missing in terms of gaps in the larger task in communication that the label is intended to enable. (Or, not... as the article also underplays the impact of the generic "table wine" designation, essentially meaning any wine can be labeled as 12.5% as long as the variance from that number isn't too large. Then, they ignore the incredible bureaucracy involved in getting labels approved... which means its best not to change anything you don't have to on any previously approved label... no matter what changes in the contents of the bottles there are.)
"Truth in labeling" would be a great place to start in addressing a number of large and still growing disconnects that exist between wine reality and wine marketing... but, you probably won't ever get to any bit of that without also reducing the surplus in the extant burden in the dysfunctional and over-weaning bureaucracy... who are probably even more defensive of their turf than the wine makers.
The differences being addressed are still mostly borne of the conflicts that are intrinsic to conflicting consumer preferences (in taste, versus the numbers on labels)... which differences are then greatly exacerbated by the nature of the choices made in context of, if not quite because of the drivers that dominate, marketing.
That consumers tend to prefer riper fruit flavors inside the bottle and lower alcohol numbers on the label... is only a part of the story. And, the "magic" in the numbers on the labels is only a smallish part of the story in terms of the "bait and switch" being practiced in wine making... or, at least, in wine labeling and marketing.
The real problems that exist are a duality that splits between a viticulture problem on one hand, and wine quality concerns (and reality versus perception) on the other. It's not really an issue in terms of any wine making problems... rather than the opposite. Wine making and viticulture have both gotten a lot better over the last 40 years, and continue to improve, so that today even problematic fruit used as an input can be converted into perfectly palatable wines that most consumers will find appealing. Vineyards tending to be generally not overly portable means that wine "tends" to reflect the experience of the particular vineyard in a particular vintage... and then, of course, the wine makers choices... the dirty little secret being that a lot of non-European wine is grown in vineyards that are, certainly relative to Europe's, quite incredibly hot. The last thing existing producers want to be threatened with... is an expose revealing they're growing grapes "in the wrong place". So, they continue to push the envelope in using wine making to correct for the intrinsic deficiencies in the inputs they have to work with... driven by the unmentionable fact "they're growing the grapes in the wrong place". If you want to focus on the reality rather than the marketing schtick... look at the nature of the problems producers tend to have, and the solutions being applied to address them, rather than the stories they tell in marketing.
That increasingly reduces to "wine quality issues" they'd rather avoid addressing (publicly), as the methods of compensating for overly hot vineyard conditions come in to play. One of those compromises made, of course, is to increase vine yields to slow and delay ripening... and the market reality is, most consumers really can't tell the difference, anyway, between a really good wine and basic high yield mid-market industrial plonk. Conflicts emerge there, again, between wine reality and what consumers demand... as what the consumers want is "the world's best wine"... for $13.99 a bottle, or less. And, often enough, they can be convinced easily enough by "more oak flavor"... even to the point that it makes the wine essentially undrinkable, while masking its inherent lack of quality. Or, otherwise, by increased extract, reduction to enhance fruit perception, etc.
From there we could divert to a discussion of what quality really is...
Or, we could re-focus on other aspects of the problem that does exist, and how it is being addressed on the wine making side... if you want to Google "spinning cone" technology... or want to start talking about how much water used in "cleaning the equipment"... ends up operating to reduce potential alcohol while converting water into wine by somewhat less than biblically correct methods.
There's going to be another split that occurs in the market, there, too... between giant companies whose products are "made", in the worst sense of that word, using all the available tools while leaving nothing to chance... and the smaller producers who are limited to applying more traditional methods while hand crafting quality products by getting everything right in the first place, rather than by using technology (secretly) as a means of correcting for problems after the fact.
The marketing schtick, of course, emphasizes the "romance" of vineyards and winemaking... when the reality for most larger volume producers is really all about industrial agriculture, and industrial processing, of what are essentially industrial products.
Thanks for inducing the rant. I quite enjoyed spilling that here... |
