The use of fruit concentrate!

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Permalink Reply by Andrew on July 9, 2008 at 7:23pm

I'm not a winemaker, but.... According to Wikipedia, the predecessor to Minute Maid developed fruit concentrates (orange juice concentrate) in the WWII period. The process removes a significant amount of water (saves on weight, storage space, etc.) through a process that, in principle, minimizes alteration to the taste. As one who grew up drinking orange juice made from concentrate that came frozen in cardboard cans, I can confirm that the taste changes significantly in the concentration and reconstitution process.

You can find information on the web about making wine from concentrate, as it sold to home wine makers, including opinions about what is gained and lost by using it: example: http://winemaking.jackkeller.net/concentr.asp

I doubt that commercial producers would use concentrate by choice, given the current value given to the seemingly natural and the least processed. In contrast, naturally-concentrated grape juice from naturally-frozen grapes is made into ice wine [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ice_wine], which is a highly-prized dessert wine. Natural alteration on the vine is good; industrial alteration is bad.

Wine making is a transformative (manipulative?) process; it's a question of what transformations/processing will produce the most desirable product. Minute Maid stills successfully sells its orange juice made from concentrate in cartons (see, for example: http://www.minutemaid.com/products/OrangeJuice_and_Blends/CountrySt...); I doubt any wine maker would use concentrate where grapes/fresh juice are available.

Am I wrong?

Andrew

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Permalink Reply by Todd Hansen on August 11, 2008 at 2:59pm

Andrew,

Your comments may have touched on a more interesting topic than the East Coast winemaker to which Steven was referring. The hobbyist who reads WineMaker Magazine can produce a product from concentrate that sometimes, almost, resembles a commercial wine.

The addition of concentrate to "improve" a wine, however, is more common than most consumers know. I've vowed that I'll never do it, but I'll never produce in anything coming close to mass-market. Mega Purple is the most notorious concentrate and was the topic of a fascinating article in W&V a while ago.

I believe I have spotted concentrate in some cool climate syrahs, and truly bizarre pinot noirs on occasion, but we'll never know for sure how many have made it past our palates undetected.

- Todd

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Permalink Reply by Andrew on August 12, 2008 at 9:43am

So would you be in favor of commercial producers/marketers having to identify certain wine additives and other additions beyond the preservatives noted currently on labels?

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Permalink Reply by Todd Hansen on August 12, 2008 at 5:16pm

No. To my mind it comes down to the integrity of the product. If one is selling the wine as having a sense of place, then it should be the "place" in the bottle. Here I don't think certain additives are off limits. If my brix are low I'll add sugar without a second thought.

Concentrate is really grape juice when you think about it. So some may argue, e.g., that it is less intrusive to add concentrate than sugar. But I would say that even if it is only a few tenths of a percent concentrate can alter the inherent character of the wine in a way that other additives don't. If you aren't selling a wine as having a sense of place then concentrate is probably a convenient, cost effective and reasonable way to improve the wine. But if you have, e.g., a syrah or pinot noir that is marketed as a serious wine from a certain site or region and it comes up a bit thin, perhaps you should either bulk it out or sell it as is. (Of course the realities of the marketplace are that you really can't change your price vintage to vintage even though quality varies from vintage to vintage.)

And as I indicated in my previous post - who knows how many wines we drink that have been "improved" with concentrate? If we like the wine, and if concentrate really is just grape juice, maybe we should just relax. Is concentrate that much different from using a de-watering method (be it ice, reverse osmosis, or even the traditional methods of saignee or passerillage)?

My fear with putting everything on the label is that consumers might misinterpret additives (e.g., the sugar isn't in the final product, it is converted to alcohol) and the result would be worse wines and fewer inexpensive wines. Inexpensive wines are great because they help make wine a part of every day life for a large percentage of the population.

Just my 2 cents.

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Permalink Reply by Andrew on August 13, 2008 at 2:21pm

Thanks for your candid comments on this controversial aspect of winemaking. Besides technical skill and knowledge, as you note, there are matters of integrity and vision that come into play in a complex production process.

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