Water Into Wine?

In Dublin recently a prominent Australian winemaker questioned whether the industry should call time on the rise-and-rise of wine’s alcohol levels. Ernie Whalley investigates the methods that might be used.

One of the few blessings that age confers on a wine writer is the ability to remember (Oldtimer’s Disease permitting) how things used to be. Sipping your Château Laplumedematante, a buxom charmer tipping the scales at 13.5 per cent alcohol by volume, you proclaim to anyone prepared to listen, “I remember when this wine was a mere wraith of 11.5.” Back in those days eyebrows were raised if an unfortified wine weighed in at over 12.5 per cent; it would invariably be crude muck from Spain or Southern Italy or Algerian plonk. It took a long time for 13 to attain respectability – as the benchmark of the new influx of Australian reds made from grapes with a fair bit of sun on their backs by guys who knew what they were doing. Today Coonawara Cabernet and Shiraz from the Barossa or McLaren Vale are more likely to clock at least a notch more on the ABV scale. Indeed, it even looks as if fifteen is now the new fourteen.
We’ve got used to wine writers weighing in against high alcohol levels. In Ireland the likes of Raymond Blake and Mary Dowey have been in the vanguard of the countercharge against the heavy brigade. But when criticism comes from a winemaker it’s time to really sit up and take notice, especially when that winemaker is non other than Phil Laffer, wine supremo of Orlando and, as such, the man behind the rise and rise of Jacob’s Creek.
Phil is an engaging character, extrovert and friendly, with that ‘here’s what I do and here’s how’ openness common to Australians in the industry; unlike the canny French there’s no poker playing when it comes to sharing their methodology. In Dublin to showcase the brand’s top dollar (and it has to be said, most impressive) ‘Heritage wines’ to trade and critics, Phil used his after dinner speech at Poulot’s in Donnybrook to ask the question, which he clearly believed to be rhetorical, “Is the Australian wine industry shooting itself in the foot by producing wines of this strength?” His case was based on three premises. One, that to produce wines with excessively high alcohol levels was contradictory at a time when the industry is cooperating with government to educate the public to drink responsibly. Two, while in some countries wine is taxed according to its alcoholic strength in others including Ireland it is not. Therefore the industry would be a soft target to any government seeking to trumpet its morality and gain a little extra revenue in one fell swoop. Three, the moral high ground would be ceded to the Europeans who could use their lower strength and hence more socially acceptable wines as the basis of a counter-campaign. Personally, I can’t see the French, who are no great shakes at marketing anyway, putting ‘Drink Burgundy, it doesn’t get you pissed’ on the poster sites but Phil does have a point.
“So, what has caused the beefing up of booze?” I hear you ask. “How come the wine we drink has got stronger?” Well, global warming has a lot to answer for. And it’s certainly happening. Temperatures in Kent and Sussex are now what they were in Champagne a hundred years ago, making for some interesting speculation that could form the basis of another article. As summers get hotter it gets easier to harvest ripe grapes.
Science has played a part, too. Yeasts used in the winemaking process are more efficient than their counterparts of yesteryear at converting grape sugars into alcohol. Fashion is also a factor. The new generation of wine drinkers are largely uninterested in adapting to the green leaf, tea tannic and vegetal flavours we once regarded as de rigueur. They want rich primary fruit and lots of it. This calls for ripe grapes and so the tendency is for wineries, particularly in the New World where the making and growing functions are so often undertaken by unrelated concerns, to demand a greater ‘hang time’ from growers. This can confer a hidden benefit on the winery, too, as grapes lose water, which equals weight; and therefore cost less when bought by the tonne.
Assuming the Australian wine industry sits up and take notice of Phil’s proposition could it wind the clock back and revert to making weaker wines? Yes, by harvesting earlier. But then it’s ‘farewell fruit-driven wines’ and back to the ones that need half a lifetime’s drinking in order to assimilate. A risk of mass-market alienation that few wineries would be prepared to take. Or you could kill the yeast once the wine had reached a likely 12 per cent alcohol by volume. There would be masses of grape sugar unresolved and the resultant tacky sweet wine might just reach merchantable quality at the altar on Sundays but that’s about all.
There’s one really simple method they could use – ‘just add water’. Don’t laugh, it could happen; in fact it’s started to happen and in case you are already imagining images of Del Boy, Rodney and a zinc bathtub in Peckham let me reveal that the dilution movement is led by some very respectable people. Winemakers in California, and not the plonky ones either, are becoming obsessed with extending hang times in the vineyard, primarily to induce the fruit to produce maximum flavour compounds but also to soften tannins as market research has shown that tannin and the American quaffer are incompatible. Trouble is, the flavour-packed, sugar-crammed crypto-raisins that eventually get picked are capable of making wine of horrendous potency – I’ve seen 17 per cent ABV on one Californian Zinfandel label. So, latterly, Californian wine laws have been changed to allow producers to add water to replace that lost through ‘field dehydration’ and it now seems that wine makers have got very clever at reducing alcohol without reducing flavour.
Another way of making weaker wines from more butch grapes is to use a less efficient yeast. Phil Laffer was doubtful that this would happen as a good deal of time and effort has been put in by wine industry chemists to develop yeasts capable of working harder and converting more and more grape sugar into alcohol. These people, not being Luddites by nature, would hardly want to wreck a lifetime’s research, Phil said.
The fifth and final potential method of reducing the alcoholic content of wine is to use a ‘membrane’. Membrane technology has been used in the sugar refining, dairy and other food industries for many years. Winemakers have latterly discovered that this technology can provide solutions to many of their process problems too. How does it work? Do you remember grandpa making wine at home and using a pair of grandma’s old tights to strain the elderberry juice? Well, that’s a membrane, albeit a primitive one. Membrane filters are micro porous films with specific pore size ratings, a hi-tech development on grandpa’s timeworn technique. Membranes retain particles of microorganisms larger than their pore size, primarily by surface capture. The pore size varies according to the job the membrane has to do and tasks undertaken can embrace a whole spectrum of wine ‘improvements’ from simple filtration to reverse osmosis. Reducing the alcohol content by this method is not a problem. The main barrier to the process’s adoption is the professional pride of the winemaker who now knows that the best wines are made with minimum intervention.
During the discussion following Phil’s speech, Kieran Tobin of Irish Distillers pointed out that a glass of these blockbuster wines has the equivalent alcohol content of a single Irish spirit measure. Many people who would happily sink four or five glasses of wine at a dinner party would die of shame before they consumed the same number of whiskeys or brandies, he opined.
Wines high in alcohol have other problems than the ability to get you jarred faster than you can say, “No thanks, I’m driving.” The alcoholic content can mask the fruit or, in a worst-case scenario, infuse the wine with throat-searing white pepper sensations. Many modern wines, particularly the fourteen-and-over Chilean Merlots in exhibit this quality in spades.
At the same time the question has to be asked, “Do we really want lighter wines?” Having asked it, please don’t point the finger and say I’m condoning drunkenness, if I say “not necessarily.” Drunkenness is ugly, demeaning and dangerous. I want people to drink responsibly; I don’t want them to wreck their livers or their marriages; or maim or kill anyone with a violent blow or a recklessly driven motor.
On a recent visit to South Australia I drank shedloads of Shiraz registering 14 per cent and more, much of it beautifully crafted wine where fruit and tannins were properly integrated and where the alcohol certainly did not register as a burning sensation at the back of the palate. All-in-all, classy stuff that I very much doubt would be improved by throttling back. One winemaker I spoke to, a man with a proven reputation, went further. “Imagine riding a powerful racehorse in the Melbourne Cup,” he said. “You can’t just yank on the reigns and go ‘Whoah!’ you’d end up on your arse on the track. It’s the same with Shiraz.”
Finally, we should maybe also recognise that the pharmacological, mind-altering effects of wine are something that the drinking public values as an integral part of its wine experience. Put bluntly, most of us drink wine because it makes us feel good and helps facilitate and enhance social interaction, not so we can attempt an intellectual analysis of its merits.