Frankenwines

Aren’t winemakers meant to have the skills to know what variety to plant, where to plant it, when to pick it and how to maximise the potential of vine

HAVE we lost our taste for the natural? It’s a question which was brought into focus after tasting some remarkable Slovenian herb liqueurs whose purity of flavour was entirely due to the natural, simple way they were made: the herbs were macerated in alcohol, the liquid filtered and a little sugar added.

They were the polar opposite to a brand like Morgan Spiced, but guess which one will sell the most?  It brought to mind a trip to Australia in the late 90s when I was with a group which was taken to a stainless steel tank manufacturer in Griffith (and there you were thinking my life is hopelessly exotic).

It was all very impressive, though as I’m sure you appreciate, there’s a limit to the enthusiasm one can muster for enormous tin cans.  Then our hosts unveiled a device which they called a "spinning cone".

This, they said with admirably straight faces, was a vacuum evaporator which could separate aromatics from a wine.  "Here’s essence of Sauvignon," they said proffering us a glass.  There was no doubt the liquid had an aroma most Kiwi winemakers would give their eye-teeth for.

"We can spin off the aromas in a high alcohol wine, reduce the alcohol, then add the flavour back in," they raved.  Needless to say, we didn’t believe a single word, but did applaud this cunning attempt to wind up some gullible Poms.

The more they protested, the more we laughed until something (it might have been the threat of violence) made us realise that this was no wind up, but was, in fact, the truth.  It’s bugged me ever since.

As a way of maintaining a ripe fruit profile without the hurt of high alcohol, the spinning cone was to be admired, but was it entirely honest? Suppose vintage conditions give you a wimpy wine, what’s to stop you creating or buying in varietal essence and giving your wine a little boost in the flavour department?

The wine is "natural" in the same way as "pure" orange juice made from concentrate is.  The recent South African Sauvignon Blanc scandal touches on the same issue.  Here were some winemakers who used additives to give a steroidlike boost to the aroma of their Sauvignon Blanc.

They were caught but, amazingly, there were many commentators who saw nothing wrong in their actions.  It’s no worse than using the spinning cone, or chaptalisation, or must concentrators, they said.

Winemaking isn’t a natural process.  Technology, be it as simple as a bag of sugar or a high-tech machine, has been used for centuries.  All they are doing is accentuating the natural flavour of the grape, adding the viticultural equivalent of MSG.

It’s not poisoning anyone, is it? But am I the only one who thinks this is wrong? Aren’t winemakers meant to have the skills to know what variety to plant, where to plant it, when to pick it and how to maximise the potential of vine and vineyard? Isn’t winemaking meant to be a natural process, or has "natural" become as bastardised a term as "fresh"?

I thought this trend was more prevalent in spirits – essences being slipped into gins, the laboratory-made "pure and natural" flavourings added to vodka, the taste of every RTD – but it would appear that wine is just as guilty.

I bought a Portuguese wine from Tesco made by a winemaker who I like enormously.  It reeked of vanilla essence and a strange artificial mintiness. 

This wasn’t wine, this was a wine-flavoured beverage, a concoction created by committee to target all the correct consumer pleasure points. Maybe the wine had been spun – and I think I mean that in more ways than one. 

What it inferred, however, was that the wine departments of the supermarkets are following the same path as their colleagues in the food departments and creating drinks which appeal to a consumer whose taste for the natural has been eliminated thanks to a diet of ready meals, cheeseflavoured product, concentrated juices, FABs and RTDs.

Thinking these candyflavoured drinks are natural is like using an air freshener and believing in some deluded way that your room now smells like a "spring meadow".  We have become so used to the artificial that we are in danger of forgetting what the natural is.

By using spinning cones, essences or chemicals, winemakers or distillers are trying to create a beverage which is more like the original, whereas they are actually doing the opposite.

Welcome to the virtual drinks business.