Wine Label Claims: an Introduction

The other day I bought a bottle of "The Organic Wine Works - California Red Wine - Radical Red." I couldn't tell you why, other than I'm a sucker for organics and it was probably relatively cheap (a Google search revealed that indeed, it is cheap, selling for as low as $7.34 online. I don't know how to buy wine online, someone should write about that).  Also, the bottle was colorful. 


This is where I would talk about their website, but even though the label lists a website, the website is "coming soon." It appears that The Organic Wine Works is embedded within The Hallcrest Vineyards, "established in 1941 in the Santa Cruz Mountains where the soil and climate are ideal for producing premium California varietal wines."


What made we want to write about this otherwise forgettable bottle of wine, was some of the claims made on the label. To wit: 

1. USDA Organic logo.
2. "America's Favorite Vegan Wine"
3. "Sulfite free" and "No sulfites added"

1. Organic

There's not much to discuss here. The "organic" logo is fairly ubiquitous at this point. Perhaps to a lesser extent on wine and alcohol, but most consumers recognize what it means, or at the very least what it stands for.

2. Vegan Wine

This is a topic that I would like to delve into further, and perhaps write my paper on. As a vegetarian, inching ever so close to becoming a vegan, I'd have to say that giving up dairy, eggs, or cheese might be demonstrably easier than giving up wine/beer. Yet, other than wine/vegan enthusiasts, who knew that wine wasn't already vegan, or at least vegetarian? I didn't know until a few years back while working at a restaurant. (Super important parenthetical sidenote: every week my restaurant would have "wine-o-Wednesday"in which wine reps from our different suppliers would come in and educate us on the finer points of their wines which we offered, what to pair it with, how to describe it, and so on. Much of this was informative and useful. However, the more important part was that we would be tasting all of these wines as we were being educated. At about noon. Every Wednesday. Those were the days.)

So, what makes most wine non-Vegan? After doing some quick research to refresh my memory, I can say this: during fining, a clarification process in winemaking, a protein is used to attract unwanted particles that make a wine cloudy or affect its color.  This protein is often egg whites or fish bladder (gross!), and historically has been anything from ox blood or horse gelatins, and thus, not vegan. 

So how would a wine not be vegan? Well, it could not go through the fining process, for one, which some winemakers will proudly display on their labels as "unfined and unfiltered." Also, it appears that other materials could be used during fining, such as Bentonite, a aluminum silicate clay from Wyoming. 


I'm assuming there's some sort of laws regarding who can say "vegan" on a bottle of wine, but interestingly, in Australia it's mandatory that a label include wording regarding "allergens" including dairy products, or sulphites above 10ppm.

How The Organic Wine Works determined they were "America's favorite vegan wine," I couldn't tell you.

3. Sulfite free


"Any wine bottled after July 9, 1987, must have a label affixed that is a declaration of sulfites. The label may be front, back, strip, or neck, but it must be affixed to every bottle." - WinePros.org


Why? Well, because a very small percentage (about 1) of people suffer from sulfite allergies, which doesn't sound like an awesome affliction, particularly because most winemakers add sulfites, or sulfur dioxide, to help preserve the wine. 


According to The Internet, people think that sulfites in wine give them headaches. Most people respond to this by saying, "No, that's the alcohol." And they're right. 


So why the "no sulfites" label? For one, it's a marketing ploy, if you ask me, because people are still going on the assumption that sulfites give them headaches, whether they're correct or not. Second, clearly there is some danger for those allergic to sulfites. Lastly, I think people, particularly those purchasing an organic and vegan wine, are of the mind that anything being added to a food/drink product is inherently bad, even if it's been done for generations and has no danger associated with it. Oh well.