Eenie, meenie, minie, mo, did you add it yes or no? | Wine Surf - Giornale di Enogastronimia: inchieste, interviste e degustazioni

Mister(Y) Winemaker

26/04/2006

Eenie, meenie, minie, mo, did you add it yes or no?

Already Pliny the Elder, when describing the Roman banquets talks of a wine sweetened with honey. Wine, since it was created, always had some of its traits not liked by the very 100% of its consumers.
During the centuries, the practice of “softening” wine has sensibly evolved. If we only consider the last 20 years of winemaking history, we can already list a number of different techniques used by oenologists to smoothen up some of the rougher sides of wine.
Obviously, the attempt of concentrating the grape’s own components is the most natural way of achieving the above: a perfect phenolic ripeness makes for sweet and soft tannins in the glass. Also the balance between sugars and acidity would be perfect in this case. This kind of result is achievable only by working well in the vineyard, strictly reducing the yields, waiting for the right picking day and selecting the best bunches. It is not always easy to implement what we just said, (specially in the viticultural areas in the north of the Country) mainly because the production costs would quickly raise thanks to these practices. That’s why many times “correcting” the finished wine just before bottling it is the easiest way around many problems.
Let’s skip on the illicit practices such as the addition of glycerine, that (coincidence!) has been abandoned since the introduction of reliable analysis to reveal it. The two most widely used solutions are the residual sugar and the gum arabic.
The first method was made possible by the developments of the micro-filtration systems: by holding in the filters any micro-organism potentially able to restart a fermentation you can guarantee the stability of the wine. Before micro-filtering, the alcoholic fermentation is stopped either by lowering the temperature or by the addition of sulphites. The unfermented grape’s sugar (5-10 grams per litre) will add “softness” to the wine.
The other solution is simpler, thus much more in vogue with winemakers: adding the wine with gum arabic. It is a natural colloidal substance, obtained by Acacia Seyal or Acacia Verec trees, which are extensively planted in Africa (particularly in Senegal).
Gum arabic is widely used in the food industry for the production of cakes, candies and fruit juices and it is indicated as E 414 on their packaging.
In winemaking it is quite used because of its “softening” effect on wine, but also because it helps in fixing the colour and in stabilizing the tartrates. Given that it cannot be fermented, the gum arabic (chemically speaking, a polysaccharide) can be added to the wine just before bottling it, after a few laboratory-tries for deciding the final dosage. Normally it is added in the region of 0.5 to 5 grams per litre, depending on the typology of wine and on the desired effect.
The law allows using it and doesn’t fix its maximum quantity for what concerns Europe. In USA the maximum allowed amount is 5 grams per litre while in Japan it is absolutely forbidden.
Understanding when a wine has been added with it by tasting it is virtually impossible: this substance is completely soluble, consistently stable, colourless and odourless. So, unless you have a comparative sample of un-added wine it would fool you no matter how experienced a taster you are.
The costs of gum arabic are relatively low: a wine producing cellar would pay 5 to 6 Euros per Kilo so the cost per bottle is in the region of a few cents, depending on the dosage.
Disregarding the effects that gum arabic has on wines added with it, you have to consider a further (placebo-like) effect it has on the winemaker: it gives him peace of mind. This latter effect obviously makes it yet more popular.
It would be interesting to investigate more on the fact that it seems that the plantations for the production of gum arabic are largely owned by the Bin Laden family. If this would be true, theoretically the international terrorism would be partially financed by the wine industry. It’s a strange world, isn’t it?

Autore: Enologo fantasma

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Grande Fratello della vite. Siamo maturi, o quasi. Così ci dice la bilancia umana

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