Wine Myths Debunked

A lot of homebrewers are also great home winemakers. And it’s no wonder; the hobbies have a lot in common. The skills and techniques involved in brewing and winemaking are just about the same: using quality ingredients, practicing good sani­tation techniques, monitoring fermentations, fining, stabilizing, and bottling. But certain people out there just won’t have it so. They would rather we believe that wine is mysterious and complicated, an exclusive accouterment of the elegant elite and simply too far beyond our realm of understanding.

Centuries of this exact kind of wine snobbism have bred countless wine myths in our society that have, unfortunately, made wine appear a beverage reserved solely for special social occasions, romantic dinners, and boat launchings.

No wonder many potential home winemakers are turned off by all of the mumbo jumbo that has surrounded winemaking and wine consumption over the years. Here are some wine myths that are sorely in need of a good debunking. This may not make your hardcore brew buddies turn in their mash tuns for crusher-destemmers, but it might go a long way in relieving some of our collective wine anxiety.

Myth: Barrel fermentation produces more complex wines.

A wine consumer issue and a heavily debated winemaking controversy as well, this wine myth is one of the classics. We’ve all seen the ads in the glossy magazines and on the prime-time news that claim that Winery X’s Chardonnay is more complex and aromatic because it’s fermented in French oak barrels. Many wineries set aside the bulk of their production budget for roomfuls of $600-a-pop toasted oak from the Limousin forests in France, and the price of their Chardonnay reflects this costly investment.

But is all of the trouble — and all of the hype — warranted? No, according to studies conducted at the Department of Viticulture and Enology at Universtiy of California, Davis. No perceptible difference in smell or taste could be found between wines fermented and aged in new oak barrels and wines fermented in stainless steel tanks and aged in the same new oak barrels. The take-home message is: don’t waste your time and money on barrel fermentation if you’re just going to store it in oak anyway. To the commercial wineries that hope to cash in on the chicness associated with barrel fermentation, the cat’s out of the bag.

Myth: Wine causes headaches.

Ah, the infamous “wine headache.” This choice topic of conversation among wine snobs and wine wannabes alike has grown and festered in the corporate headquarters and fashionable watering holes of America into an urban legend of almost epic proportions. Knowingly citing anything from histamines to tannins, the weekend wine warriors of the world (and perhaps a few innocently speculative home winemakers?) have created a wine myth juggernaut that just won’t die.

It’s easy to see why. There are a number of things that seem to be likely culprits. First and foremost to be blamed are always sulfites, the sulfur-containing compounds used in winemaking (usually in the form of sulfur dioxide powder) as an antioxidant and antimicrobial agent. We’ve all seen the sulfite statement on the bottles. It’s not an unlikely leap of logic that links the wooziness one might feel after ingesting a glass of wine or two with something that’s clearly advertised as being harmful.

The truth of the matter is, however, that the level of sulfites used in winemaking (on average, around 40 parts per million) is not harmful, and the sulfite warning labels don’t even concern the majority of the population anyway. The warning labels are there to protect the 0.001 percent of the population that is both asthmatic and that lacks the enzyme sulfite dehydrogenase. These rare individuals cannot properly digest sulfites like the rest of us can and know to stay away from other sulfite-containing food and drinks like dried fruit, cured meats, and bottled fruit juice. Even if a wine is “organically” made without the addition of sulfites, it’s still going to contain some sulfites because yeast produce them naturally during the fermen­tation process. But we don’t have to worry anyway because sulfites in wine have not been shown to be detrimental to the health of most people.

So what about other things  such as histamines or tannin that might cause the dreaded “wine headache”? No worries there, because none of these components have been shown to be the culprit, either. Current academic opinion holds that what probably makes your Aunt Edna feel a little out of sorts after a glass or two of red wine is most likely what’s been there all along — the alcohol.

Myth: The older, the better.

We’ve all heard the story on the 6 p.m. news: Some wine collector with obviously way too much money has just paid $45,000 for a bottle of 150-year-old Bordeaux at Sotheby’s in London. And so is perpetuated the myth that the older a wine is, the better it must be, and yet another potential home winemaker is turned off by the thought that he must wait years or even decades to enjoy the fruits of his labor. Well, wake up and smell the bottle bouquet, because you’re not going to be retired before you can sample your first vintage nor do you need to take out a second mortgage to buy a drinkable wine. The truth is that all wines have a life cycle and when any given wine is “ready” to drink depends on a number of factors, not just its age.

First and foremost, all wines do have an expiration date — of sorts.  A premium Grand Crus may be just hitting its stride after 25 years, whereas an American White Zinfandel will be oxidized and undrinkable if left alone that long. This is because the White Zin, lovely and fruity though it might be, is not built to age. The slow but inevitable breakdown and chemical oxidation of wine components that happens over time can only improve a wine if the proper reactants are in place to start with. Red wines are just swimming with all sorts of these things. Tannins, anthocyanins, aromatic compounds, and other red-wine components all have their place in the complex chain of chemical reactions that occur under the correct storage conditions.

Comparatively, our White Zin is lacking in many of these reactants, and the ravages of time are more immediately felt as the components it does contain are attacked and degraded.

Most white wines produced in this country are ready to drink when they hit the shelf, and most red wines will benefit from aging to a point. If your homemade wine is really tannic, colored, and acidic (pH of say 3.3 or below), it’s more than likely built for the long haul and might improve over the next 10 or 20 years. If it’s light, fruity, and less acidic than usual (above pH 3.6 or so) and especially if it’s a white wine, you can drink it as soon as it’s done fermenting, but it will continue to improve in the bottle for the next year or maybe two. The case of the century-old Bordeaux is the exception, not the rule, and I’d be hard pressed to recommend that anyone risk that much cash on a bottle of wine that is more than likely over the hill.

Myth: You can’t make serious wine from kits.

I’m a homebrewer as well as a winemaker. I think it’s great that you can buy a kit at your local homebrewing store, pop open a can, heat up some extract, and enjoy your own great homebrew in a matter of weeks. What could be easier or more fun? For some reason a lot of home winemakers (or potential home winemakers) believe that you can’t make great, or even good, wines from kits. They staunchly stand by their grape-only (sorry to all you country wine fans out there, too) winemaking dogma that states that if you didn’t crush it and press it, it just isn’t real wine.

This mindset isn’t surprising considering the kinds of kits that have been available to the wine­making public in the past. Obscure varietals, sugar-sweet recipes, and oxidized or heat-damaged kits have all taken their toll on the reputation of winemaking from concentrate. Lucky for those of us who want great wine without all the work, kit winemaking is easier, more affordable, and more quality conscious than ever. Grape-juice concentrate companies have upped the quality and variety of their products, and it’s a snap to find kits that correspond to the varietals, styles, and volumes that you want to make.

Written by Alison Crowe