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Enzymes shelves. Winemaking Made Easy : Fill Your Shopping Cart... Somewhere in France...
This is harvest time, and with it, the high season for the biotech labs and the chemical groups behind the ever-growing array of products made available to the vignerons of both the old- and the new world...While most of this business is done discreetly by mail or the internet, there are a few physical shops where enologists and vignerons can go shopping and make a last-minute purchase of yeasts, enzymes or powdered tannins for example. Welcome to the real (but hidden) world of modern wines.
You may have noticed that the wineries and vintners featured on Wineterroirs are often the ones who don't use any of these biotech products, and in this regard they stand rather in the "natural wines" or "real wines" category, meaning that their wines were made without any of the many chemical products that the specialized labs have developed and put on the market over the last 10 or 20 years. Nonetheless, It is good to have an open mind and taste and enjoy all sorts of wines, including the ones which are the result of the modern winemaking products, but it would just be fair if the consumer knew a little more about what his wine has been going through. But can you really imagine these "modern wineries" communicate in their beautiful tasting rooms about all the magic chemical additives they have been stuffing their wines with ? Not very romantic indeed, and as there is a mystical purity associated with the aura of wine, there is a strong reluctance on the part of everyone including the wine media and writers to dig too much on the subject.
Not that I want to spoil the party, but here is a quick look in an additive shop for a change, something which can be very healthy and help us ponder over our wines and ask the right questions.

The Yeasts AisleThe shop featured in this story sells traditional tools for wineries, like pumps, gloves, thermometers, plastic containers and grape forks, to name a few, but the additives aisles are probably the most interesting to visit because in the last few years this section has literally exploded in size. You will find many different types of industrial yeasts, each giving to the future wine specific aromas, you will find the powdered tannins that you add in the wine like flour, or the enzymes, the nutrients, the arabic gum to add roundness to the wines, and many other new chemical wonders...On the top of the Yeast shelves [picture above], boards help the clueless vigneron to make his choice, featuring the properties of the different yeasts, listed by type of wines, "Sauvignon", "Other Whites" "Universal Yeasts", "Rosés", "Primeur", "Light Reds" and "Heavy [Corsés] Reds". Yeast-Packaging with Flashy Fruit Pictures to Illustrate the Aromas Walking through such a shop once in his/her life should be compulsory for a wine lover who genuinely tries to learn more about his passion. Critics and sommeliers should also "pass the test" and make themselves heard and why not, lobby for more transparency on additive use by the wineries. But this is a hidden side that the commercial wineries who make a heavy use of these products would like to stay in the shadow. The adjective here (commercial) is not perfect and may be partly misleading as it could imply that natural-wine (or real-wine, call it as you like) vintners don't sell their wines, but the word "commercial" pictures well the philosophy behind the systematic use of additives : make a predictable, risk-free, formated product and deliver it at the right time on the market, and in big volumes. While On the vinification side you have often an ample use of these techniques, which are driven by a culture of efficiency and profitability, on the communication side, the consumer is entertained with a different story where "legacy", "tradition", "heritage" and "terroir" are put forth...One-Kilogram Bags of Powdered TanninsThe biotech companies who make these products are not well-known to the wine consumer and while some were among the ones that I mentioned in my page about additives (posted in november 2006) like Laffort Oenologie, some were new to me, like Littorale Oenologie (recently bougt by the dutch group DSM), Martin Vialatte Oenologie, Lamothe Abiet Pinosa and Anchor Biotechnologies. The french biotech company Lamothe Abiet Pinosa has even found a well selling name for its Powdered Tannins [see picture above]...;-)
For the anecdote, this bag of Gallo Tanin B consists of chestnut-tree tannins which are supposed to better the fining process of whites and rosés . According to the fine print, the dosage is 5 to 15 grams per hectoliter and has to be mixed with hot water (40°C) before being poured into the wine during a pumping-over. The instruction-text suggests to use the injector-doser manufactured by the same company... I was also surprised by the affordability of these products, the 1-kg tannin pack costing only about 7,5 Euro tax-included, and the yeasts packs about 20 Euro. No surprise that winemakers may be tempted to use them...
To sum this up, it is one thing to browse on additive catalogs online, like Gusmer Enterprises' or Scott Laboratories', but it is another thing to walk into a physical shop where you can almost touch these products: you really get the perspective and scope of what is going on behind the screen...
Oh, and one more precision : I asked to the people in this particular shop if there was a catalog that I could check, to which they answered that there was just a printed booklet with several tools and winery items (after a quick look I realized that there was only innocent tools in there), but that there was a more extensive listing of their products, including additives, on their website, which could be accessed (listen carefully) THROUGH A PASSWORD... That's a very important difference which shows how these things are dealt with, in France...

Comments

[Iris]

Thank you for your permission to use a translation in my german blog version. You can find it here:

http://weingut-lisson.over-blog.com/article-12874727.html

everything is linked to your article too for the photos, which suprised more than one of my wine-loving readers.