“I’m all lost in the supermarket, I can no longer shop happily.”- The Clash
I remember being a young twenty something and wandering aimlessly down the aisles of the supermarket – in a feeble attempt to choose a wine to go with dinner. There were just too many wines to choose from, and I had no idea what would pair with pepperoni pizza or carnitas burritos. I wasn’t alone. The average wine consumer, just looking to grab a quick bottle or two on their only shopping excursion for the day, has to make a quick and often uninformed decision. More often than not, they grab the one with the pretty label, or maybe it has the word ‘family’ on it (ostensibly making it seem family-made), or it’s a brand that they already recognize because the winery spends millions of dollars on advertising.
I don’t purchase wines in the supermarket because, as a winemaker, I know too much about what goes into most of those bottles. The majority of them are mass-produced at a staggering quantity – large enough to feed the vast American supply chain. So is large a bad thing? Let’s consider how the size of a winery and its shelf price influence quality.
Take, for example, Josh Cellars. Sounds like it was made by your good buddy who lives down the block, right? Just a good old hand-made wine made in Josh’s posh little winery? Wrong. Josh Cellars produces over 90 million bottles annually. 90 million! That is a staggering number. To make good ol’ Josh’s wine you would need to start with at least 600,000 tons of grapes, or 1.2 billion pounds. That’s enough to fill 20,000 big rig trucks. And Josh isn’t even the biggest – Barefoot churns out over a billion bottles.
“The chemists are a strange class of mortals, impelled by an almost insane impulse to seek their pleasures amid smoke and vapor, soot and flame, poisons and poverty.” — Johann Joachim Becher
To make wine at this scale (not to mention at a sales price under $15), you need a mega-winery, and corners need to be cut. First of all, fruit is sourced from large-scale farms that spray harmful chemicals and use Round Up like it’s party confetti. Furthermore, the cheapest fruit comes from regions that are less than desirable for making high-quality wine – but that’s no problem, a team of chemists is at the ready! They can morph that juice into something palatable to the unknowing consumer. There are over 100 chemicals that they can legally add to perfect their Coca-Cola like blend every year. And to make matters even more confusing, there are no labeling requirements for liquor that require them to disclose what they put in that bottle.
The big question is, what can we do about it as wine consumers? How do we know if what is in the bottle is real wine or some formula? For now, not a lot – we will be mostly left in the dark until liquor has the same labeling requirements as every other food item in the aisles.
But do not despair, I have a suggestion to make: buy the wine from the small winery who is transparent about their production methods. Who grows grapes organically (meaning no chemicals like Round Up), and who makes honest wine. Get on their mailing list. Order a mixed case to see which wines you like. Shoot them an email with questions. Join their wine club. You’ll be glad that you did, and the planet (and your body) will thank you. After all, no one likes getting lost in the supermarket. Shop happily, and healthily!
-Will Henry
