Let’s Talk About Sulfites

What this whole natural wine thing is about + A few picks for those who are natty wine curious

This is not an article about how the natural wine movement is promoting poorly made, unstable wine as a holy alternative to mainstream, commercially manipulated bottles. This is not an article about how mainstream wine is hiding behind lax labeling regulations to include ingredients that many consumers might have second thoughts about if they knew what they were ingesting. This is an article about sulfites. Stay with me.

I’m going to put it out there. It is highly improbable that the number of people who over the last ten years have told me they are allergic to sulfites in wine actually are allergic. But I can understand why they might think so.

Compared with regulations on food packaging, wine labels are shockingly sparse. The current guidelines from the US Bureau of Alcohol and Tobacco requite the alcohol content by volume (ABV), alcohol amount (e.g. 750ml, the standard full bottle size), country of origin (if an import), the standard government warning about drinking while pregnant, impairment of driving and operating heavy machinery, the name and address of the winery, and declaration of added sulfites.

What most consumers don’t know is the vast number of additives that can legally be added to wine without needing to list it on the label. This is happening all the time in wines you probably love.

If grapes are underripe, sugar can be added during fermentation in a process called chaptalization. Yeast is necessary to convert the sugars in grape juice to alcohol. It can be found naturally in the environment (think about the sourdough starter you coaxed from scratch in a jar on the counter) or it can be added in a commercial form (equivalent to baking bread using yeast bought from a store). Tannins, crucial to wine’s ability to age, occur naturally in grape seeds but can be increased by aging in oak barrels or adding, yes, oak chips.

On the lesser-known end of the spectrum, if a wine is too acidic, say coming from grapes in a cooler Northern climate, there are de-acidifiers like calcium carbonate. Or if a wine is not acidic enough (ever had a jammy fruit bomb from a hot climate?), malic, tartaric or citric acids are put to use by winemakers to achieve balance.

None of those additives end up on the label – only sulfites. Thanks to a very small percentage of the population who have a sensitivity to sulfites, estimated at 1% of the population, winemakers must list the presence of added sulfites on the label if it is tested to be more than 10 parts per million. The average bottle of wine has 150 ppm. But here is the kicker, if your kids drink juice from a box or you eat any kind of dried fruit, you are already consuming sulfites at a much higher level than in that bottle of wine. Dried fruit alone can contain sulfites up to 2000 ppm.

Reading a back wine label

If the only additive that is required to be listed on the wine label is sulfites, it is no wonder that a person who wakes up with a nasty headache reaches for the bottle of wine she drank last night, looks at the label and concludes that sulfites must be the problem.

So what are sulfites doing in the wine exactly? Yeast, that hero of turning sugar into alcohol, naturally produce sulfites as a means of warding off bacteria that are also eager to get in on that sugar feast during fermentation. So even when you drink a wine with “no added sulfites” on the label, there are still sulfites present. For centuries, sulfites have been added by winemakers to help stabilize wine, preventing oxidation, and to stave off unwanted bacteria that can lead to unpleasant tastes. Sulfites help keep those nasty tastes at bay.

The so-called “natural wine movement” is a loose terminology for winemaking that can include organic and biodynamic farming and espouses minimal intervention in regard to additives. As the one ingredient that must be disclosed on the label, natural wine enthusiasts grabbed onto sulfites as the cri de coeur for fewer additives. It seemed like suddenly, everyone who ever got a headache after a night of drinking wine was blaming this rather common stabilizer.

If you have ever dipped your toes into the world of “natty wine”, you might wonder why so many bottles are acidic, cloudy, or even taste a bit mousy. That’s because winemaking is a hard thing to do without a few tools, like sulfites, to help along the way. In the end it is a chemical reaction with a lot of unpredictable natural factors, like bacteria, that can swing a barrel or a bottle on the whim of a microscopic organism.

Organic farming, better vineyard management and proper hygiene in the winery can all help winemakers, low intervention and mainstream, to minimize the need for and quantity of added sulfites, which can only be a good thing for everyone.

If you are going to spend the calories on a glass of wine, as one friend likes to say, you want it to taste good. And though in the last decade I’ve seen a lot of improvement in the quality of wines falling under the natural wine umbrella, there is still a lot of unpredictability in taste. If you are natty wine curious, or just looking for winemaking that is more transparent with what is going in the bottle, here are a few ways to get started:

·      Look for a wine bar where you can sample a variety of low intervention (natural) wines and find one that is right for you. In San Diego, The Rose in South Park and Vino Carta in Little Italy have knowledgeable staff and a good selection to get you started. In Hong Kong, La Cabane has a wide array of mostly French offerings to sample.

·      Find your local wine shop and have them direct you to a low intervention wine that might fit your taste. More traditional wine shops are stocking low intervention wines these days and there are more than few wine shops completely devoted to the natural wine movement. Little Victory in Encinitas has a wide selection – and they will be opening a wine bar in Carlsbad later this fall!

I remember going to a seminar in New York about ten years ago, somewhat early in the natural wine movement, that pitted a low intervention winemaker against a heavy proponent of additives. The natural wines surprised me with their quality and the additive wines were simply not good, failing to impress me that his way was superior. However, there was one thing the additive proponent said that stuck with me. Wine by its very nature, he argued, is an intervention. Every step of the process from planting to pruning to watering to harvest to fermentation to ageing involves a series of decisions made by a human in collaboration with and in response to what is happening in nature. Wine, as we know it today, could not happen on its own. It is anything but natural.

The interventionist was right of course, which is probably why there are those of us who like to geek out on wine. We find pleasure in the glass but also the process and the story. Every bottle seems like a small miracle. Maybe if wine consumers were let in a bit more on that process, the wood chips and acids and sugars that sometimes make wine we like taste good, or might be the secret culprit giving us a headache, we wouldn’t feel so much like there is a man behind the curtain trying to manipulate our tastes. We would just be empowered to drink better wine, wine that tastes great and makes us feel good. Because isn’t that what drinking wine is supposed to be about?

To Drink…

Gratena Chianti, Fattoria di Gratena, Chianti DOCG, Italy 2022

When the owner of Little Victory told me this is the only “no added sulfite” Chianti, I was cautiously hopeful. I was delighted to find this is an easy drinking, medium bodied red that feels characteristic of Chianti. Made with 100% organic Sangiovese grapes coming from a village near Arezzo, this is fermented in stainless steel and aged nine months in new and old oak. As much as I loved it, I was thrilled when John tasted it and immediately said, go buy more! A request I was happy to oblige.

At the time of writing Little Victory is out of stock but will be getting more back in mid-September. Also found online at Primal Wine. From $25.

Orsola, Castello di Tassarolo, Monferrato Red Wine, DOC, Italy 2021

When I bought Little Victory out of their remaining stock of the Chianti, they steered me toward this wine instead. Imported by an influential promoter of natural wines, Jenny & Francois Selections, this was a terrific alternative. Mostly Barbera with a touch of Cabernet Sauvignon, it hits the sweet spot of bright acidity I love in red wines from the Piedmont region. Using certified organic grapes, the Spinola family has been making wine from these vineyards since the 14^th century. Biodynamic since 2016, today they are innovating by looking backwards: using heavy draft horses to facilitate vineyard work, maintaining healthy vineyards so that no added sulfites are needed while still achieving a balanced, delicious bottle.

From $24 at Little Victory also online at The Local.