The Under $20 A Bottle Wine Thread:

[TheRiddick]

Nice article, although somewhat misguided as most wine reporters and critics seem to be. He should have done more research. For example, adding tannins is done to retard any bacteria that may have arrived to the winery on grape skins. Small doses of powdered tannin, all natural, of course, but (hopefully) enough to kill any spoilage and used as a precaution in 99% of the cases.

Adding oak chips to wine is not a substitute to aging wine in barrels (contrary to the implication in the article). Chips simply add oak flavor, as article says, but aging in oak barrels leads to micro oxygenation, which is wine AGING (similar to you and me aging wine in our homes for years after the purchase). And as is, chips and staves are simply a by-product of barrel making, anyway. Why throw away perfectly good planks when making barrels?

Chaptalization is legal in France, but illegal in California, the article makes it sound like it is. Besides, with all the "complaints" from experts that CA and Oz wines are too "big" to begin with, why add even more sugar?

Overall, a good look at how the likes of [yellowtail] achieve their target, flavor profile wise, they actually have huge chemical laboratories to gauge consumer wine preferences (sugar laden and oaky wines) and then use chemical additions to get there. Some additions are natural (oak chips, MegaPurple, sugar), some are not.

But in general, you simply cannot take a wine amde from 15 tons per acre crop and turn it into something that was made from a 3 tons (of less) per acre yield. The biggest issue, though, is that all of the wine writers and critics complain about these "additives" and tricks and yet, time and again, I have watchd them give these chemical experiments high scores in tastings, blind or not. On the one hand, they tell consumers about the "evils" of such wine making tricks, on the other they themselves do not have good palates to begin with.

I do not see any attraction in buying non-USA made wines when well made, clean wines are made here and available for same prices as imports. Why send money out of the country?