Water in the wine

[winemanden]

Just wondered what your views are of the latest European Union plans are.
Here's a bit of news from Wein.plus

The Italian Minister of Agriculture Stefano Patuanelli supports Italy's vintners in their fight against plans of the EU to allow the dilution of wine with water to lower the alcohol content throughout Europe.

Yet another reason for us Brits leaving EU!!

 

[Cynewulf]

It seems like an odd thing for the EU to get involved in but I also don’t fully understand how the EU PDO laws interact with the Member Countries’ individual geographical indication regulations. I don’t have a strong opinion on allowing the practice or not as it seems to me to be aimed at the larger producers. Within the EU I mostly spend time in France and already don’t care for the industrial wines that are typically sold in the supermarkets there. I prefer the wines from the smaller independent producers who focus on making high quality wines using old school low intervention techniques and those winemakers aren’t going to do this.

 

[Rice_Guy]

* it is good to have rules that industry operates by, it is good to use the same rules country by country or state by state since it allows the consumer to have healthy/ non adulterated quality product. The US is better off with the food system today than it was in 1910 before we had all the regulation/ when we were transitioning to large factories and branded goods
* if you make your own wine and bread and mutton and beer you will know if/ how it was adulterated, ,,,, but most of us would rather go to Tesco and not learn how to make the product correctly, or learn how to compensate for variation in raw ingredient.
* from a factory point of view it is easier to be sloppy, the rules are a pain
* the US rules are that a wine label needs to be approved which is nominally a six month process. Part of the label rules allow being plus or minus 0.5% of the labeled alcohol by volume. Being able to dilute with water helps the winery meet label requirements using what ever the new crop gave us to work with.
* If France has 7,000 wineries or Italy 5,000 wineries and Britain has 500 wineries ,,, Britain is not a big player so it basically has to follow others. ,,, I personally like the EU regulations since it makes it easier for the US to develop goods for and buy from that market, ,,, and we have other tools to adjust sugar (example ultrafiltration) so we can live with it either way.

 

[sour_grapes]

Just wondered what your views are of the latest European Union plans are.
Here's a bit of news from Wein.plus

The Italian Minister of Agriculture Stefano Patuanelli supports Italy's vintners in their fight against plans of the EU to allow the dilution of wine with water to lower the alcohol content throughout Europe.

Yet another reason for us Brits leaving EU!!

From your quote, I cannot tell if you are in favor of allowing water additions or adamantly opposed. Or just chuffed about the EU.

I have absolutely no opposition to adding water to high-brix musts that would benefit from added water. (AFAIK, Cali allows this and France forbids this.) Likewise, I have absolutely no opposition to adding sugar to low-brix musts that would benefit from added Chaptalization. (AFAIK, Cali forbids this and France allows this.)

Do you have some specific reasoning to share?

 

[winemanden]

That's just me asking for you opinions.
Faceless unelected bureaucrats in Brussels force unneeded regulations on people.
Italian winemakers don't want it, France is against it, maybe other countries will be the same.
Can you imagine the great French Chateaus who sell their wines for hundreds of Dollars per bottle watering their wine?

Only recently, winemakers in the village of Champagne in Switzerland have been forbidden to put Champagne on their wine labels.

Saying Britain is not a big player so it basically has to follow others is wrong. UK winemakers won't have to follow the regulations because we are no longer members of the EU.

Rightly or wrongly, I was under the impression that it was the big grape growers in California who let their grapes go to a high Brix, that cause winemakers to water the must, because that's the way they are paid. Higher Brix = more Dollars.

 

[Rice_Guy]

* any hot climate has the potential to harvest high brix, the Central Valley in California, Spain, Australia, parts of Chile, etc. Many parts of the States do not have that issue but struggle to drop the acids/ raise the sugar. And,, some places are just right in France and California and South Africa etc.
* my observation is that five percent are angels, ninety percent are basically good and five percent of the bosses bend the rules which includes producing a few extra bottles of expensive wine, or creating false stories on the internet. My feel is that we as a species operate best with checks against too much power or influence in this five percent of the population. ,,,, I deleted examples called food adulteration Herba Spain fired that VP
* YUP,, some of the rules are funny, as we imported ship loads of rice which had live contamination but if an interesting genetic breeding sample was imported we had to run it through quarantine,,, probably since it was easier to look at 100 grams. As a world community we make mistakes every year, the human species has been lucky so far.
* I am pretty sure Britain will survive no matter what the EU does in regulations. There are lots of exceptions where a non conforming product has to be sold in the export market, or,, ?why would I be on a patent for grot rize?, there isn’t any sold in the US market. ,,, The customer is right.