Sulfites in Wine Get Unfair Rap

The Wine Wizard wrote the following great response to yet another person who erroneously believes he has a sulfite allergy and thus cannot drink red wine. A model of sulfur dioxide is shown to the right.

Wine Wizard replies: It is impossible to make a sulfite-free wine, because wine yeast produce sulfur dioxide (SO2) during the fermentation process. Wines with no added sulfite contain from 6 to 40 ppm of sulfite, according to most experts. Check with your physician to make sure that you really are allergic to sulfites. Only a small percentage of the population (approximately 0.01%, or 1 in 10,000) is truly allergic to sulfites. These people lack the digestive enzyme sulfite oxidase and therefore can’t metabolize sulfites. This small percentage of the population is also asthmatic, so many doctors test their patients for sulfite allergies when a diagnosis of asthma is made. These individuals typically know they’re allergic from childhood and so know to avoid all foods and beverages that contain sulfites including, but not limited to, lunchmeats, processed salami, processed fruit juices, packaged seafood and dried fruits, as well as wine.

Sulfur dioxide gets a bad rap because of the government warning label plastered on wine bottles that is only targeted to this select group of consumers. Furthermore, many people blame sulfites for the group of symptoms commonly called the “wine headache.” These symptoms are often simply caused by the alcohol in the product. There has been some speculation in the medical community that histamines — a naturally occurring substance found in foods like canned tuna and wine — are a possible culprit of this “red wine malaise,” but there has been no conclusive evidence so far. Ironically, many consumers drink white wine, thinking red wines have more sulfites, when white wines typically do.

At the end of the day, using sulfites in winemaking is usually not a health issue. Judicious use of sulfite use can significantly increase the quality of your wine. International regulatory boards usually set legal levels at around 350 ppm total sulfur dioxide and most commercial wines are bottled with totals between 50-100 ppm. A little bit of SO2, used wisely, goes a long way and won’t hurt 9,999 out of 10,000 of us.

Chateau Montelena tasting

Just look at that winery! It was built in 1882--perhaps Napa Valley's first?--and has stone walls 12 feet thick in places. Famous for the 1976 "Judgment of Paris" in which its Chardonnay beat out the best French wines in a blind tasting, Montelena is famed for its cabs as well. So it was with great anticipation that I accepted David's very kind invitation to taste their reds at a event in which Montelena's Jim Barrett was the speaker.

Located high on Mt. St. Helena and in the high north end of the Napa Valley, it gets fogs and cool breezes spilling over from the Russian River Valley. This leads to night-time temps of just 50F, versus day temps as high as 100F, and that diurnal difference gives the wine more acidity, which you can taste. Also, we learned that not so long ago, wines would top out at about 8% alcohol, but the yeasts used today can push that to 12-15%, so wines have become much more powerful in the past few decades.

I thought their Chardonnay ($46 retail) was firm, fruity, and had good grip. The 750's can age for seven years. The '06 Zin ($27 retail; head-trained on 6' trunks and planted in 1972) was sharp with no nose at first, though later it opened to a nice bouquet. But it cannot quite stand up to one of California's super-zins, such as a Turley or a Hartford.

Then we jumped into the various estate cabs, from 1999 to 2005. I found some a bit acidic or thin. The '05 had a better nose than the other 2000's, with dark fruit and tobacco notes. The '99, though, was amazing: with an awesome bouquet, sweet tannins, and still tastes young.
I can buy these at Columbia Distributors, if you are interested.

Towhee

Not a word you see every day. The Eastern Towhee is a ground bird, a "large New World sparrow." He's a beaut. Ours loves to dig up the bark mulch in my vineyard, presumably looking for worms. I will begrudge him a few of those, so long as he doesn't take an affinity for grapes.

This bird's call is "drink your teeeeeee," which isn't bad advice.

Pop! Book!

This is off-topic for wine, but here it is:


1. A soda suggestion:


If you drink soda and know about the health dangers of artificial sugars and corn syrup and phosphoric acid, then give Pepsi Natural a try. It uses real sugar, kola nut, water, some naturally-occurring food acids and colors, and not much else. I found it hiding behind the refrigerated section, at Costco. It's good stuff; I hope it survives. It's much more like a real food, in huge contrast to mainline Coke, Pepsi, etc. It IS a sugar drink, to be sure, but if you're already drinking diet soda or corn syrup soda, you could benefit from avoiding the corn syrup (artificial; does not exist in nature; some think it can't be digested as sugar and is instead laid down as fat; in fact, some think it's partly responsible for the obesity epidemic), the aspartame (linked to seizure disorders), and the phosphoric acid (leaches calcium out of your bones) that are in the classic sodas. I'm not a doctor; do your own research.

2. A book recommendation:
If you like: mystery; cannibalism; cargo cults; goddess worship; fast action; aging, mistake-prone protagonists, organ theft, airplane theft, ocean maroonings; minefields; and extramarital sex, then I recommend a great book: It's "Island of the Sequined Love Nun" by Christopher Moore. It's awesome.

You Gotta Be Kidding: 32 wineries in Tennessee?

and at least one of them is a good one! We went to Jackson TN to visit some of Jane's friends, and found two wineries nearby: One was imminently forgettable, but the other, Crown Winery, is well worth a blog post:



If you often wonder: "Who are these people who found new wineries?", here is an answer: Peter Howard is a "British gas physicist" whose ancestors include the gent who named the types of clouds, and also include the shipbuilder to Peter the Great. Peter Howard married a former Miss Tennessee, and there you go.

The new winery building has a spacious tasting room and is built in the California Spanish style. It sits amidst a hilly former dairy farm. The winemaker is quite talented. Because of the humid summers (and the resulting disease pressure), they grow mostly hybrid grapes (please recall my earlier missives about the undeniable--and green--trend towards hybrids). I took a special interest in their Chamborcin, because that is a parent of Regent, which is taking a foothold in my own vineyard. Their Chamborcin is very nice: Bright fruits, good balance, very drinkable.

So, if you find yourself halfway between Nashville and Memphis, check out Crown Winery! And you have to go there, because it is a CRIME for them to ship wine outside of TN. You can thank some of the most corrupt politicians in the country for that little (unconstitutional) gem.
http://www.crownwinery.com/

Sunset High School Winetasting Fundraiser

On Saturday, May 2, Dave and Krista Jellison hosted a winetasting fundraiser for Sunset HS' Grad Party. It's a very worthy event that keeps the just-graduated high school seniors entertained (food, music, games, mock weddings, fireworks, poker games, rock climbing, etc.) in the high school all night, instead of drinking and driving.

Floyd and I managed the wine end of it. Between the admission prices, the silent auctions, and the wine sales (I donated the profits to Sunset HS), we raised somewhere between $1000-$2000 for the kids. Thanks to all of you who came out for it.

A big thank you, also, to my friends Kevin Kohnstamm and Joe Hirko of The Party Pros, in Hillsboro. Party Pros has more Reidel wineglass stems (10,000+) than anyone else in Oregon! They can supply all your party rental needs (tents, tables, tableware, jumphouses, etc.), and they gave us a discount since the party was for a non-profit entity (the public school).

Go Apollos!

Jesus Turning Water into Wine: John 2:1-11

I saw Jesus, who turned water into wine. Really.

Picture a hard rainfall, at White Rose, somewhere SW of Dundee, OR. You're standing in a barn, surrounded by wine barrels. The double door is open, and the rain is sheeting down, obscuring the vineyards into a kind of twilight promise of phantom vines. You're grateful for the shelter. The light is dim. An air of surrealism pervades the place. If the Pillsboro Doughboy waltzed out from behind the barrels, it somehow wouldn't surprise you in the slightest.

Before you are two Hispanic brothers and a table with some wines on it. Spartan. Fitting. The younger brother, eager, talkative, knowledgeable, is handling sales, and the older one, taciturn, leaning back on the door jamb, watching you, is the winemaker. Through a fluke of tour bus dynamics and unknowable universal humanoid allocation principles, no one else is there. It's a planet of eight billion, and yet there are only the three of you. The rain beats out a winetasting dance. You sample the wines, all Pinots, ranging from $30 to $75. Some are forgettable, some are very good. It's clear from the conversations that the older brother, the winemaker, knows his stuff--it is fitting that he rose from field hand to chief winemaker in less than ten years. You love America, that it can provide such opportunities. Looking into your glass, you wonder where this winemaker grew up, how he came here. Which is more mysterious: the wine, or the winemaker?

Then, the winemaker, having sized you up as a person who understands something about Oregon Pinot, offers to pour you his own personal wine--he's the winemaker for all the wines at White Rose, but the owner has kindly allowed him to select from the best fruit and make a few cases all his own. So he brings out a bottle with a different label, "Dreamcatcher," with Native American art on it. It's got 2007 Vista Hills Vineyard fruit, which reached 23.5Brix at 800' elevation, a neat trick for grapes growing so high. This vineyard is right next to Domaine Drouhin and Domaine Serene, so you're in God's Country for Pinot.

The bouquet is unmistakable Oregon Pinot, but it's subtle--you want to keep smelling it, and each time it rewards you with something new: rose petals, licorice, black currants. It's like a time-release nosegasm. In the mouth, it's excellent, redolent of black fruits, very light on the oak--very balanced. The guys said it was bottled in Jan 2009, and would develop more complex flavors after another year or two in bottle. I believe that.

The best part? This little under-the-table gem is the least expensive of all the White Rose offerings.

I stress that this is a fleeting opportunity. He made hardly any of this stuff. If you open this wine, a year from now, for your very best friends, you can be assured that (a) they will not have had this anywhere else, and (b) they will love this wine. And each bottle is signed in gold ink by the man who truly turns water into wine: Jesus (as in, "Hey! Dr. Suess!")

What's special about White Rose is that they've got some of the oldest Pinot noir vines in Oregon--about 35-40 years old. And they limit crop to as low as one ton per acre. That allows supreme concentration in the fruit.