LABEL LEEWAY
Alcohol proof can mislead
How much attention do you pay to the alcohol content of wine? Every bottle must show the alcohol level by volume, but I wonder how often consumers look at it before buying a bottle. Do you care if your California Chardonnay or your French Merlot has 12.5 per cent, 13.5 per cent or 14.5 per cent alcohol?
An article in the latest issue of the Journal of Wine Economics discusses the rising alcohol levels of wine.
It’s often thought that climate change — specifically climate warming — is the main reason; as grapes grow in warmer climates, they develop more sugar and therefore more potential alcohol.
This article concludes that warming temperatures have had only a marginal effect on changing alcohol levels.
This supports earlier research suggesting that changes in alcohol levels have largely resulted from changes in winemaking, as winemakers (guided by marketing departments) make moreintense wines to suit consumer demands and that one sideeffect is higher alcohol.
What’s really interesting about this latest article is the finding that the alcohol level declared on the label is generally not the actual level of alcohol in the wine.
All wine laws allow some leeway in declaring alcohol level. U.S. wine law, for example, allows 1.5 per cent either side of the actual level in most wines, so that a wine with 13.5 per cent on its label can have an actual alcohol level between 12 per cent and 15 per cent. Many other wine laws allow one per cent either way, so a wine with 13.5 per cent declared alcohol could be anywhere between 12.5 per cent and 14.5 per cent.
These researchers found that declared alcohol levels were generally lower than actual levels. (They got the actual levels from analyses done by the LCBO lab in Toronto.) Not all producers understate alcohol, but most in this large sample did. And because the misstatements of alcohol level were within the range permitted by law, they were legal.
But why not state the actual level of alcohol? This article suggests that consumers want richer wines that are likely to have higher alcohol but also want lower alcohol levels. And that they have ideal alcohol levels for particular categories of wine: about 12.8 per cent for Old World reds and 13.2 per cent for New World reds, and 12.3 per cent for Old World whites and 12.7 per cent for New World whites. So producers state alcohol levels that are closer to these ideals in order to make consumers more comfortable buying their wines.
I’m not certain about these ideals. I would certainly raise my eyebrows at a Pinot Noir from Burgundy that was as high as 14.5 per cent or an Australian Shiraz as low as 12.5 per cent alcohol. But how often do you scrutinize alcohol levels, and do you have ideal levels? Let me know.