Tag Archives: nutrition labels

studio microphone

Winecast 73: Randall Grahm and ingredient labels for wine

Randall Grahm
Randall Grahm: Labels will force winemakers to do a better job of making wine.

“The consumer has a right to know what’s in their wine”

Few people have worked harder or longer for ingredient labels on wine than Randall Grahm, who was using them on his Boony Doon wines at least a decade ago. So who better to talk to about the latest developments in adding ingredients and nutrition fact boxes?

We recorded this podcast a week ago Sunday, a couple of days before the federal government announced it would start the rulemaking process to add the labels to wine, beer, and spirits. Not surprisingly, Randall — whom I’ve known for longer than both of us would care to admit — predicted we’d get the labels sooner rather than later.

Know, too, that Randall was on his best behavior — so no name calling or punny insults. Rather, just solid, sensible reasons and analysis about ingredient and nutrition labels and how to make them work:

• One of the reasons that labels have become more accepted- — the rise of the natural wine movement, which makes a point to talk about what’s not in the wines.

• Why so much resistance still? Additives are a crutch to make wine easier to make, he said — “artificial fixes. … If you had to put everything on the label that you put in the wine, you’d have to be a much more fastidious winemaker.”

• Wine remains confusing to most consumers; labels will help make it less confusing.

• There is room for discussion about what needs to be included.  Randall suggests ingredients that remain in the wine should be listed, so yes to sulfites and grape juice additives like MegaPurple.

• Most of the objections the wine business makes to labels aren’t necessarily obstacles. It’s possible to add the information to back labels without a crisis, he said, and this comes from someone whose labels were artistic. Most big producers can afford to add the labels; perhaps there can be an exemption for smaller producers.

Click here to download or stream the podcast, which is about 15 minutes long and takes up 10 1/2 megabytes. Quality is good to excellent.

More wine podcasts:
• Winecast 72: Denise Clarke and the progress — and challenges — for Drink Local
• Winecast 71: Paul Tincknell and solving all of wine’s problems
• Winecast 70: Ray DelMuro of Refresh Glass and recycling wine bottles

Yes, nutritional labels fit on wine bottles

Gazela nutrition facts label
Damn! Only 87 calories. Who knew?

The Gazela vinho verde found space – why can’t others?

Almost everyone – including the federal government – has come to the realization that wine needs ingredient and nutritional labels. But there is still resistance from wine, because that’s the way wine works.

Hence, this post, and the picture at the left: A nutritional label on the Gazela vinho verde.

I contacted the Gazela importer to find out why the producer (one of Portugal’s biggest) added the label. If I hear back, I’ll update the post.

But it’s easy to figure out why: Just 87 calories, which is about three-quarters of a typical glass of wine (and fewer than light beer); almost no carbs; and no fat. My only complaint is that the alcohol content (a measly 9 percent) is stuck up in the upper left hand corner of the back label; it should be next to the nutrition box.

So, yes, Gazela and parent Sogrape have lots of ulterior motives to add the information. Obviously, they’re going after the younger, hard seltzer demographic, which sees that beverage as a more healthy form of alcohol than wine – less calories, less carbs, and so forth. So the box is letting those consumers know that Gazela is just as “healthy” – fewer calories, even. In this, vinho verde has always struck me as the perfect wine alternative for all those hard thises and hard thats.

So, given wine’s resistance to nutrition and ingredient labels, I don’t much care how many ulterior motives Gazela and Sogrape have. Results matter, and this is one more crack in the anti-label wall.

Winebits 622: Supermarket wine, ingredient labels, Kroger wine

supermarket WineThis week’s wine news: Sommeliers pick supermarket wine, plus another shout out for wine ingredient labels and Kroger expands its on-line wine business

• Interesting choices: Vinepair asked sommeliers to pick quality supermarket wine, and what struck me as how un-supermarket so many of the wines were. How many of us go to the grocers to spend $60 for a bottle of Jordan cabernent sauvignon? And you can tell many of the sommeleirs had not bought wine at a grocery store lately, given the number of hard to find European wines they selected. Still, it was good to see Dallas’ Barbara Werley select Chateau Ste. Michelle and Houston’s Jay Pyle pick the Matua sauvignon blanc, a top $10 wine.

• Thank you: Mike Veseth, The Wine Economist, says “I believe that wine, beer, and spirits will eventually be required to list their ingredients and nutritional data. I wonder what would happen if wine were to take a voluntary step and be more transparent now as a way to shape the narrative?” Which is good news for those of us who have fought long and hard for ingredient and nutritional labels and to convince to join the 21st century. Veseth’s reasoning is well taken: “We might think wine is special — and it is in many ways — but we shouldn’t assume that it is immune to the forces that are making transparency, accountability, and technology more important every day.”

• Good luck: Kroger has expanded its on-line wine store to 19 states and Washington, D.C, offering – get this – some four dozen wines “selected by winemakers and sommeliers for their quality, value and flavor profiles.” I wonder: Is it a coincidence that one of the wines is the Matua sauvignon blanc? You can check out the store at this link – just click on one of the states listed in the menu. Selection is limited, and most of the wines aren’t well known. But it is intriguing that Kroger is trying something that mighty Amazon gave up on long ago.

Nutrition labels: What wine can learn from two packages of frozen onion rings

nutrition labelsIf wine doesn’t have nutrition labels, how will younger consumers know it’s not going to kill them?

Every time the Wine Curmudgeon writes about wine nutrition and ingredient labels, people cancel their email subscriptions to the blog. So get ready to press the cancel button, because you’re really not going to like this post: How nutrition and ingredient labels save us from making stupid food decisions, and what wine can learn from a package of onion rings.

Consider two packages of frozen onion rings – one traditional and one made with onions, cauliflower, and beans. Which do you think is the healthiest choice?

And you’d be wrong.

In fact, the faux rings, Farmrise veggie rings, have 220 calories per serving, with 15 percent of the USDA daily allowance of fat and 8 percent of the allowance of sodium. The onion rings, the Kroger house brand, have 180 calories, 10 percent of fat, and 7 percent of sodium. Plus, the real onion rings are about half the price. Click on each link and you’ll see the nutrition label for each product.

The difference in nutrition? The faux rings need the extra fat and salt because cauliflower has no flavor; the fat and salt goose up the Farmrise so it won’t taste like industrially steamed cauliflower. And the difference in price? That’s the healthy option premium, in which we’re supposed to pay more for stuff that’s better for us, even when it isn’t. Check out a can of so-called “healthy” soup, and the only difference between it and Campbell’s may be the price – each has massive amounts of sodium.

What does this have to do with wine? Wine refuses to join the 21st century by making this nutrition information easily available; it has been fighting labels with down to the last bullet determination for more than a decade. But that also means that the same younger consumers who would spot the onion ring contradiction in a second will continue to think wine has something to hide. This is opposed to their parents and grandparents, wine drinkers all, who trust in cauliflower and Big Food.

Because, to the younger consumer’s post-modern way of thinking, wine would have these labels unless there was something fishy going on (or eggy or sugary or industrial adhesive-y or any of the other 60-some ingredients legally allowed in wine that aren’t grapes).

And, as we are reminded here and elsewhere, and reminded over and over, younger consumers aren’t drinking wine the way their parents and grandparents did. Maybe this could be one of the reasons?

More about wine nutrition labels:
• The final “nutrition and ingredient labels for wine are a good thing” post
• Are we making progress in adding ingredient labels to wine?
• Nutritional labels for booze

Winebits 582: Wine scores, corkage, nutrition labels

wine scoresThis week’s wine news: A Swiss study finds wine scores continue to be unreliable, plus an Aussie restaurant jacks up the corkage fee and a consumer group consortium asks for nutrition labels

• Not really: David Morrison, analyzing wine scores from two top U.S. critics, does not mince words: “I have rarely seen scores differ by this much — 13 points is a lot of quality-score difference. It is pertinent, I think, to ask whether these two people were actually tasting the same wines!” In other words, his math confirms what those of us who don’t use scores have said for years. Scores, at best, are an overview. At worst, they’re damaging to the wine business, confusing consumers and putting people off wine they might otherwise like.

• Yikes: A Swiss wine merchant claims an Australian restaurant charged him A$8,000 (about US$5,700) to bring eight of his own bottles to dinner. The story, from London’s Daily Mail newspaper, doesn’t have quite as many facts as I would like, but seems to be legitimate. This practice is called corkage – when one brings their own wine, the restaurant charges a corkage fee. It ranges from $10 to $30 a bottle; this way, the restaurant can make up for the lost sale but not gouge the guest. In this case, though, the Swiss claims he was charged $725 a bottle, about five times the value of the wine. It’s good to see Australian wine service can be as shabby as service in this country.

• Yes, labels: So much for the Wine Curmudgeon’s good intentions. I promised that last week’s post would be the final effort on the blog  about ingredient and nutrition labels, but then this happened: The Center for Science in the Public Interest and 67 other groups have asked the federal government to require labels “covering alcohol content by percentage and amount, serving size, calories, ingredients, allergen information, and other information relevant to consumers.” Which, of course, is what I have been begging the wine business to do for years.

The final “nutrition and ingredient labels for wine are a good thing” post

ingredient labelsOne more study shows consumers use ingredient labels and that it influences what we buy

The Wine Curmudgeon has long advocated nutrition and ingredient labels for wine, but the response has been silence punctuated by more than a few cat calls. So, rather than continue to elicit abuse, consider this the final post on the subject. I can’t make the point any more forcefully other than to report this story:

An analysis of studies that looked at how labeling on food packaging, point-of-sale materials and restaurant menus prompted consumers to eat fewer calories and fat; reduce their choice of other unhealthy food option; and eat more vegetables.

What more do we need to know about the efficacy of labels? How much better off would wine be if each bottle listed calories, fat, and the like? Wouldn’t consumers benefit to know that there are about half the calories in a glass of wine than in a jelly doughnut? Wouldn’t they feel better knowing their wine was mostly fermented grape juice instead of something like Dr Pepper – with its 250 calories, high fructose corn syrup, and four percent of the daily value of sodium?

The wine business disagrees, and just not because it doesn’t want consumers to know wine sometimes has a lot more in it than fermented grape juice. Instead, I will get emails and comments citing another part of the study: Consumers “also selected 13 percent fewer other unhealthy food options such as sugar-sweetened beverages, alcoholic beverages, non-alcoholic caloric beverages, french fries, potatoes, white bread, and foods high in saturated fat, trans fat, added sugars or sodium.”

My answer: Doesn’t wine need to do something drastic when it’s compared to french fries, white bread, and sugar-sweetened beverages? When consumers think your product is as nasty as french fries, you’ve got nothing else to lose.

So read this, and know the way the world is going. And know that the wine business is headed in a completely different direction.

More about nutrition and ingredient labels:

• Wine and GMO labeling
• Update: Nutrition labels and what the wine business doesn’t understand
• Nutrition labels for booze

Bud Light debuts new and improved ingredient labels

If Big Beer understands the need for ingredient labels, why is it so difficult for wine to do the same?

ingredient labelsBudweiser is beefing up the ingredient labels on its Bud Light beer. Yes, that Budweiser, whose marketing gurus think the above video is witty and whose product is seen by many as the reason for craft beer.

Yet, somehow, Bud and its parent, Anheuser-Busch, are smarter and more modern and more progressive then the wine business. Wine has  viewed nutrition and ingredient labels as the spawn of the devil since the end of the 20th century, despite their value in the fight against the neo-Prohibitonists. Is it any wonder I’m not the only one worried about the future of the wine business?

Writes the Associated Press: “Bud Light went with a big, black-and-white label, similar to the ones required by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration on packaged foods. … ‘We want to be transparent and give people the thing they are used to seeing,’ said Andy Goeler, vice president of marketing for Bud Light. … [He] said the brand’s research shows younger drinkers, in particular, want to know what’s in their beer.”

Shocking news, of course, to everyone but the wine business. I’ve been writing about nutrition and ingredient labels for wine since since my newspaper days, and the message has remained the same: Why ketchup and not wine? Why not transparency? What is wine trying to hide?

Or, as consumer advocates said in this 2009 story I did for Palate Press, the refusal to add ingredient labels ”puts the industry outside of the mainstream given developments in food labeling and consumer information. The goal, they say, is more information, not less. ‘It’s all about transparency,’ says dietitian Kathleen Talmadge, RMA, RD. ‘Any time the consumer gets more information, that’s a good thing. You want them to be knowledgeable about what they’re buying.’ ”

So Bud Light, one of the most simple and inexpensive alcohol products, has better ingredient labels than a $25 California wine. How much sense does that make?