Tag Archives: pix.wine

Winebits 768: Wine consumption, back labels, Pix.wine

Man shopping at wine store
Remember, only 1.3 bottles a month.

This week’s wine news: U.S. wine consumption compared to the world, plus the language of wine back labels, and Pix.wine folds

• About one bottle a month: David Morrison, writing on the Wine Gourd blog, details how little American care about wine – or, as he puts it, “For most Americans, wine is not a big deal.” The post looks at per capita consumption, where the U.S. ranks 18th, between Canada and South Africa, at 12 liters a year. That works out to 16 bottles annually, or about 1.3 bottles a month – more or less the average over the past 20 years despite the total increase in U.S. wine consumption. In other words, the increase in consumption has not been bigger than the population increase. Or, writes Morrison: “No-one should conclude that wine is in any way a staple product in the lives of US citizens.” His analysis, in the wake of the past two Gallup alcohol use surveys, is well worth contemplating.

• What’s on the back label? The South African wine writer who uses the non de plume Cape of Good Wine takes a look at wine back labels, a subject we’ve gone into quite a bit on the blog. His take: There is more to back labels than bad winespeak (and he goes into detail on that, too), and especially in his native country. He is particularly impressed with the way some producers do the right thing on the back, listing sustainability and fair trade efforts. Maybe, he writes, producers should use the back label as their main selling point: “And I hope there’ll come a day where we will all rotate each bottle in eager anticipation of seeing how the winery is more environmentally and socially responsible.”

• Pix.wine: I wasn’t going to write about the wine site Pix.wine closing this month; call it more bad news for those of us who write about wine, and leave it at that. But 1 Wine Dude Joe Roberts, a long-time pal of the blog, points out that Pix’s demise is just one more sign of wine’s problems. Its failure, writes Joe, is another sign that the wine business has no idea how to adjust to the digital age. A few caveats here: I wrote for Pix and my editor, Felicity Carter, is one of the best I’ve worked with, wine or otherwise. Plus, Pix impresario Paul Mabray has done a hell of lot for wine and wine writing. So I may not be especially impartial when I say Joe makes some fine points (though in language we don’t use on the blog) about the wine business’ woes. Would that someone besides Joe and I – and a handful of others – cared.

Mega Purple: The natural wine ingredient that no one wants to talk about

Bottle of Mega Purple concentrate
Yes, grape juice concentrates like Mega Purple really do exist.

It’s concentrated grape juice that may be in your $15 supermarket red. But don’t tell anyone I told you so

I’ve written about corruption, underhanded dealings, and various other shenanigans during my career. But I’ve never been stonewalled quite the way I was when I wrote a freelance piece for Pix.wine about the history of MegaPurple.

MegaPurple is concentrated grape juice, similar to the frozen stuff at the supermarket (though made with a hybrid grape called rubired). It shows up in red wine all the time – mostly in blends, sweet and otherwise, costing $15 or less, and it’s so potent that only a drop is needed.

But it may also, maybe, possibly be in red wines costing two and three times that much – if someone was willing to talk about that.

In fact, I contacted some 15 people for the story, and only four talked to me. Almost everyone said, yes, it’s a great idea for a story, but I can’t help you.

So why all the mystery? Because – and pun fully intended – Mega Purple and its competitors (one of which is called UltraVin 8000, and another of which is organic) are the deep dark secrets of the California wine business. They’re used to make inexpensive red wine darker and a touch sweeter, on the theory that most wine drinkers equate quality with darker wine and that most of us prefer a touch of sugar.

And it makes wine critics crazy. Do a Google search, and you’ll see a decade or so of stories taking Mega Purple to task; in this, it’s even more heinous than scores, premiumization, and the neo-Prohibitionists. The consensus is that it’s unnatural, even though it’s made from grape juice and is completely legal under most state and federal regulations.

This is not a defense of Mega Purple; blog readers know me better than that. Rather, it’s to note two ironies: First, that it is natural, and not a whole lot different than adding grapes like alicante bouschet or petite sirah to make red blends darker. Which happens all the time, and especially in pinot noir costing $25 or more. Or so I’m told – but not, of course, on the record.

Second, that ingredient labels would spotlight Mega Purple and the rest, and we’d all know that it was in our wine. But how many people in wine really want to do that?