Tag Archives: wine nutrition

Consumers want transparency in what they eat and drink, so why not wine?

Food marketing instituteThe Food Marketing Institute, which gets paid to help sell food, says consumers want to know what’s in what they eat and drink

Dear Wine Business:

We’ve had our disagreements over the years about ingredient and nutrition labels, which I think are crucial for wine’s success in the 21st century. You, on the other hand, don’t seem interested, claiming that it’s too much trouble to fit a label on a wine bottle or that listing ingredients would just confuse consumers.

Both are excuses, and not reasons. That’s because I’m not the only who feels this way. The Food Marketing Institute, whose job is to help food companies market their products, says everything you need to know — but don’t want to acknowledge — in its 2017 report:

U.S. grocery shoppers want more than just information; they desire transparency that engages them, offering assurances of food safety, the pursuit of health and wellness, the appetite for discovery and a closer connection to food.

Wine’s popularity is facing pressure from all over – the decline in Baby Boomer consumption, which brought us where we are today; the indifference of younger consumers, whose tastes run to cider, craft beer, and artisan spirits; the financial pressures facing Millennials, who may not be able to afford to buy wine the way their parents and grandparents did; legal pot; and the neo-Prohibitionists, who insist that drinking is as deadly as smoking cigarettes.

Ingredient and nutrition labels would go a long way toward addressing those concerns, as well as to meet the challenges in the Food Marketing Institute’s report. Not adding labels makes it look like wine has something to hide, which the cynical among us think is what’s really going on. Answer me this: If the additives are legal, be they Mega Purple, a grape juice concentrate used to make wine darker, or food grade gelatin, used to clarify wine, what’s the problem with listing them? Or calories? Or whether wood chips or oak barrels were used?

We both want the same thing – a healthy and thriving wine business that helps Americans enjoy wine. Your approach is short-sighted and ignores the long-term, which is what I’m worried about. Who wants to write a wine blog about the joys of wine when fewer and fewer of us are drinking it?

Your pal,
The Wine Curmudgeon

Update: Nutrition labels and what the wine business doesn’t understand

Last month’s news that the federal government would allow nutrition labels on wine was mostly ignored by the wine business. Hardly anyone wrote about it, and the emails that I got said wine drinkers weren’t interested in nutrition labels and I would know this if I paid any attention to the real world.

Actually, the reverse is true. Wine drinkers are interested. The problem is that too many in the wine business don ?t understand who their customers are or want they want.

The May 29 announcement, which allows wine, beer, and spirits producers to add the labels voluntarily, was not aimed at wine. As the always insightful Tim McNally wrote, beer and spirits “are not necessarily anxious to disclose caloric information. Some craft beers are most opposed because they have high hops and grain content, which is highly caloric. [T]he brewery feels you won’t step up and just guzzle down a few (more) bottles, knowing you are knocking on the door of 1,500 calories just to slake your thirst.”

The labels will almost certainly be used by the biggest beer and spirits companies to reinforce their hold on the light and diet categories, as well as to point out that one serving of vodka has half the calories of one serving of beer or wine (and God knows how many times the profitability).

But that doesn’t mean the labels aren’t important to wine. Eric Asimov of the New York Times has written that wine drinkers “pay little attention to wine’s added ingredients, even as we have become hyper-conscious about what we eat.”

And what’s one of the most common sights in a grocery store aisle? A young woman checking the label on a can of soup for calories and sodium and fat content. Why does anyone in the wine business think that information wouldn’t help sell wine? And why do so many consider it an affront to be asked to include it?

McNally writes that nutrition labels won’t matter in wine because wine doesn’t have the mix of ingredients that beer and some spirits do — mostly just grapes, yeast and sulfites, without fat or sodium. What he misses, though, is that the young woman in the grocery store aisle doesn’t know that (and, given the wine business’ woeful efforts at education, never will).

A nutrition label will tell her that. Which means, just maybe, that the next time she is choosing between an energy drink, flavored water — or even a soft drink — and a bottle of wine, she’ll discover that the wine has no more calories and less sodium. How can that not be good for wine?

For more on wine nutrition labels:
• Update: Wine nutrition labels
• Nutrition facts: Coming to a wine bottle near you
• Diet wine, and why we’re stuck with it

Winebits 285: Wine ingredients, Aussie wine, wine tasting

? What in your wine? The wine industry, for the most part, has ignored the federal government ?s decision to allow voluntary nutrition facts labels on its product. Eric Asimov at the New York Times, though not discussing the labels directly, writes about wine ingredients and offers the following: wine can very much be a manufactured product, processed to achieve a preconceived notion of how it should feel, smell and taste, and then rolled off the assembly line, year after year, as consistent and denatured as a potato chip or fast-food burger. ? The nutrition labels are an opportunity for producers to connect to younger ? and especially female ? wine drinkers, and it looks like they ?re going to pass it up for no good reason other than they think the idea is stupid.

? No money down under: The news just keeps getting worse for the Australian wine business. Only one in four grape growers in the country ?s best wine regions say their business is profitable, while a third of them want to stop growing grapes. And, to make matters worse, grape prices have dropped by half but only about 10 per cent of growers are being paid on time. The numbers come from an Australian government survey, and goes a long way to explain the ongoing crisis in the Aussie wine business.

? How many wines was that? The best way to learn about wine is to taste wine, and Sean Sullivan at the Washington Wine Report knows that first hand. No wonder he won a Wine Blog Award. Sullivan recently tasted 600 Washington wines over the course of  several weeks ? an impressive performance, even by the Wine Curmudgeon ?s standards. The post is worth reading, even if you aren ?t particularly interested in Washington wine, because it ?s some of the best reporting I ?ve seen from a wine writer in a long while. Sullivan eschews the usual sort of wine writing foolishness to give readers something they can use ? hard facts, critical insight, and solid advice. In particular, his discussion of alcohol levels is very good.

Nutrition labels coming to wine — finally

Wine serving factsThe labels are voluntary, and wineries that don ?t want to add them don ?t have to. But voluntary is better than nothing, given the long and tortured history of the proposal.

The plan to add basic calorie, alcohol, and serving information to wine, also called serving facts, has been hanging around Washington even longer than the blog has been in existence — held hostage by the recession, a change in administrations, and the foolishness that passes for government in Washington. In addition, there was determined opposition from most of the beer, wine, and spirits industries, which saw the nutrition labels as costly and burdensome.

So the government agency that regulates liquor came up with the voluntary compromise, no doubt goaded by the biggest booze companies in the world. Diageo, among others, sees it as giving those who use it a competitive edge, and they ?re right. Which of us wouldn ?t be glad to see this information on a wine label?

A winery that wants to add the labels won ?t need to do anything other follow the samples in this link, says Michael Kaiser of the Wine America trade group. Hopefully, many will do it, since the long-term benefits will outweigh the short-term costs. An informed consumer is more likely to buy a product than consumers kept stumbling around in the dark by an industry that still acts, in many ways, as if Prohibition just ended.

And mandatory labeling? If and when that happens is anyone ?s guess, says Kaiser. And his group still opposes it.