Is Wine an Ultra Processed Food?

And how do you know when there's no ingredient list?

Welcome, Sauciers! Today’s essay is a freebie for everyone to read because this is too much of an important topic to keep behind a paywall.

Photo by Vinarija Perak on Unsplash

If you think wine is only fermented grape juice, you’d be wrong.

Sure those lovely advertisements make it out like your wine is made by some old dude carefully handpicking grapes, fermenting them then bottling them for your drinking pleasure. But unless you are drinking the most natural of natural wines, little could be further from the truth.

Wine is a manipulated product. In fact, if you look at the definition of an Ultra-Processed Food, a lot of wine fits into that category.

Despite this, no wine is required to disclose its ingredient list in the US. This makes wine — and how it’s made — a murky world full of misleading advertising and false information.

Which is bad news for you as a wine drinker. Because how the heck do you know if you’re guzzling down the vinous equivalent of Sunny D every night?

You don’t. And that, my friends, is shocking.

Ultra-processed wine = ultra-processed drinking

If you’ve not yet come across the term ultra-processed food (UPF), it’s the buzzword of the food world since it emerged as a new food classification.

Ultra-processed food is generally defined as:

• Having five or more ingredients

• Using additives that are not typically used in home cooking

• Designed for a long shelf life

Commonly cited examples include ice cream, sausages, cookies, and carbonated drinks. Some alcoholic drinks like whisky and rum also fall under the classification.

Wine is nowhere to be seen on the lists. Yet when you look at permitted wine additions, it could definitely fit into a UPF definition.

In Europe, more than 60 additives are allowed. The US fares worse, at 72.

Some of the additives are designed to keep wine shelf-stable, the most well-known being sulphites. Some are as benign as water (literally).

But there are plenty of other additions none of which would be seen in home cooking and thus would fall under the UPF category.

We’re talking colorants like mega purple designed to trick you into thinking your wine is darker (thus fuller-bodied) than it really is.

We’re talking about both deacidification and acidification additives.

We’re talking about using Isinglass (fish bladder) used to make wine smoother.

The list goes on and on.

When I learned how to make wine at a British wine college (a country notorious for excessive wine additions), I learned just how many of these additives are used. It would shock you. It certainly shocked me, and I work with the stuff.

Yet you’ll never see any ingredients or additives listed on a bottle of wine. The most you’ll see is the ubiquitous “contains sulphites” allergen warning.

Wine in the US is not required to list ingredients. Yet so much of it would fall under the ultra processed food category.

There’s an argument that many wine additives are harmless, but that’s not the point. The point is when you pick up a bottle of wine, you have no idea if you’re drinking something relatively naturally made, or alcoholic Gatorade.

It’s appalling that the wine industry can do this. It means the less scrupulous parts of the industry can take advantage of you and hide behind its — frankly false — reputation of being a natural foodstuff.

After all, research has revealed that most people assume wine has the fewest ingredients out of wine, beer, and canned cocktails when that’s entirely untrue.

A White Claw hard seltzer has six ingredients. A commercial beer like Estrella Damm has four.

But wine? Well, who knows?

Whilst 70% of beer producers will happily list ingredients, almost all wines still don’t.

And that is a big problem.

---

The Sauce is 100% reader-supported. For $5 a month or $50 a year, you’ll get access to hundreds of recipes, food and wine commentaries and articles, as well as discounts on my remote wine consulting service.

---

There’s wine and then there’s wine

Not all wine is made equal.

Yes, most of what’s on liquor store shelves is commercially made and additive-heavy. But not all.

There are plenty of wines that are not made like an ultra-processed foodstuff. Natural wines are the first ones that spring to mind.

Natural wine does not have a recognised definition but most winemakers agree they are made with no chemicals in the vineyard or cellar, naturally fermented and bottled either with a small amount or zero added sulphites.

An ingredient list of a natural wine would look very different. We’re talking grapes and perhaps sulphites. That’s it.

Even in wines that are not specifically natural but are made with low intervention, the ingredient list would be very short.

But even natural wines don’t list their ingredients. The only two wines I’ve ever seen disclose are Boony Doon and Ridge, both Californian wineries (and both arguably natural wines).

In fact, many small-volume winemakers make a point to put very little information on the label. The reasons for this are as varied as the winemakers themselves (and their local wine authority’s rules) but whenever I’ve asked, many tell me it comes down to trust.

That winemaker wants you to trust that their wine is worth buying because they have made it, not because of what the label tells you. As they say, you trust big wine brands, why wouldn’t you trust them?

That’s nice in theory and amazing when it works. But when you’re faced with a wall of wine in a wine store, how are you to know? After all, no one wants to Google every wine on a shelf to check how it’s made. And not every wine store worker (or indeed owner) will know the answer.

Are you drinking an ultra-processed wine or not?

Bad winemaking likes to hide (but times are changing)

There is a big lobby of commercial brands who don’t want you to know what’s in their wine.

As natural winemaker Deidre Heekin puts it:

If a grocery store wine had to include all the ingredients, they most likely would not fit on the whole label. (And) who would want to drink something with that many additives.

But times are changing.

Those commercial wines may have big lobbying power but people care about their health now more than ever. They want information. They want control. They want to make informed decisions.

And Europe — if nowhere else — is listening. They’ve just made the biggest change to wine regulation in the last century.

The EU recently announced that as of late 2023, ingredients must be stated on all wines sold within the area, either on the back label or via a QR code.

The law has been passed incredibly quietly. I had no idea until recently and neither did many of my wine trade friends.

But it’s happening.

Here in Europe, if your wine is an ultra-processed food, you’ll soon know about it. If you’re elsewhere, you may be waiting a while longer. But considering European wine has a huge influence across the world, the change will certainly ripple across other countries.

The changes will come with issues, of course. Winemakers I spoke to are concerned consumers will disproportionately worry about the additives, unaware that most of them are perfectly harmless.

And since learning about the law, I’ve scanned every QR code I’ve seen. Not a single one takes you to an ingredient page.

There is work to be done.

But for my part, I believe you have a right to know what’s in your wine, be they harmless additives or not. It’s only then you can make a truly informed decision about what you drink.

And if it encourages a more judicious approach to winemaking, that can only be a good thing.

Sometimes I love that wine is shrouded in mystery. It’s a complicated subject and that’s half the fun.

But with opacity comes secrets.

Industrial-scale winemaking has too long been able to hide behind a lack of transparency. There are few other foodstuffs so adept at duping people into believing it’s a natural product when it’s anything but.

A lot of wine is ultra-processed. Whether you care about that or not isn’t the point. The point is you don’t know.

All you can do is equip yourself with knowledge. Drink better. Drink smarter. Drink more interestingly.

I’ll be right there with you.

---