Allergen Labeling - Is Wine a Food?

[Rebel Rose]

This article in the LA Times asks the question, "What's Really in That Wine?"

Unless the Wine Institute lobby succeeds in talks with regulators, wineries will be required to disclose possible allergens on their wine labels, even if those allergens are not proven to exist in the wine.

The possible allergens under discussion include:

* the food grade wheat paste used to seal barrel heads into the barrels

* oak tannins from barrel aging

* eggs used for fining

* bentonite (a natural clay used for fining)

* isinglass (a fish product used for fining)

It would be interesting to hear from posters here who truly suffer from food allergies if they have had averse reactions to wine. All of the products listed above except the tannins are removed from the wine, and if they exist, would exist in infinitesimally small amounts.

What say you?

[Don Giovanni]

This article in the LA Times asks the question, "What's Really in That Wine?"

From a producers standpoint I can see if you are allergic to some things than you should avoid them. That said if what was done to wine was so bad then where are all the sick people? How many people went into anaphylactic shock that you know of by drinking a glass of wine? Yet 80% of all food allergies that end in death are from peanuts. Now one school of thought has said that just like the snake handler who has to take a bit of venom each day and if you get bit you won't die....so they actually suggest people with allergies eating the very food that could kill them in very very small quantities. Let's talk about sulfates, in the USA we can go up to 350 ppm way too much...I use 40 ppm and the wine is just fine....now go to the supermarket and go to the dried fruit section and grab a handful of apricots...guess how much sulfates 2,000 ppm ...yes 2,000 ppm not nary a mention of them though? All you are going to get is lying through omission....it will go like this "to the best of my knowledge I don't recall using XYZ" and you walk away. Producers are not going to list copper, ash, clay, mega red, purple, concentrates all kinds of acids, Micro-oxygenation, oak chips, oak dust, the field mice and snakes and such that are in the harvest, the ladybirds or ladybugs, aphids, bees, berry moths, mites......so where does it stop....do you really want the Library of Congress on a bottle? Now I propose each vintage should be lab tested and if anything really harmful is present then the product should be avoided or not sold. Anyone if he ever heard of food recycling ...that is food you order and don't eat and the restaurant simply puts it back into the food chain? I have personally seen this ....and thank G-D the restaurant is out of business, yet I hear the same story told, should restaurants have to post some sign that food is recycled for full disclosure? For people in the industry this is a joke, I warn you all you will find more producers telling you good things that are not true....and you will have allowed this regulation to be imposed on the wine industry.... How about all fast food places post a sign on the door this food will kill you or make you fat and then kill you, but in the end if you eat this food all the time you will die anyway. Also confirmed that french fries at least in the USA have a chemical that causes cancer. How about cigars a fair warning should tell you all that is in it all the thousands of killing chemicals...so at the door of the smoke shop a sign should read...buy this and you will eventually die....a proven fact...yet I ask how many people have had one glass of wine and died? The truth in labeling is a bunch of rubbish and just politically correct....did you know that they have linked the use of deodorant to cancer...hum...don't we have our priories backwards. I am organic and this is a big problem, why ......because you will be told less if you ask the big producers to disclose...same for the small producers....suddenly the world will have gone organic.....no need to label then.

Conclusion, we have better things to worry about in the food chain than how a wine is made. Now I'll drink to that!

[Rebel Rose]

I think this is all a bit of a stretch, but it's very likely to happen since the burden of proof is shot back to the winemaker to prove that these substances are not in the wine, and how can anyone prove that with 100% certainty?

As for wheat gluten leaking into the wine . . . food grade wheat gluten is used to seal the barrel heads into the barrels . . . if the gluten is leaking into the wine, then the wine would be leaking out of the barrels . . . Anyone who has popped the head off of a barrel, as we have many times, can show you that the wood around the seal is fresh and intact. There has been no contact with the wine at all. (WARNING: Scaremongerers at work. Please check your common sense at the door.) God forbid that anyone actually proposing this type of labeling should be forced to actually touch a barrel.

Furthermore, one member of our family is highly intolerant to gluten--cannot consume it in any form, but she is an enthusiastic and democratic wine drinker, and has consumed an impressive share of Dover Canyon inventory. Of course, that doesn't prove that 1 in a million people might have a gluten intolerance reaction while drinking wine.

The other compounds mentioned have been in use in natural winemaking for hundreds, perhaps thousands, of years. However, that doesn't negate the logic that perhaps people have died while drinking wine and that death could have been avoided had they known there was a molecule of sturgeon in their wine. Of course, they would also have to know they were allergic to sturgeon . . .

Aside from the fact that we will have to bottle all our wines in magnums in order to get all the required language on the bottle . . .

If we have to do this, then when, I say, when will catsup manufacturers be required to list bug parts and eggs?

[Don Giovanni]

Is wine a food ?

Food-labeling effort gains new momentum

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Is wine going to be included...you bet yah...get ready...