Lir and lirisation

[John Talbott]

On French news last night there was a piece on Lir, a 6% alcohol content grape product said to be part of France's answer to the fall in sales of their routine wine products. Googling it results in a couple of articles, e.g. here, that sound like Lir is produced by chemical gee-wizz technology. Has anyone seen, tasted, ordered it/them?

[Margaret Pilgrim]

I would guess that this kind of beverage might have its place. My husband and I frequently seek out simple artisanal raisin petillantes in the summer. These hover around or under 9%, although I think I remember finding one that was in the 6% range. These are mildly sweet, sparkling and quite refreshing in the afternoon, a far cry from the god-awful American alcohol-free 'wines'.

I wonder why it is necessary to chemically compound these beverages when winemakers have been producing that genre for years. Cheaper? Volume?

[John Whiting]

I wonder why it is necessary to chemically compound these beverages when winemakers have been producing that genre for years.  Cheaper?  Volume?

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Items that are manufactured rather than grown give the business more total control over the finished product and a bigger profit margin.

[Bux]

I suspect modern agricultureand improved growing conditions, whether they result from agribusiness techniques or from biodynamic ones, seem to be yielding more luscious fruit per acre resulting in yet higher alcoholic content. I'm sure at every step of the way modern science and technology of wine making is increasing the quality and higher alcohol is part of what's traditionally been seen as better quality. There are a few appellations where the "superior" designation is tied to a higher minimum content. A wine maker in Spain who's set about to make a fine wine in an area not known for finess in its wines, told me he has to plant some inferior grapes in his vinyard just to be sure his wines don't go into the 15% range in a good year. Another friend who's befriended growers and wine makers and helped them with the harvest in his part of the Bas Languedoc told me that most of his neighbors complain about the higher levels of alcohol in the wines these days. Most of them cut their own wines with water to drink on a daily basis because straight from the bottle, they're no longer the beverage they grew up drinking.

6% seems low, but I've enjoyed wines well below 10%. They're hard to find these days. I've seen some albarinhos from Portugal, that run well below 10% and sell for as little as four dollars a bottle here in NY. They can be very refreshing on a summer day.