| What flavor would you like in your ice cream, ma’am? Do you want cherry, chocolate, coffee or mocha perhaps? How about some orange, pineapple, peaches or passion fruit? You can take your pick of flavourings in your gelato - but not in wine. The regulations do not permit additives in wine to add to the existing flavour; it has to come naturally through the permitted additives like yeast, acid, sugar and oak interacting with the grape juice. Cheaper wines are devoid of much flavour and at any rate are simple, single dimensional flavours and are more likely to cause headaches due to the presence of high quantities of sulphites and in poor vintages are quite bland.
According to a report in ABC News, a PhD student from the University of Adelaide is trying to enhance wines in the $10 - $15 range with natural flavours like honey, passion fruit and vanilla. Yaelle Saltman, a winemaker herself, says natural flavours could be used to add complexity and depth to wine made in a bad vintage.
"For quite a while I've been thinking about what we can do to wines to improve their quality, and yet have consumers accept those wines. This is how I thought about adding something that's normally practiced in the food industry and trying it on wine." If one can use it in ice-cream why not wine, would be the logic used by her.
Yaelle surveyed 1300 people and asked them how they felt about the presence of a range of natural and artificial additives in wine. She divided the survey group according to their level of knowledge about wine, and then asked them about their acceptance of the approximately 50 existing additives to wine, like tartaric acid.
"The results were really surprising," says Saltman. “Regardless of their knowledge of wine most people did not accept additives that are being allowed for use at the moment- like tartaric acid or preservatives whereas natural flavourings were accepted."
To further gauge consumer's perceptions of natural flavourings in wine, she conducted a blind tasting of two Chardonnay and two Shiraz wines in some of which she had added minute amounts of vanilla, honey and passion fruit flavours too-not necessarily to give it flavouring but to add depth and complexity to wines that had suffered from a bad vintage.
Saltman avers that the results of the blind tasting were further evidence that consumers would accept natural flavourings of wine. "When I add honey or vanilla, it's not so far-fetched, because a wine that's been oaked would have those notes anyway. So I'm in a way enhancing that flavours that already exist," she says.
But the current regulatory framework means that Saltman's work won't move past the research phase. The Australian and New Zealand Food Standards and in fact, barring table wine, wine laws in most countries prohibit the addition of flavourings in natural wines. India does not have wine laws yet and some producers might be already trying her theory on the sly.
She insists that her research gives a tool to the wine makers to work with. "What my PhD does is give the industry a tool to improve the flavours of poor quality wines, just like the food industry does."
It is highly unlikely that the industry would put the tool to use but her research does leave you with food for thought.
Tags: Australia,University of Adelaide,Yaelle Saltman |