Watered-down Grape Juice

Being college students in Italy, during a time when the conversion rate between the Euro and the U.S. dollar is far less than desirable, it is imperative to find cheap wine that is not watered-down grape juice. 

As previous posts have mentioned, we visited both a vineyard and a laboratory to see the multi-faceted wine making industry and better understand the Tender Loving Care that goes into the beverage we so enjoy.  We learned that several factors could affect the quality of the wine including: high pH (normal levels fall in between 3 and 4), insufficient sulfur dioxide, excessive oxygen, and improper vineyard or wine additives.   

What particularly stood out to me was a side-comment made by our ‘tour guide’ in the lab.  Standing amongst the many automated machines running analyses, he mentioned the wine scandal that occurred approximately 20 years ago when methanol was added to several wines to increase their alcohol content.  It resulted in 22 deaths and over 90 hospitalizations.   It put the importance of their work, analyzing wine content before it hit the shelves, into perspective for me.   Not only did they focus on making sure you were getting what you paid for (in terms of label authenticity and not just grape juice), but they were also saving lives.  In fact, IsVea Laboratories tests for several health-hazardous components, methanol and pesticides being two of them.

Using Gas Chromatography-Mass Spectrometry (GC/MS), the technicians in the lab can distinguish between naturally occurring compounds in the wine and those that come from adulteration of the product.  Gas Chromatography is used to separate the sample into its various components by dissolving the sample into a gas and then allowing it to run through a column coated with a stationary phase.  It separates components based on the time it takes to travel through the column, otherwise known as the retention time.  Basically, certain components will make it to the end of the column faster than others because they have less affinity for the stationary phase.  After separation, the components are passed through an ionization chamber and enter the Mass Spectrometer for analysis.  The ions pass through an electric field and are deflected at rates dependent on their mass and charge.  Lighter ions with a greater charge are deflected to a greater extent than larger ions with less charge.  A computer analyzes the relative intensity of ions deflected against its mass/charge ratio- resulting in fingerprint-like peaks that can identify the components of the sample.  Scientists compare these peaks to known standards and can determine if the ‘wine’ is just watered-down grape juice.

And finally, we learned that the difference between the finest and poorest of wines is due to a measly 3% of the wines’ total composition.  When it comes down to it, saving a few Euros over three percent is OK by me.