SULPHUR IN WINE

Sulphur has been used in winemaking since ancient times as a preservative and cleaning agent.  The pungent aroma it gives off when being burnt led the Romans to believe that it simply had to be driving away anything unseemly.  These days, it is incredibly widely used in wine making for the following reasons :-
 
- It is a very powerful antioxidant. 

To be very technically correct about this, it doesn’t actually protect the wine from oxygen.  What it does do is ‘bind up’ the aroma’s that too much oxygen give to wine, effectively disguising the effects of oxidation.
 
Much of the oxidation in wine occurs thanks to enzymes which damaged or rotten grapes are teeming with.   These oixdases are lethal to clean, pure fruit flavours and so only if berries which are immaculate and brimful of their own innate antioxidant goodness are being used can SO2 be dispensed with (or at least used in much smaller quantities).
 

And so, for the reasons above, most of the contemporary wine world believe that making wine without SO2 is utter insanity.  They believe that the result of such moronic negligence would always be wine which was lifeless and fruitless (thanks to oxidation), the only flavours being those of bacterial spoilage  and/or or volatile acidity - and no-one wants a mouthful of that.  It is believed that the need to protect wine becomes especially pressing if it is to travel out into the world, only to be assaulted by the hardships of contemporary travel and then  to be further abused by being stored incorrectly at its eventually destination and at most points along the way.

We say that this is a fair point and indeed, we have tasted our fair share of wines made without SO2 which had us reeling  in horror.  However, the idea that it absolutely cannot be done and that all wine made this way is either going to be innately faulty OR such a delicate flower that it expires within minutes of being ripped from its birthplace is completely wrong.  There are now plenty of  wine makers who have cracked the code, very successfully  using either no SO2 at all or just the merest pinch before bottling and their wines are packed with life;  vital and bursting with fruit so pure it restores your faith the wonder of wine (a faith sorely tested in these mad, bad times).    For these heroes of virtuous wine-making, the secret lies in the vineyard.  There, extensive work is done to ensure pristine fruit, brimming with life and anti-oxidants  as opposed to merely bulging with imbalanced juice containing precious little goodness or flavour.  And the resulting delicious  fruit simply needs much less  protection.  Protection which will, inevitably, destroy some of the good life as well as the bad.
 

One of our natural wine heroes, who works completely without SO2, Alain Castex, puts it thus :-
 
"The properties of  natural wines are that these are alive, and like all living things, they are constantly evolving.  The problems that occur with natural wines are  precisely because they are alive.
 
Modern winemaking has an obsession with killing the life in wine.   Controlling  its development to the point where anything quirky and beautifully natural as found in a living product is completely avoided.
 
Consider how our most eminent specialists are failing. They use the expression ‘to stabilise the wine’ – a very elegant way of saying that they are killing it."
 
Bravo, Alain!  Who wants to drink dead wine?

SO2 is detrimental to some asthmatics, causing instant and sometimes very dramatic problems with breathing.  In the worst cases, this happens at even incredibly low levels.  For most of the population though, it will cause no such problems but regular drinkers of wines made with higher levels are probably taking in more than is ideally recommended.
 
It is very easy to blame SO2 for a range of problems that occur with some  wine drinkers – headaches, sinusitis, flushing etc.  The reality is that it is just one of many compounds (not least the alcohol itself) which, either taken as a cocktail or acting in isolation can cause adverse reactions.

Our view on this is that we would rather drink wine in which the only potential toxin our body is going to have to deal with is the alcohol.  No residues left over from irresponsible vineyard work; none of the effects of manipulation in the winery and very, very little or no added SO2.   We think they taste better and we KNOW we feel better the next day.  Considerably better.

Do note that the above numbers are the total levels; i.e. the ‘bound’ SO2 (which you can’t taste) and the ‘free’ SO2 (which you can).
 
With wines made with either with no added SO2 or only a tiny pinch at bottling, the reds generally have less than 10mg/l and the whites no more than 25mg/l.  Those who do add a pinch do so at levels of about  1 – 3ml/l; a truly homeopathic dose.

It must be noted that even in wines made with no added S02 at any point of the process, there will still be very low levels in the finished wine – along the lines of those described above.  That is because sulfites are produced as a by product of fermentation and so, at very low levels, are completely unavoidable in wine.