So, it’s the first proper day of 2021 and Christmas has been packed up or discarded like the spent trees on cold pavements. Time more to think about drinks and things rather than to be listing ideas for celebratory cocktails, but as I like a hint of continuity, I will give you a cocktail of sorts after a bit of a discussion of drinks.
I recently read this article on wine labels and possible changes to make it mandatory to make a list of all ingredients easily accessible on wine labels. This, plus having just finished reading Simon Loftus’s brilliant Puligny-Montrachet got me thinking about chaptalization, its place in wine, and the use of similar adjuncts in other drinks.
Before thinking about how it is used, and if it is perhaps overused, let’s cover the basics of what it is and how it works. It is a process of adding sugar (normally cane sugar) to the grape must (the juice and any solid matter from the pressed grapes) before fermentation, so there is more sugar to be fermented into alcohol. It is named after the Jean-Antoine-Claude Chaptal a French chemist who was first to widely advocate its use in wine making. It is also sometimes known as enrichment, but that term can also refer to other things so let’s stick to calling it chaptalization.
Historically sugar, or similarly sweet things such as honey, was sometimes added to wine for sweetness, and people realised that this often led to a change in the mouthfeel as the wine would be more alcoholic. Over time this became the major reason for doing so, in part also because of changing tastes in wine, and as it was discovered that more alcoholic wines kept better.
In terms of adding sweetness, it is a decent method, especially when considered against the old practice of adding lead sugar (lead acetate) to wine, which evolved out of the Roman practice of heating, or storing wine in lead vessel. Chaptalization has the major benefit of not being toxic.
Modern wine making has the benefit of analytic chemistry so the sugar level in the grapes can be worked out and from that the final alcohol level after fermentation. This means that the concentration of sugar can be used as measure of how strong a wine will be. So, chaptalization is done with a set abv. in mind, and in many wines only slightly alters the finished abv. For example, if a parcel of grapes, year in year, produces grapes that will ferment to a range between 12.7% and 13%, chaptalization can be used to standardise the final wine to always be 13%.
However, it can be misused by producers who do not give their grapes sufficient care and so end up with grape must with far less sugar than they need to produce a wine of the strength they need/want. So, in some cases a considerable volume of sugar is added. This alongside the reliable value of any wine made in certain areas (e.g., any wine with a well thought of appellation will sell reliably) can lead to producers doing what is easy or cheap rather than focusing on the quality of the wine.
I also understand that chaptalization is not done purely to increase the alcohol content for its own sake, as a higher abv. will alter the mouth feel and also interact with the processes of fermenting and ageing. So, I will not fully condemn it, but I do feel it would be nice to be able to get good wine reliably at 11-12% rather than it being frequently 13% or more.
Instead, I feel it should be relied upon less as if it is routine it can be used as a crutch sometimes in bad years, but then will always be there an alluring alternative to waiting for the grapes to be just right, so some producers will decide to harvest early when there is very little chance of the crop being damaged by the weather and using chaptalization to ‘correct’ their wine up to strength.
This also is linked to the idea that a wine has to be a certain strength. I would far rather wine was focused on taste (with the caveat that alcohol does alter mouthfeel which is important) and the alcohol was a side product. And yes, alcohol can be an enjoyable drug, but there are cheaper and easier ways than wine to consume it if you just want to get drunk, so wine should not give alcoholic strength too much thought.
In a rather tangential way this links in to cider, as many large brands rely upon apple concentrate and sugar to provide the bulk of the fermentable matter, and so are able to produce a reliable product, at a reasonable abv without too much cost. Yet this leaves the cider rather lacking in the depth of flavour from one made just of apple juice, and more importantly can confuse the consumer.
If you walk into a pub or supermarket and buy a cider, you probably expect it to be made from apples, water, and yeast, with perhaps a few other fruits in there. Yet there are often many many other things in it, which you might have no idea about (many of which are very useful and prevent spoilage or are needed to regulate acidity etc.).
Now, I am not advocating that all drinks must be stripped back to some sense of purity. Instead, I feel that producers (for all drinks) should be clear about what goes into their drinks. They need not give masses of label space to it, a small box of fine print or encoding it into a QR code would be fine, as most people will not care, and those who do will be happy to spend a moment or two to read the details.
Perhaps a bit of regulation might help, as currently beer is very badly regulated in terms of names, as almost anything can be called beer, and cider is rather vague. It would help to distinguish between producers who use a few ingredients people might not expect, which are there to allow them to make their product work (e.g., acidity regulators to ensure the yeast can function) and those that add ingredients to lower the cost of production (e.g., adding sugar and water to give volume and alcohol to cider).
Now to disappoint you with a short poem rather than an actual cocktail recipe…
Vespers:
A slither of yellow lemon.
A glass’s iced clarity.
A meniscus of baptismal, clear vodka.
A haze of measured vermouth.
Now limpid cold against the tongue
As the brain submits,
Nerves engage – chemical pleasure – I am freed.
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