Fake Wine

What is fake wine? Well, it's not so much fake as it adulterated. It's not so much fake as it is that there a point at which it ceases to be wine. 

In order to know what is fake wine, we have to define when wine is not fake wine. Then, when wine ceases to be fake, it must be wine. But, if wine goes the way of beer, and I am not commenting on whether this is good for beer, by having things like pumpkin spice wine, then we are no longer celebrating a craft that has for thousands of years been producing a particular beverage. It's a beverage that, generally speaking, is food friendly and it's one that has been shows to have health benefits. On the other hand, when we have a mass-manufactured, mass-produced alcoholic beverage, perhaps it is something else.

Maybe it's a grape-based alcoholic beverage. But, it's not wine, at least as I know wine. It doesn't have the complexity. It doesn't have the ageability and without that ageability, it doesn't evolve over time. That might not matter to you. To me, it does.

You see, the goals of wine and fake wine are different. No winemaker worth his or her salt expects or wants to produce a wine that appeals to everyone. They want to produce wines in the style of their choice. They are producing a liquid piece of art, so to speak.

Think about a fabulous Picasso, for example. To some, it might be paint thrown on a canvas. To some, it might be really interesting and appealing. To an afficionado that loves Picasso, it might be life-altering.

Well, in some ways, a finely crafted, complex wine may be very similar. The style might not be for everyone. Not every critic will agree. That Robert Parker, for example, found a particular wine to have been "perfect" and Antonio Galloni, to choose another well-known critic, thought it was overblown and over-extracted does not make either wrong. It simply means they have different opinions of that winemaker's artful expression of the grapes she has chosen.

But, the fake wines are different. They have no consistency and they don't care. They gather thousands of tons of grapes by machine from flat lands with no contour. They mix those with morning sunlight and those with afternoon sunlight and those that got little sunlight. The grapes have been plentifully watered during the growing season, ensureing their eventual maturity, but depriving them of the stress that produces intensity of flavor. They've had sugar added to them, not to change the fermentation process, but simply to produce a wine that people will buy at their local supermarket.

You might love this stuff, and if you do, that's great. It's your money that you are spending so that you can consume this alcoholic beverage. If you like it, that's great. 

But, it's not wine. Even if it's labeled wine, it's not wine. It's something else. It's fake.It's a grape-based alcoholic beverage that bears no resemblance to the products produced by skilled winemakers.

Typically, it's cheap and it tastes cheap. Yet, there are inexpensive wines that while they don't compete well with the best wines are truly wines.

You drink what you want and you enjoy what you want. But, if you want to talk to me about wine, make it a wine, not a fake wine.