Wine and a popular scapegoat

Now let’s just get this out of the way at the very beginning. Nothing that I am trying to convey here is anti ‘natural wine.’ I have people I consider friends who make natural wine. There are wines that I consider ‘natural’ that I love. If I have an issue at all it would be this. The appropriation of the word ‘natural.’ I don’t think it’s entirely fair because by default there is the inevitable implication that anyone who doesn’t take the same approach is doing something ‘unnatural.’

That is probably a different conversation than what I’d like to talk about today. Disclaimer aside, it is also necessary to remember that the Natural Wine Movement (NWM) is not one homogenous block of people thinking exactly the same, taking exactly the same approach. There is a general consensus around using wild yeasts, minimal use of additives such as sulphur and minimal human intervention in the fermentation process. (To be honest, I would say that all of my winemaking friends in New Zealand practise minimal intervention, because the thing is that intervention costs money!)

Of these, it seems to me that sulphur dioxide, or the compound SO₂ (used interchangeably for the purposes of this article) in particular, gets the most attention in certain wine bars and magazines. In some NWM circles SO₂ is right up there with the devil himself.

As I said, my purpose here is not to take shots. Personal preference is paramount. My reason for writing these words is to inform opinion and to help get information I believe to be relevant into the public consciousness. I will admit straight up that without access to all of the most up-to-date statistics I am being pretty loose with some of the numbers. I have tried to err heavily on the conservative side as much as possible, but I think what is important to be aware of is the gist of the pattern.

And that is this – if you suffer from wine intolerance, or have a problem with certain wines, it is highly unlikely that sulphur dioxide is the reason. (In fact, according to the research paper of newly accredited Master of Wine, Sophie Parker-Thomson, controlled use of sulphur dioxide will likely help with your wine issues.¹)

“But people are seriously affected by sulphur dioxide, right?” One may ask.

Yes. This is totally true. Some people.

However, research shows that it is a very small proportion of the population. In fact, only 3 – 10% of severe asthmatics are allergic to sulphur dioxide. To clarify, that’s not 3 – 10% of the total population, or even of the population with asthma. It’s 3 – 10% of severe asthmatics. This reaction is, except in extremely rare cases, normally limited to respiratory difficulties, i.e. SO₂ affects breathing.

Prevalence varies from country to country, but the WHO estimates there are roughly 300 million asthma sufferers worldwide. This would suggest that in a population closing in on 8 billion, we are talking less than 4%. Severe asthma is estimated to affect between 5 – 10% of those. So, if according to the research only 3 – 10% of severe asthmatics have an acute reaction to sulphur dioxide, this is less than 0.001% of the global population (rounded up). This is just as well, since SO₂ is used in many products because sulphur dioxide is the only natural or synthetic chemical that is food grade, antioxidant, and antimicrobial. We are talking about products consumed daily, such as juices, dried fruits, sausages, pickles, vinegar, canned beverages etc, the list is extensive. Why is it used? Because SO₂ preserves flavours, stabilises colours and textures, and protects from microbial spoilage. In fact, perhaps the only place I am aware of where the use of SO₂ is heavily controlled is in the seafood industry.

If you think that you are one of those who are negatively affected by SO₂ then try this simple experiment. Can you drink coca cola? Can you drink processed orange juice? Can you eat dried fruit? All of these things contain SO₂ in levels many times what you’ll find in wine — even the cheap stuff.

Disclosure: I have a problem with sulphur dioxide. At high enough levels I will have difficulty breathing, to the point where I am pretty sure that if I kept going with what I was consuming, I would end up in full anaphylaxis. I have never had that reaction from wine. But mass-produced pickles? Yes.

Second disclosure: I consume a lot of wine.

Third disclosure: I own a New Zealand wine bar in Japan.

It is worth noting that New Zealand has a disproportionately high level of asthmatics. It is also very worth noting that the NWM, a movement that generally promotes zero sulphur dioxide additions as being a better way of doing things, has not really taken off in New Zealand the way it has in Europe, the USA and Japan. The argument could be made that if sulphur dioxide really was the devil, then with the level of asthmatics in NZ it would be a stronghold of low or zero SO₂ wines.

Here in Tokyo (in a far from scientific survey) I’ve had multiple guests say they only drink natural wine because they are allergic to SO₂. After being told that in general, NZ wine is very clean of additives compared to some of the mass-produced bulk plonk pumped out of some places, they have then proceeded to drink a glass of something Kiwi with serious trepidation, trusting me but clearly wondering why.

I’ve pressed and been told they get terrible headaches, hang overs, flushes and sneezing attacks when they drink ‘normal’ wine. Don’t forget, these symptoms are not associated with SO₂; when it does cause problems, SO₂ messes with breathing. When these guests have returned they’ve told me that, to their surprise, they felt fine the next day.

Personally, I am all for minimal intervention. I am all for protecting the vineyard by promoting biodiversity and the minimal use of dangerous chemicals. But it’s not like I am an exception to this idea. Martin Bell, chief winemaker at Butterworth Estate in Martinborough, confirms that this attitude is prevalent. “We have a lowest common denominator theory in NZ,” he told me. “If a market doesn't want X in a wine, then X is added to none. I am too small to make three different blends of things. I might as well not add it.”

The NWM began in the Beaujolais region in France in the 1960s. A group of winemakers felt that what they were seeing in the market had little or nothing in common with what they remembered from their youth — the sort of wines their ancestors had produced and consumed throughout the years, before the introduction of mass-production processes, pesticides and synthetic chemicals.

This group set about taking things back to basics. To reiterate, I am in total agreement with the sentiment. Soulless, bulk-produced, multi-regional wines that have no character or sense of place miss the mark on what wine should be, in my opinion.

The fixation on SO₂ of the modern proponents of natural wine is what I question. It could be said that the genesis of the NWM came about as a reaction to mass-produced wines made more in a laboratory than in the vineyard and winery. In general, the majority of New Zealand producers seem to have decided that quality is where they will focus their attention, and leave the mass-quantity production to countries with a landmass and topography better-suited to that model. Could that be the reason why the NWM hasn’t really taken off in New Zealand? The average quality was high enough that the push-back was unnecessary? Perhaps a subject for another day.

Now let’s introduce the real kicker. SO₂ occurs during grape fermentation. All wine has SO₂.

Even wine that claims it has ‘naturally’ zero SO₂ actually does have SO₂. (If a wine has somehow had the SO₂ removed through some kind of scientific process, it could hardly call itself ‘natural.’) If you love natural wine, that’s great. Personal preference is paramount. Whether you like a certain wine is absolutley the only thing that is important as far as I am concerned.

My suggestion is not to let dogma or dubious marketing trick you into making SO₂ the scapegoat.