Wine alcohol content is going up

The Wall Street Journal's wine critic, Lettie Teague, said winemakers are beginning to push beyond wine's traditional alcohol-content ceiling of 14 percent - sacrificing the favor of some wine afficionados for flavor and intensity.

The federal government taxes wines with 7 to 14 percent alcohol as "table wine," and taxes wines with 14 to 24 percent alcohol at a much higher rate as "dessert wine."

A wine's alcohol is determined by the grape's sugar content. As grapes ripen, they accumulate sugar, which is converted to alcohol during the fermentation process. The higher the sugar, the higher the potential alcohol of the wine.

UC Davis agricultural economist and director of the Robert Mondavi Institute Center for Wine Economics Julian Alston has charted the sugar content of grapes over the past 30 years, Teague reported. He said grape sugar is on its way up, leading to wine with higher alcohol contents.

Alston attributes the change to climate, later harvests and growing popularity of big-flavored, full-fruit wines.

"Mr. Alston calls this 'the Parker Effect,'" Teague wrote, "a reference to wine critic Robert M. Parker, who seems to get blamed for most things in the wine world these days."

Parker is a U.S. wine critic with international influence, according to Wikipedia. He created a 100-point wine grading system and says he scores wines on how much pleasure they give him. Parker believes corruption and other problems have made his consumer-oriented approach necessary and inevitable.

Meanwhile, many fine wine purveyors won't even try wines with alcohol content above 14 percent, Teague reported.

"I won't taste wines over 14 percent alcohol, because I want a balanced wine, and I think 14 percent is the threshold of a balanced wine," the story quoted Rajat Parr, wine director of the San Francisco-based Michael Mina restaurant group.

"Is (this) just the next form of wine snobbery . . .?" muses Teague.

Wine tasting (Photo: Brenda Dawson)

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