Wine is not powdered. Powdered wines do not exist

Let's start with artificial wine drink- this is simply evaporated grape must, diluted with water. Plus alcohol, yeast and all sorts of flavors. The diluted concentrate in the bottle does not require special conditions storage. Therefore, its production is a fairly inexpensive and not labor-intensive process.

How to distinguish fake from natural wine?

Firstly, look at the price. This parameter gives a rough idea of ​​whether the cost of a bottle corresponds to your understanding of the price / quality ratio. If not, then most likely you have a surrogate in front of you.

After all, in order to make natural wine, the manufacturer should seriously spend on its production, bottling, transportation and storage. Making powdered wine is much easier and therefore cheaper.

Secondly, powdered wine in the vast majority is not vintage. It should also be borne in mind that there are no dry artificial wines. Therefore, almost always a drink made from a concentrate is sweet, with an obsessive aroma, but does not leave an aftertaste.

Third, you can easily check the quality of the wine by swirling it in the glass. If it is natural, then “paths” of liquid will remain on the walls of the vessel. The French call them "wine legs". It is believed that the longer they stay, the best quality wine. In addition, they also talk about age: the thinner the traces, the more years the drink is.

Fourth, you can carry out simple chemical research at home. To do this, you can drop a few drops of glycerin into a glass of wine. If it sinks to the bottom and does not change color, then the wine is natural. If the glycerin turns red or yellow, then you have a “natural” powder in front of you.

And finally fifth, in order to determine whether it is a powder or not, you should fill a deep bowl with water, pour a little wine into the vial, and then pinch the neck with your finger. Next, lower the vessel with the drink into the water and turn it over.

Then everything is very simple: the finger is removed from the neck and the effect is visible further. If the wine is mixed with water, this will indicate that the drink contains additional impurities, flavors and other additives. But natural wine will not mix with water.

Often buyers of inexpensive wine Russian production are wondering - is it not "powder"? let's find out what this "powder" wine is and what it is eaten with.

Usually "powder" is considered to be cheap wine released to a little known general public Russian manufacturer. It is understood that in its production, instead of fermenting grape must, a kind of "wine powder" is used, which is diluted with water with the addition of alcohol. Regarding the composition of this powder, opinions differ: according to optimists, "wine powder" is made by evaporating grape juice and is a whole natural product. Pessimists are sure that it is made by mixing sugar, citric acid, food coloring and all kinds of fragrances.

How true is this legend and what is it based on?
Firstly, after the collapse of the USSR, most of the wine-growing regions - Ukraine, Moldova, Georgia, Armenia - ended up outside the borders of Russia. Although in recent years, domestic viticulture and winemaking has been developing very actively, which is facilitated by government support measures, until now, wine produced in Russia from grapes grown here covers only about 30% of the market's needs. About the same amount or slightly less is accounted for by bottled imports - but imported wines are significantly more expensive and far from affordable for all consumers.

The remaining market share is occupied by Russian-made wines (and according to the law, the place of production alcoholic drink is considered a bottling line), which are made from imported wine materials purchased in different countries and imported into the country in tanks in bulk - in the slang of winemakers, these wine materials are called bulk.

The term "wine material" means dry wine intended for subsequent further processing. In the simplest case, it is simply bottled and put on sale, but it can be blended, i.e. to mix different varieties for a more interesting bouquet, soak in oak barrels or subject to champagne - almost all inexpensive sparkling wine, produced in Russia, are made from the beam.

Most of these wines are produced at little-known wineries located near large cities - during the Soviet industrialization, they were placed closer to consumers and skilled labor, and raw materials could be imported from any region.

Most of these wines are of quite acceptable quality, although claims against them are still not uncommon. The fact is that the bulk, as a rule, is purchased on the spot market, where it turns up cheaper, one batch from Spain - the other from Chile or Moldova. Therefore, there are frequent cases when, when trying to buy the wine he likes, the buyer encounters a drink that is completely different in taste from him - although it is bottled in exactly the same bottle. On the back label reverse side, you can read the inscription in small print: "Produced from dry wine material."

A person who is far from familiar with the intricacies of winemaking technologies immediately comes to mind a certain concentrate powder - although at the same time, reading the inscription "dry wine" on the label, he does not expect at all that there will be some kind of "powder" under the cork. This is one of the reasons for the legend of "powdered wine".

There is another. In the 90s, in the markets of coastal resort villages in the Crimea, on Black Sea coast Caucasus, in the southern regions of Ukraine, semi-underground trade in cheap "homemade wine" in plastic bottles was very widespread. Sometimes it really was a simple home-made "dry", but very often enterprising merchants simply took a dry concentrate popular in those days like "Invite" or "Yuppi" and diluted it with water and vodka.

The resulting liquid was not wine in any way - in modern terms, it was a typical surrogate - but it was moderately sweet, moderately sour and contained alcohol. Among inexperienced vacationers, who were primarily interested in the alcohol content, and not in taste and aroma, these surrogates, due to their cheapness, diverged with a bang. And the whole local district knew that "Baba Manya drives wine from powder."

Actually, these two very real reasons, bizarrely combined in the mass consciousness, gave rise to the myth of "powdered wine". And to what extent is it possible and realistic to produce wine - real wine, and not a surrogate - from any "dry concentrates"? After all, they are used for the production of juices and nectars. concentrated juices delivered from exotic countries?..

Firstly, the cost of one liter of imported wine material is about $0.6–0.8, or about 40–50 rubles for our money, but in some cases (low quality, excess yield, etc.) it can turn out to be much more below. It makes no economic sense for manufacturers to bother with "evaporation" and subsequent "recovery". The costs of "production" of such wine are reduced in the simplest case to bottling and labeling and are more than recouped even in the lowest budget segment.

Defective wine material, which has obvious flaws in taste and aroma and is unsuitable for direct bottling, can be purchased even cheaper. To correct the taste, sweeteners (usually ordinary sugar), acidity regulators ( citric acid) and other ingredients. Often the content of the original wine material in such a drink is only 50% of the volume.

The law does not allow the resulting product to be called wine, and it is labeled as a "wine drink" - on the shelf of chain stores, such swill can be found in paper bags at a price of about 100 rubles per liter, if not cheaper. For health, it is completely safe, but about any palatability do not have to speak. Such products also find their consumer among hunters for a cheap degree.

At the same time, the level of state control over the alcohol industry in Russia today is extremely high, and none of the legal producers will risk an expensive license for a penny profit. Than to be chemical with "powders", it is much easier to drive cheap shmurdyak absolutely legally by writing "wine drink" on the label.

There is another point - technological. In the process of making wine, during yeast fermentation, there is not only the processing into alcohol of the natural grape sugar, but also many others chemical processes. As a result, natural wine - whether good or bad - does not taste like grape juice at all. And making "wine" by adding water and alcohol to grape juice concentrate - whether it's dry or pasty - is impossible. You can easily see this for yourself: take a bag of grape juice, add some vodka to it and try it. You will get vodka with grape juice, and the resulting "cocktail" will be completely different from wine.

Our fellow citizens sometimes cannot be denied vigilance. Incrimination of both domestic and foreign manufacturers in poor quality goods and services is a kind of folk hobby. Evidence of this in the form of various television programs - a lot. On the one hand, this cannot but inspire respect, but on the other hand, at the place where completely contradictory facts, mixed with paranoia and sometimes low education, collide head-on, delusions are born, from which it is then difficult or even impossible to get rid of (products with GMOs are one of the most notorious examples). Wine, being a fairly popular drink, also did not remain without public attention: the arithmetic mean opinion is that there is only one fake in all stores. Which drinks qualify as fake is a separate issue, but the so-called powder wine has long and reliably occupied its niche in this category.

- Confusion in terms -

A wide range of consumers believe that the concepts of “wine material” and “powder wine” are related by family ties. One has only to see the words “dry wine material” on the label, as the thought of chemistry, a surrogate and a conspiracy among winemakers immediately arises. Illusions continue to live even after they are debunked, so prevention should be carried out regularly: dry wine material is ordinary dry wine made at one farm, but sent for bottling to a completely different place. powdered wine- another song.

- Eureka! -

In search of the roots of powder wine as a phenomenon, one can stumble upon a patent for a method for the production of grape and fruit wines by fermentation, declared on November 27, 1952 to the Ministry of Food Industry THE USSR. The initial motive was to obtain such raw materials that would not spoil for a long time and had a compact transportable form, in order to then make wine from it according to the approach mentioned above. First, the juice is filtered, removing large fractions from it. The resulting wort is subjected to heat treatment: it can be sprayed on drum dryers, sublimation or other convenient specific case way.

- Two reasons to dry -

The manufacturer may either have an interest in maintaining the viability wine yeast, which were present in the grape must before drying, or in its complete cessation in order to ferment for cultural yeast. Based on the task, it is selected temperature regime. At the end, we have a concentrate, which is packed into containers and briquetted.

- By law and conscience -

The invention made it possible to realize their winemaking ambitions with a minimum of effort, which shook the very foundations of this noble occupation. While some winemakers extract their product with sweat and blood, others operate on the principle of "just add water." Or rather, not water, but yeast, alcohol and flavor additives. On the other hand, there is also a place for ethics here: it is enough to indicate “Special Wine” on the label, and from a legal point of view, you will honestly tell the consumer what is in front of him. powder product. By the way, the production of concentrate does not know the definition of "substandard", because not only whole, but also mashed berries are used.

- Taste and color -

The difference between a natural product and a "bodyagi" begins to appear already on the store shelf - the prices of powdered wine are low to the point of obscenity. The packaging also draws a line - winemaking ethics does not allow packing an excellent product in tetra-packs. Now let's see what's inside. Powdered wine does not inspire gourmets to roll wine around the tongue and palate and look for notes; the note in such wine - both flavoring, and aromatic, and color - is usually one, and it sounds deafeningly loud. The watery consistency and the absence of traces on the glass (the so-called "lady's legs") will be the final proof that you have wine "from a bag" in front of you.

- Memo -

To protect yourself from buying powdered wine as much as possible, it is advised to follow these simple rules:

1. buy wines only in glass containers;

2. read the label carefully;

3. look for vintage wines, that is, those with a vintage date;

4. choose dry wines - they cannot be made from powder.

- Truth or fiction? -

Taking into account all of the above, it is necessary to take into account the opinion of some experts who mention powdered wine as a folk fiction and enclose this phrase in quotation marks. There are two arguments in favor of the mythical nature of such wine, and both speak of the unprofitability of this kind of undertaking. First, additional production area and power in order to evaporate the grape must to a state of powder. Secondly, the European Union willingly supports the export of wine materials outside the Eurozone with subsidies, which makes the production of wine from foreign material much cheaper than the cultivation of a concentrate, which, again, still needs to spend some electricity. However, there are experimenters who refer to the experience of buying a dry mix of dried fruits and berries for the production of red, white and rose wines, similar in taste to Californian ones, from the Bordeaux region, etc., which leaves the discussion about powdered wine open.

Age limit: 18+

There is a very common belief among the people that natural wine is now so easy to find: only powdered and chemical ones remain. At least, the fact that cheap wine is not wine at all, is considered by a significant part of the population. But this is not true. Let's figure out why.

Nearly 27 billion liters of natural grape wine- according to . Accordingly, on average, one inhabitant of the Earth accounts for more than 3.8 liters of wine per year - including babies, the elderly, the sick, teetotalers, as well as Muslims and those who do not take wine in their mouths because it is not available, or prohibited, or simply too expensive (after all, a huge number of people are below the poverty line). This fact alone seems to hint at the fact that there is enough wine in the world even without powders.

Let's move on to the next point - legislation. Legislation of no civilized country in the world (including Russia; about France, Italy and other old-world wine-producing countries I'm not saying) will never allow the word "wine" to be called a drink that is not really wine. For "non-standard" substances (for example, with the use of "bread" alcohol), we have a special term - a wine drink. And in the case of the powder ... however, let's move on.

The problem is that powdered wine… is impossible to make. On the one hand, everything seems to be simple: flavoring powder, alcohol, water, sugar. But alas, no, it's not that simple. No, you can, of course, be smart and do something that resembles wine, but the fact is that there is no need for this: the simplest natural wine is very cheap!

Many foreign farms are left with junk wine - something that they will not use for reasons of prestige (or they are not given the right to do so by regional / appellation norms). And now they are always happy to merge this shemurday to someone. It can be both quite decent wine and amazing rubbish (but grape) - for example, obtained from vines with a crazy yield, about 150-200 centners per hectare (such wine will be “watery”, tasteless, bad).

And here are our producers (both dubious wineries and some wineries) buy similar wine "in bulk", in giant tanks, "bulk" (=mass). The cost of purchasing one liter of such wine can be as much as 20 cents (a very mediocre product) or more (for 50 cents / liter it is already quite decent wine). Well, why bother with powders here, reinventing the wheel?

Where do all the St. Petersburg, Chelyabinsk, Yekaterinburg wineries in St. Petersburg get their raw materials (=wine materials) from? Yes, from there, from abroad, they bring a bulk here at bargain prices, sweeten it, carbonate it, pour it - and voila: Russian champagne is ready! It's a very ironic title. Sometimes these drinks are flavored (and here you really get some kind of chemistry), but sometimes not.

Drinks of the ultra-budget segment - for example, the most legendary port wine "Three Axes" - of course, can be more "powdery". In the sense that not full-fledged wine is used as a raw material, but any sedimentary burda that costs three kopecks. And here, as a result, a very dubious product is really obtained, not wine.

If you are interested in this topic, then I advise you to read the journal of Denis Rudenko: he wrote about this more than once. Here, for example, is one of his articles-records, dedicated, among other things, to this legendary powdered wine.

How to distinguish real wine from a fake?

Option 1.

At home, it is very easy to check the wine, whether it is real or synthetic. Pour a little (10 grams) of wine into a transparent glass or glass, then add a little ordinary baking soda to the glass. If the wine has changed color (acquired a gray-green-bluish tint), then it is real. Grape (fruit) starch reacts with soda and changes color. And synthetic wine will not change color at all and will remain as it was.

Option 2.

To check the quality of wine, you can even spend a small chemical experiment. You just need to drop a couple of drops of glycerin into a glass of wine. If the solution sinks to the bottom without changing its own coloring, then the wine is natural. And if the glycerin turns yellow or red, then you are holding powder wine in your hands.

Option 3.

And the last way to check the authenticity of the wine. We collect water in a deep bowl, pour a small amount of wine in a vial, and pinch the neck with your finger. After that, lower the vial of wine into the water and turn it over. Further actions are very simple: remove your finger from the neck and observe. If the drink is mixed with water, then it is not natural wine. If the drink does not mix with water in any way, then congratulations, you have a natural wine drink!

Option 4 - Personal experience.

And finally, a personal observation. But this only applies to wines. homemade. Throughout the entire period, since we started home winemaking, it has been noticed that any wine (both from the Moldova grape variety, and from Isabella, etc.) - of any year, in the spring during the beginning of the sap flow in the vine, and in the fall when the young wine begins to grow. just play, "old" wine (1-2 years old) also begins to "play out" a little. Even in the one that is already bottled and corked, gas bubbles appear, that is, it becomes as if carbonated. It probably doesn't apply to those wines. industrial production
that have gone through the process of heating to 55-60 degrees C. In homemade wine that has not undergone such processing, there remains a little wine yeast, which causes such a "seasonal" behavior of wine in bottles. The process can be somewhat activated by adding a little sugar 1-2 gr. for 1 liter of wine. Powdered wine naturally has no residues of wine yeast. Thus, one more way to determine the natural origin of wine.

Option 5 - From conversations with winemakers

Everyone who has ever been involved in the manufacture of wine must have noticed that if, during a careless overflow of wine from one container to another (to remove sediment), a few drops of wine are left on a barrel or bottle, or if you have a container on which and / or in which there are fresh remnants of young wine, then in the warm season, after a while - an hour and a half, fruit trees flock to these places to feast front sight Drosophila (colloquially "wine fly"). Insect by the way - very harmless. But an excellent indicator of wine quality. The fly does not even land on powdered wine and flies around it.

And lastly.... Wine is a product that cannot be produced at home. all year round. It's absolutely seasonal product. Therefore, if the year is lean and there are few grapes, then, of course, there will be little wine. Therefore, the wine of a normal and honest manufacturer may end, unlike, for example, those. who prepares it all year round from powder components, think about it.

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• #1

  It is probably possible to distinguish without resorting to such complicated ways.... Most likely the taste and sediment.

• #2

  Thank you! Great article. Now we are just on vacation in the Caucasus region, and these methods are most welcome. I want to take a good natural house wine, and not drink synthetics, having traveled so many kilometers.

• #3