Is That MegaPurple, Or Are You Just Happy to See Me?

There is one important way that wine is like food—the cheaper it is, the more manipulated it is. But that’s the way we like it. Americans don’t like surprises. This explains 9-11. And condoms. When we buy a bottle of cheap wine, we don’t care about the vintage or the appellation, we just care that it tastes like it did the last time we bought it, five years ago. Just like we want McDonald’s french fries to always taste like salty cardboard regardless of where in the world we’re eating them. If they taste like potatoes, they’re disgusting. If cheap wine tasted like quality wine, that would be a horrible mistake. All that character getting in the way of the alcohol? That seems pointless. Winemakers understand this, and go to great lengths to manipulate those inexpensive wines into tasting as unobtrusive and bland as possible. How do they do this? They add stuff. Same as they do to cheap food.

There are many wine blogs devoted to “Great Wines Under $20.” Let’s get something straight. There are no great wines under $20. There are fools who think there are, but, for God’s sake, don’t believe them. The wines they recommend are not, never have been, and never will be, Great Wines any more than the new James Patterson piece of shit is a Great Book. So shut the hell up about “Great Wines Under $20.” Cheap and easy to understand doesn’t equate to great. If it did, my idiot cousin would be on Mount Rushmore. It demeans the hard work of the great vintners of the world to refer to cheapass, manipulated wines as “Great.” Even if you need to feel good about drinking Great Wines Under $20 all the time, and not knowing the difference, you don’t need to insult the truly great wines of the world, or the intelligence of your readers. What’s wrong with “Wines I Like Under $20?” We know you’re an idiot, and can take that into account. “Great Wines Under $20,” for fuck’s sake. That’s like shopping on Craig’s List for Bargain Plastic Surgery. It’s cheap dick enhancement.

I know, most of you believe in the “romance” of wine, the compost heap that marketing departments sell under the guise of “telling the winery’s story.”

We lovingly tend our beautiful and historic vineyards, coaxing the best out of them. We hire happy little brown people who sing and prance as they harvest the precious grapes. We don’t know where these little brown people come from, they just magically appear each year, despite the gunfire. Each cluster is praised and admired as we prepare it to meet its maker. Gently crushed, like your teenage daughter’s heart, it transforms itself, under our ever-watchful eyes, into Great Wine, which we bottle and reluctantly sell to our friends. We are mere stewards of the land, and too humble to intervene in this mystical process of transformation. We don’t make our wines, our wines make us.

Yup, and California cheese comes from contented cows. Why are they content? Their farts are causing climate change and killing humans, that’s why. Damned bovines.

Let’s take a brief look at some of the more popular wine additives, and what they add to wine.

Gum Arabic
Gum Arabic, which is made from the sap of two species of Acacia tree, so it’s tree bodily fluid, is added to wines to enhance texture. As an alternative, many wineries in Lodi add Maple syrup to their Zinfandels in order to receive high scores from Mrs. Butterworth, who writes under the name Natalie MacLean.

WD-40
Most wines that are referred to as being “silky” can attribute that quality to just a splash of WD-40 added right before bottling. Many inexpensive Priorats can repair rusty locks. Pouring Apothic down your pants can unstick your zipper. This is a little celebrated quality of manipulated silky wines, but one you should explore.  No tool kit is complete without a bottle of Kim Crawford Sauvignon Blanc.

Techron
Often added to German Riesling, it helps with mileage. As they say in Germany, there’s no fuel like and old fuel. Or sometimes, petrol for one, and one for all. Germans are hilarious.

Copper Sulfate
Small amounts of copper sulfate may be added to a wine in order to remove hydrogen sulfides, which cause wine to smell like rotten eggs. Copper sulfate in sufficient quantity is poisonous to humans, but no more so than Sarah Palin, who, unsurprisingly, is also redolent of very old eggs. But don’t worry about copper sulfate specifically, wine is filled with poison. It’s called alcohol. Luckily, the antidote is readily available, and involves driving home.

Powdered Tannin
Powdered tannin is sometimes added to red wine to help fix color and add grip. Sadly, Michael Jackson tried this and, well, you know the result. He obviously lost his grip. The same additive is occasionally used on donuts, which then go great with Barolo.

James Earl Jones Voiceover
Often added to make an expensive wine seem classier. Cheaper wines use a high dosage of Morgan Freeman. Adding voiceovers is technically illegal in Europe, though they do allow the use of ventriloquists.

MegaPurple
MegaPurple is a grape concentrate made from the hybrid grape Rubired. Manufactured by the wine conglomerate Constellation, it’s often added to red wine in order to ruin it. A single drop, however, is said to make any orange wine significantly better—bang, it’s even more orange! MegaPurple is also a common substitute for Viagra. If after consuming a glass of The Prisoner your erection lasts for more than four hours, consult a sommelier. That’ll make anyone go flaccid.