Labels on wine bottles are pretty useless, from a health standpoint. They don't convey vital information for some people, like the average concentration of phenyl and bimetasulphide in the contents. This sort of thing is very important to asthmatics who are allergic to these, and other, substances.
We can tell everyone that chocolates may contain nuts, but not that the wine promoted to you as "A well-balanced, deep, dry red, with hints of cherry stone and barnyard, and made from the finest Californian fruit and matured in antique oak barrels for your enjoyment" contains a chemical cocktail that may well be fatal? Yes, alcohol can kill you, but hardly as quickly as a good dose of some nasty little preservative or leachate from the oak barrels is likely to do.
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Do you have any statistics for people dying in this way?
Apart from my mother? No. Though that's a just a few minutes on Google to fix.
good idea. Some wines give me headaches, and i avoid them without knowing exactly what is in them that has this effect. Rather than avoid all red wines from australia, i'd rather be informed to the contents.
I wanted to reply to a comment - its gone, now I forget it.. why can't I see past comments?
I need to see past comments while I think about my comments
[I know -- we're working on it --BN]
hello sloth! I think we met in a past life...
Now I know I've met you, op.
For my first brew of beer during the summer, I got some sodium metabisulphate to clean and sterilise the gear. Only a month or so later did I read about the effects it has on asthma, and I've been getting pretty notably wheezy in recent months (which I put down to a 'event' that seems to have affected most other people I know in South and East London that have asthma like me - but, the less we know about any 'event' thats likely to have happened, the better for any chances of economic recovery, I say - after all, if they want to say we're all wheezing because a power station got struck by lightning, that's good enough for me. Ignorance is bliss, compared to the alternative and its associated emotions of demoralisation). I've changed to a different sort of sterilising mixture since then (and five batches on) - things are possibly a bit better (or I imagine they are - the beer certainly is).
Your observation that things are added to wine is completely off base. In fine wines, the only things that are "added" are yeast to start fermentation. The action of yeast eating sugar in the grapes gives alcohol and CO2. After the yeast has done it's job, the red wine is then put in natural oak barrels that have been torched to give a little charcoal flavor to it. The only white wine treated this way is Chardonnay. To preserve the wine from oxidation, the wine has an inert gas layer put on top. There are no additives, it is a completely natural product that some people are allergic too, just like my son is allergic to all grasses and trees. I do not suggest that all trees and grasses be eliminated to keep my son healthy. The headache that was referred to by someone is a reaction to the naturally occuring histimines found on the skin of grapes. If you really want to drink your red wine, take an antihistimine beforehand. This information is from working with fine wineries in California for 30 years in all aspects of the winemaking process. I cannot speak for the cheaper wines made by large companies.Your suggestion of listing all of the chemicals that is in wine would be interesting if you required the same of milk or orange juice. They all have naturally occurring chemicals that someone is allergic to.