Wine sulfites are fine, but here’s how to remove them anyway

Thursday, 2 July, 2015
Christopher Null, Wired.com
For millions of drinkers, the scariest two words on a bottle of wine are “CONTAINS SULFITES.”

Sulfites comprise a range of sulfur compounds - particularly sulfur dioxide (SO2) - that are a natural by-product of the fermentation process that work as a preservative against certain yeast and bacteria (which will quickly destroy a wine if they start to multiply). But fermentation alone doesn’t produce enough sulfite to preserve a wine for more than a few weeks or months in the bottle, so winemakers add extra in order to keep microbes at bay. Sulfites aren’t just in wine. Many, many foods ranging from crackers to coconut contain sulfites. Anything that’s at all processed is likely to contain at least some level of sulfites.

In 1986, the FDA identified sulfites as an allergen, following a rash of asthma cases reported around that time. Sulfites were promptly banned from raw fruits and vegetables, and as part of the warning label push in the late 1980s the feds required that sulfites be disclosed on wine labels if they could be detected at a level of 10 mg/L or higher. If you prove your wine has less than that, you can apply for an exemption—thus so-called “sulfite-free” wines exist. They are universally quite vile. Though many foreign producers include US warning labels, technically the rules only apply to domestic wines. Either way, sulfites are a regular part of winemaking around the world as a matter of necessity. Just because your bottle of Chateauneuf-du-Pape doesn’t have the warning doesn’t mean it isn’t full of sulfites.

And that’s how the hysteria over sulfites in wine got started.

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