The danger with fake wine is that it could kill the whole wine category. If wine becomes just another manufactured beverage, shorn of its interest and diversity, then what’s the motivation for consumers to trade up? Will people ever think wine appreciation is a worthy hobby if all they are weaned on is industrial crap Branded wine is like a movie set: looks great from the outside, but pass behind the edifice and it’s all plywood and 2 by 4s.
What can stem this rising tide of branded wine? I reckon some gently subversive counter movement is needed. People need to be champions of honest, natural wine. If there’s an increased demand, then perhaps the continued existence of real wine will be assured.
I find branded wines upsetting, largely. They are dressed up to look like interesting wines; made to sound as if they have been lovingly created from a single vineyard by artisanal winemakers in small, rustic cellars – aged gracefully in oak barrels with the attentive hand of the grower never far away.
The truth is they are industrial concoctions manufactured in huge factory-like wineries from machine-picked grapes that come from huge, flat, irrigated vineyards, and cooked up with all manner of winemaking trickery. They are blended together to offend as few consumers as possible (i.e. to taste as little of ‘wine’ and as much of fruit juice as possible), sometimes sweetened with a couple of grams (or more) of residual sugar, and sold by deep discounting to give the punter an impression of quality.
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