How much alcohol is in your wine?

Alcohol may be what distinguishes wine from fruit juice, but many drinkers seem pretty wary of it these days. In February, researchers Wine Intelligence published a global study which suggested that 40 per cent of regular wine drinkers wish to moderate their alcohol consumption.

Yet since hotter summers encourage the build-up of sugar in grapes, which yeast converts to ethanol, alcohol levels have been rising relentlessly. Wines of at least 14% alcohol by volume (ABV) have become increasingly common.

Consumers take comfort in the fact that alcohol levels have to be stated on wine labels — but how accurate are they? In the EU, a “tolerance”, or leeway, of 0.5% alcohol is allowed for most wines (0.8% for sparkling wines and those that have been in bottle for at least three years). Alcoholic strengths have to be given in multiples of 0.5%, which means that a wine with 13.5% on the label could in fact be higher than 14% ABV.

Tolerances permitted in Australia and the US are even more generous. Percentages given on wine labels in Australia can be as much as 1.5% awry, meaning if a wine is labelled as 13%, the actual alcohol content could be anything from 11.5% to 14.5%.

As long ago as 2008, wine writer Max Allen observed in The Weekend Australian that virtually all Barossa Shiraz was labelled 14.5% when much of it nudged 16%. He also reported that the national wine organisation was considering changing the domestic tolerance to 0.8%. But that still hasn’t happened (although the tolerance on Australian wines exported to the EU is “only” 0.8%).

Within the US, where alcohol levels are mostly spelt out to the nearest 0.1%, wines below 14% alcohol are also permitted a tolerance of 1.5%, while those above 14% are given leeway of 1%. A California wine with 12.5% on the label could be anything between 11% and 14% in reality, while 14.7% on the label could signify anything between 13.7% and 15.7%.

It’s also worth mentioning that the type size of alcohol levels on US labels tends to be Lilliputian — a magnifying glass is often required to read them — whereas the EU mandates a decent minimum size.

I asked Damien Jackman, UK representative of the California Wine Institute, whether exporters of California wine bother to convert their labels to comply with EU regulations. He pointed out that these are extremely rarely enforced. “In five years running Legal [requirements] for [the multinational] Treasury Wine Estates in the UK and Europe, I think I had a German authority try to hold a shipment at a port once because the ABVs on some Beringer [California] wines were not rounded to [the nearest] 0.5%. I never had it raised as an issue by UK authorities.”

Most American wines exported in bottle tend to have their original US labels on them. (Vast amounts of cheaper California wines are shipped in bulk to the UK, where they are bottled and labelled in accordance with local regulations.) While UK importers occasionally superimpose a sticker with the alcohol level rounded to the nearest 0.5%, this still leaves consumers wondering how the tolerances have been interpreted.

In the late 1990s and early 2000s, high alcohol levels were admired, especially by American wine drinkers. The bigger the bang, the bigger the justifiable buck. During that era, I saw alcohol levels above 16% on many California wine labels.

Yet some connoisseurs insist that high levels of alcohol simply don’t suit certain styles of wine. Rajat Parr, for example, outlawed any Pinot Noir above 14% when he ran the wine programme for Michael Mina’s restaurants in the US 15 years ago. The highly respected sommelier-turned-winemaker went on to found a movement called In Pursuit of Balance, designed to showcase California wines that provided an alternative to the high-alcohol Napa Valley Cabernets (“big wines”) proliferating at the time.

Keen to distinguish themselves from the traditional big hitters on the cranium, new wavers positively boast about lower alcohol levels

Parr and his fellow believers have provoked a wider reaction to the big-wine movement, polarising the California scene between the old guard and the new wave, who deliberately pick grapes earlier to make more refreshing, lower-alcohol wines. These days Parr produces Pinot Noirs at Domaine de la Côte in southern California with alcohol levels well below 14%.

Recently I asked an insider about the divergence between the true ABV and what’s on the label for the traditional big California wines. “There is less discrepancy than 10 to 20 years ago,” he reported. “Actual alcohols have come down a bit, and I think that labelled levels have come up a bit. In other words, 20 years ago the wine might have been 15.8% and labelled as 14.6%, and now the wine is 15.2% and labelled at 14.9%.”

Keen to distinguish themselves from the traditional big hitters on the cranium, new wavers in both California and Australia (especially) positively boast about lower alcohol levels. Several sources in California assure me that the new wavers typically pride themselves on accurate labelling and transparency in general.

Meanwhile, the 25 per cent tariffs Donald Trump imposed on wine imports from many EU countries in October 2019 — as part of the Airbus subsidies dispute — applied only to wines below 14%, which did not incentivise universal accuracy. It is an open secret that, since then, the ABVs cited on many European labels destined for the US have been massaged above 14%.

In my recommendations, I suggest some wines that combine both character and pleasure with relatively low alcoholic strength. On the label, at least.

Jancis Robinson will be appearing at this year’s FT Weekend Digital Festival, March 18-20. For more information and tickets visit ftweekendfestival.com

More stockists from Wine-searcher.com. Tasting notes on Purple Pages of JancisRobinson.com

Follow Jancis on Twitter @JancisRobinson

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