What's in your wine?

I watched this programme last night with the above title and was expecting to cringe at the awful discoveries about to unfold. The truth was a bit more mundane with tales of producers adding sugar (knew that) and / or acid (knew about that), that big branded champagnes aren't much good (knew that) and that there are rogue producers doing all sorts of dodgy things (knew that).

There was a lot of concerned frowning and soft questioning, but little in the way of anything new or newsworthy.

The point of the programme seemed to be to campaign for labelling of ingredients on wine, a measure that I would be in favour of as the good producers would have nothing to hide. Of course, the large wine factories who hold all the power are dead set against it, so probably won't happen.

In the meantime, the advise she didn't give us was to choose wine made from trustworthy family wineries who are genuinely concerned to produce a wine that reflects their own philosophy, their family history and the origins of the wine rather than wine from factories which is confected to appeal to the lowest common denominator in terms of price and coca cola tastebuds. As I have said before, if you care about what you drink go and talk to your local wine merchant. If you don't, the supermarkets have plenty of choice, probably at "half price" ( see previous posts).