05/10/2020
🍇🍷Wine Facts 🍇🍷
Mega Purple is a controversial topic in winemaking. It’s widely used, but people don’t really like to talk about it.
🍇What is Mega Purple?
It is grape juice concentrate thousands of wineries quietly use. It adds fruit and color to a red wine. Besides the look, it smoothes out the flavors, and gives it a fruity wallop. It will hide unwanted vegetal flavors and mask certain types of spoilage. It’s not just the low-end wineries that utilize this little cheat. I’ve read, that this technique is being used heavily on wines from California and Australia that retail for upward of $20, and even the occasional ultra-premium wines.
Mega Purple is produced by Constellation and sold by third-party vendors. It is made by concentrating the Teinturer grape Rubired, a cross between Alicante Ganzin and Tinta Cão. As such, say winemakers who use it, the concentrate has a distinctive aroma that smells a bit like what they called "Central Valley red," with hints of a foxy sort, not unlike a native American grape. Rubired grapes are prepared into a kind of wine with a ton of residual sugar (about 68 percent) and a very rich color. When Mega Purple is added to a wine, it’s generally used in low doses. It’s so “mega,” that’s all you really need.
🍇Which winemakers use it?
Obviously, it’s not easy to get a winemaker to admit to using the stuff. Many winemakers anonymously insist they only use a very tiny proportion of it, adjusting for color but not affecting the aroma or flavor. The reasons they seem reluctant to mention it are many. To them to admit using such an additive implies that their grapes are less than superior. That is, if a concentrate is appropriate for a wine, clearly their grapes are somehow deficient. And thus, the wine isn't a “fine wine.”
10,000 gallons of Mega Purple are sold annually and it is probably added to over 25 million bottles of wine annually. This begs to say it’s being used quite often.
🍇Can you find wines without Mega Purple in them?
Absolutely! Scout & Cellar Clean-Crafted Wines have NO ADDITIVES! 😉🍷. Love yourself enough to care what you consume and enjoy the benefits and deliciousness of the healthiest drink in the world!!!
