Tablas Creek Vineyard Blog

Sulfites in Wine - What's Causing my Headache?

In my recent post on lessons I've learned from blogging I recommend that bloggers write about the questions they find themselves asked all the time.  Following my own advice, I realized I've recently answered several questions about sulfites in our wines.  There are two phrasings to this question, both getting at the same issue.  One phrasing runs along the line of "oh, you farm organically.  Does this mean that your wines are sulfite-free?"  The other phrasing is "I get headaches from the sulfites in wine.  Does the fact that you're organic mean I can drink your wines?" 

Just the other day, I got pulled in by a discussion on organic wines and sulfites on the excellent blog 1 Wine Dude.  As I was writing the response, I realized that this is exactly the sort of issue I'm recommending that others address.  The confusion surrounding the issue would be farcical if it didn't negatively impact the acceptance of organic wines in the marketplace.  The punch line of the joke (which no one I know really finds funny) is that sulfite sensitivities don't typically cause the headaches that most people who believe they suffer from sulfite allergies describe as their principal symptom.  Those who report headaches are far more likely to be reacting to the histamines (or, more rarely, the tannins) in wine.  Or the alcohol.

As for us, yes, we use sulfites.  If we didn't, our wines would be unstable to a degree we're not comfortable with, and we're making wines for aging over the long term.  We do what we can to minimize the concentration to under 100 parts per million (the average American wine is about 350 ppm).  Still, I am not aware of any top winery anywhere in the world who omits sulfites entirely from the winemaking process.  And, sulfites have been used since Roman times in wine.  The fact that (unlike in other countries) United States regulations prohibit us from calling our wines organic is an unfortunate consequence of the widespread fear in America that many, many people are allergic to sulfites.  Fortunately, sulfite allergies are quite rare, and wine contains minor quantities of sulfites compared to other common foods.   

Important fact #1: If you (other than wine) eat quite normally, and wine (particularly young, red wine) gives you headaches, you almost certainly are not allergic to sulfites. 

Sulfur occurs in many foods, including (according to WebMD):

• Baked goods
• Soup mixes
• Jams
• Canned vegetables
• Pickled foods
• Gravies
• Dried fruit
• Potato chips
• Trail mix
• Beer and wine
• Vegetable juices
• Sparkling grape juice
• Apple cider
• Bottled lemon juice and lime juice
• Bottled Tea
• Many condiments
• Molasses
• Fresh or frozen shrimp
• Guacamole
• Maraschino cherries
• Dehydrated, pre-cut or peeled potatoes

Particularly common sources of sulfites are dried fruit, potato chips and french fries, and condiments.  Three ounces of dried apricots, for example, contain 175mg of sulfur dioxide.  By contrast, a four ounce glass of Tablas Creek (at 100ppm of sulfites) contains about 12mg.  Even a glass of wine with average sulfite levels would contain about 40mg of sulfur dioxide.  You'd need to drink half a bottle to get the same sulfites as that handful of apricots. 

The FDA estimates that about 500,000 people in the United States have sulfite allergies (about two-tenths of one percent of the population).  Those who do need to be very careful about what they eat and drink, as exposure to sulfites can cause respiratory reactions.  Six people have died in the last 30 years in the United States due to sulfite reactions (none traceable to wine).  The reactions to a sulfite allergy are typically wheezing, coughing, hives, abdominal pain, and difficulty swallowing, the same reactions you'd expect from, say, a medical allergy (and, in fact, those with allergies to Sulfa drugs are much more likely to have other sulfite allergies).

Headaches, on the other hand, are not mentioned in the literature on sulfites, but are common reactions to an excess of histamines.  Many more people have sensitivities to histamines, which are common in pollen as well as many other plant materials.  Reactions to histamines include headache, itchy eyes, runny nose and flushed skin... the common effects of hay fever.   It's less well known that histamines are also common in the skins of grapes.  This explains why many people are sensitive to only red wines (which spend time in fermentation next to grape skins) or only to young wines (histamines break down over time in bottle).

Important fact #2: as with seasonal allergies, sensitivities to the histamines in wine can be treated with an over-the-counter antihistamine such as Benadryl or Claritin.

So why does the government mandate that wines display "CONTAINS SULFITES" on the back of nearly every label, but make no mention of histamines, when histamine reactions are much more common than sulfite allergies?  Essentially, histamine reactions are not particularly dangerous.  Inconvenient, sure, but not life-threatening.  However, from the number of questions I get, it's clear that the government-mandated warning has convinced lots of people that they're allergic to something they're not, and obscured the easy steps people could take to minimize their reactions. 

I've already written about how the fact that American wines with sulfites are prohibited from being labeled organic discourages vineyards from farming organically, so I won't go into that again here.  It's just another example of the unintended consequences of even well-intentioned government.

Winemaker Neil Collins Discusses Harvest 2007 with winerychannel.tv

If you haven't checked out winerychannel.tv yet, you should.  It's online television, dedicated to the world of wine.  Like many members of the new media, they're fans of what's going on in the Central Coast, and we welcomed them up here a month or so back for a discussion of the 2007 harvest.  Winemaker Neil Collins spent an afternoon with their crew walking them through what was going on in the cellar and talking about what 2007 was like for us.  Check it out (click on "The Source" Episode 26: Harvest Report when you get there).

End of 2007 Harvest!

With the completion of the "Mount Mourvedre" block behind the winery, we're officially done with the 2007 harvest.  Like each year, it's had its own challenges, this time at 65 days the longest extent between the beginning of harvest (August 27th) and the end of harvest (October 31st) that we've ever seen.  (By contrast, in 2006, harvest lasted 50 days.)

Our yields were down; the 252 tons of fruit that we brought in is down 20% from the 315 tons we saw in 2006 (or the 319 tons we saw in 2005).  At our normal conversion rates, we're looking at between 14,000 and 15,000 cases of wine in 2007.  Our field crew, led by Vineyard Manager David Maduena (center, with dark jacket and tan baseball cap) poses behind the last bin of Mourvedre:

The quality of the fruit looks tremendous.  Berry sizes are small, but skins are thick and we're seeing tremendous color extraction early in fermentation.  I hope that the California wine press recognizes that this year may be excellent for Paso Robles even though the early rain has been problematic in Napa and Sonoma.

Finally, I leave you with a good example of why you should be cautious leaving the winery camera in the hands of the winemakers.  Here's a shot they took of the last Mourvedre cluster of harvest, poised on the edge of the destemmer machine looking terrified.  Winery sense of humor...

Grenache Harvest Photos

As we'd hoped, the rain from the end of last week was followed by cool, sunny and breezy weather, and the half-inch of rain that we got didn't have any negative impact on the hanging fruit.  This week, we're bringing in the rest of the Grenache and getting a start on the Mourvedre.  The crystal clear, sunny morning yesterday allowed for some nice photos.  First, Grenache in a picking bin, waiting for destemming.  Note the very slight deflation of some of the berries, an important physiological sign that the fruit is ripe:

Next, a great shot of Neil Collins and Ryan Hebert (our Winemaker and Assistant Winemaker) pushing Grenache clusters through the destemming machine.  I love how this photo expresses the constant motion of harvest:

Finally, a nice semi-panoramic shot of Mourvedre hanging on the vines behind the winery (at the bottom of the hill we call "Mount Mourvedre") with the incredibly deep blue Paso Robles sky behind them.  Like all the photos on the site, click on the photo for a full-size rendition:

Sharing the blending experience

At Tablas Creek, we're always looking for ways to demystify the world of wine.  One tactic that we've found to be a great combination of interesting, enlightening, and portable is the traveling blending seminar.  We've been conducting blending seminars here at the vineyard for years.  And, last year I decided to bottle up and bring with me samples of the individual red components of the 2005 vintage on the road and allow our distributors' salespeople to share in the experience. 

This year, we decided to open the experience up to trade and media in selected cities, and held seminars in Charleston, Chicago, Seattle and San Diego.  Just this week, Sterling Pratt, Wine Director at Schaefer's in Skokie, IL (just north of Chicago) wrote a funny, interesting article for the Pioneer Local describing his experience.

If you're in the trade, and have a related experience, or would be interested in attending a similar event, let us know by posting a comment!

Harvest, Week of September 24th

The weather in Paso Robles warmed up last week, and we started harvesting in earnest.  We've brought in most of our Syrah, the first big chunk of Grenache, and are finishing up Grenache Blanc.  Viognier and Marsanne are in.  I'd estimate that last week, we brought in between 10% and 15% of our annual harvest, mostly Grenache and Syrah.  Happily, it looks like the production of our reds is not off nearly as much as our whites.  We're now estimating white yields down about 30%, but red yields down just 5% to 10%.  A photo from our front entrance, looking at the newly-harvested Syrah "C" vines:



This week, we're looking at more of the same weather, sunny and days in the 80s, with nights in the low 40s.  We're expecting most of our Grenache and our first significant blocks of Roussanne.

In the cellar, we're starting the assembly of our Rose by bleeding off some of our Grenache.  We've decided to make the Grenache component just a little bit lighter this year.  Each year, our Rose has gotten a little darker, and we feel it's time to back off just a little.  Below are two photos from the saignee of Grenache: on the left draining the juice from a tank harvested yesterday, and on the right spraying the juice into a new tank to ferment as rose.

Syrah/Roussanne Harvest and Co-Fermentation

Each year, one of our favorite Syrah lots in the cellar is one that we co-ferment with Roussanne.  We typically blend about 10% Roussanne into Syrah, de-stem the two grapes, and then ferment them together in an open-top tank.  The lushness of the mid-palate of Roussanne helps round out the Syrah (which can be fairly angular on its own).

This year, we encountered an unexpected problem, as the Roussanne refused to be de-stemmed.  We've never had a problem with this before, but with particularly tight clusters in 2007 and the overall small berry sizes, it seems that the berries just won't give up their grips on the stems.  So, we're having to press the Roussanne and add it to the fermenting Syrah as juice.  A close-up of the Roussanne is below:

We've consistently had better luck co-fermenting Syrah with Roussanne than we have with Viognier.  Although it's commonly done in the Northern Rhone (and has been copied by California producers) we've never found it to do the trick.  For us, Syrah is very aromatic and long, with its only flaw being a bit hollow on the mid-palate when it's young.  Viognier further emphasizes the aromatic character, but if anything the resulting wine is more notable (perhaps because of the explosive aromatics) for its relatively underdeveloped mid-palate.

Oh, well.  We're still learning.  Every year brings something we haven't seen before.  This year, it's Roussanne that refuses to be de-stemmed.  Next year, who knows!

Harvest 2007 Begins!

The 2007 harvest is underway.  As I've written about this year, we've had a relatively unusual year for weather, with a very cold, dry winter delaying the beginning of budbreak and flowering, and then a remarkably moderate summer, with few days over 100 and no extended cold spells.  It's been alternating weather patterns, with a week at a time of warm, seasonable weather (days in the mid-90s, nights in the upper 50s) and then a cooler week (days in the 80s, nights in the upper 40s to lower 50s).  These relatively moderate conditions have combined with the drought to encourage many producers here to look forward to 2007 as a potentially top vintage.  We'll see.

So far, we've begun the harvest with Viognier on August 27th.  Bob Haas, at left, holds up one of the first Viognier clusters outside the winery.  Also the week of August 27th, we did a cherry pick of the Roussanne from the top on one hill, and began the harvest of the Chardonnay for our "Antithesis" Chardonnay.  Yields, as others in the region are reporting, have been down.  Our Chardonnay crop was a little more than half what we saw in 2006, but intensity has been excellent.

The week of September 3rd, we brought in the rest of our Viognier, as well as a little Grenache Blanc and the first big chunk of our Syrah (all of our "A" and "D" clones).   The Syrah "C" clone, which we believe is our highest quality clone, is still out in the vineyard.  The photo below is of a cluster ripening outside the winery.

With the lower yields, we've decided not to make any Vin de Paille white dessert wines this year.  It's just too big a cost in production, and we want to make sure to protect the dry wines which are our core focus.

Hand Harvesting

While my wife was in the hospital this week with our second baby, we were lucky enough to be paired in the post-delivery room with an acquaintance: the well-respected Central Coast grower relations director of a major international wine consortium, who I've known for several years, and whose passion and efforts to introduce sustainable practices to his growers I admire.  In the conversation, we were discussing the beginning of the 2007 harvest (more on this soon) and I mentioned that we had begun with a "cherry pick" of the ripe clusters from the top-of-hill blocks of Roussanne.  He lamented that with the machine harvesters that the company favored, such a selective harvest was impossible.

This got me thinking.  At Tablas Creek, all our grapes are harvested by hand.  This is partially dictated by topography (our hills wouldn't permit mechanical harvesters to enter) but is, beyond this, a quality-driven choice.  Many Rhone varietals, most notably Roussanne but also including Grenache Noir, Grenache Blanc and Mourvedre, are uneven ripeners.  This means that some clusters on a plant will be ripe (usually those on the Western side, or those exposed to the sun) while others (typically those in the shade) are still underripe.  Often, ripeness can vary widely.  We address this difficulty by harvesting the same section of the vineyard multiple times, going through to bring in the ripe clusters first, often making another pass a week or so later and then usually finishing up another week later with the last clusters to ripen. 

It is probably evident to all of you that this sort of discrimination is impossible with a mechanical harvester.  Even within producers who hand-harvest, it's difficult for people who purchase grapes to assert this sort of control over their vineyards.  A grower receives parameters from the contracting winery that will require the grapes to average a certain brix number, a certain acid level, etc.  So, he'll do his best to pick when the average ripeness of the grapes matches what his or her winery wants.  But, averaging doesn't work that well.  What you get with grapes that ripen unevenly is a mix of underripe, overripe, and ripe fruit.  The numbers may average out to what is expected, but the flavors will contain components of underripe (green tannins and thin, herbal flavors) and overripe (raisiny, porty flavors and an oxidized character).  Adding overripe flavors to underripe flavors does not, as the British might say, a good wine make.

At Tablas Creek, not only do we use exclusively estate fruit (giving us the ability to make very selective picking decisions) but we also have committed since 1994 to giving our field crew year-round employment.  Most of our crew have been with us since 1994, and have learned the specifics of what we want.  When we need to bring in short-term seasonal labor (when we're really pushing to bring in fruit, or when several varietals ripen at the same time) we divide our crew among the newcomers, and they act as the best guardians of quality we could ask for.  There is no way that they're going to allow these guys here for a few days or few weeks to compromise the quality that they've worked on for the past year.  Furthermore, we pay all our crew (full-time and seasonal) by the hour rather than by the ton picked.  This is even more unusual in California, and it further reduces the incentive to harvest grapes that are not exactly what we want.  Yes, it slows down the pace of harvest slightly, but it largely eliminates the need to do an aggressive sorting of the harvested clusters before fermentation.  If you look at our grapes as they come in, they could look like they come from a grocer's table.

If you add the percentage of grapes that are machine harvested (70% in California in the mid-1990s, and surely higher today) to the portion that are purchased from growers (more than 80% of what's left) you can get a sense of what contributes to the cost of production of artisanal wines.

But, it's worth it... quality grapes coming in means you have at least a chance of making truly fine wines at the end.  If you have grapes of mixed quality to start with, you'll never have that chance.

Corks and Screwcaps: Not an open and shut case

I came back from a tasting today (the always excellent Central Coast Wine Classic) having again had my third discussion in a week with a consumer who was confused as to why we bottle some of our wines in Stelvin screwcaps, and others in cork.  She asked if it was because the wines in screwcap were less expensive than those in cork (they weren't).  We do our best to match up the wine with the closure that best allows it to age and evolve gracefully, and the answer is not the same for all wines, any more than a one-size-fits all prescription for winemaking would be.  Tell a winemaker that he must choose either 100% barrels or 100% stainless steel tanks for everything in his cellar, and you'd have a revolt.  And yet most accept such a prescription for sealing their wines without question.

I guess I can see how consumers would find this difficult to understand; most of the coverage of alternative closures is terribly reductive, either taking the position that anyone who stuffs a piece of tree bark into a bottle of wine deserves the contamination they're likely to get, or in talking in mushy language about the romance of opening a cork-finished bottle of wine.  Probably the most public debate of this sort was played out in the March 15, 2005 issue of the Wine Spectator, where James Laube and James Suckling shared cover space with dueling articles entitled "Why I Hate Cork" and "Why I Love Cork".

It is undeniable that  a percentage of all natural corks are tainted by TCA, a chlorine compound that makes the cork (and any wine in contact with it) smell and taste musty.  Industry estimates range from 3% to as high as 10%.  Even at 3%, this is a terribly large number of bottles that are ruined each year.  For a winery of our size (our production of about 16,000 cases per year) this would mean that we'd send out over 5000 bottles that would be compromised.  If we were lucky, the consumer would recognize that this bottle was corky and would request a replacement.  If we're unlucky, the consumer just decides that he must not like Tablas Creek (or at least that particular bottling).  It's easy to see why so many winemakers are passionate advocates of alternative closures.

At Tablas Creek, we have bottled samples of the same wines, finished in both cork and screwcap, since 2002.  We have tracked their evolution to get some of our own impressions of what the various impacts of both options are.  When we taste the wines, we do it blind, and ask ourselves (and anyone who joins us for these tastings) to describe what we taste.  Matt Kramer included his experience in such a tasting in a thoughtful piece in the Wine Spectator in August 2004. 

We (and everyone who's joined us) describe consistent differences between the cork-finished and screwcapped wines, and have noted these differences as early as 3 months after bottling.  Wines bottled under screwcaps taste fresher, higher in acid, younger, tighter, and more mineral.  Wines bottled under cork taste softer, sweeter, richer, more open, and more evolved.  Which is better is not a simple question, and it depends on what we want out of the wine.  For an aromatic white, or for our Rose, we like the brightness and freshness that the screwcap provides, and feel that the screwcap will have the additional benefit of keeping these wines (which are typically meant to be enjoyed young) tasting youthful longer.  But those same characteristics do not benefit most of our reds, and they do not benefit our Roussanne-based whites, all of which we want to develop that softness and sweetness that time brings to wines meant to age.

There is logic to this.  Corks come from the bark of cork oaks, and have a flavor (if untainted) similar to gentle oak from a barrel.  In addition, they provide a measure of oxygen exchange with the wine (even if they provide a perfect seal between the wine and the outside air, corks contain oxygen in their pores and share that with the wine).  Screwcaps provide a better seal, but don't provide either the flavor exchange or the oxygen exchange that a cork does. (New models of screwcap allow a tiny oxygen exchange with the air outside, but are new enough that we haven't felt comfortable experimenting yet.)

So, next time you hear a winery declare that they've switched entirely to screwcap, or a writer rhapsodize the ceremony of opening a cork-finished bottle, I hope you resist the suggestion that things are so simple.  Rarely in life do either of two options, each with passionate advocates, have a monopoly on the truth.  The debate between cork advocates and screwcap advocates is no different.