Wine allergen warnings: Good idea?
While I was reading the small print on the back label of a Barossa Valley Australian red the other day (doesn't everyone do that?), I noticed something unusual: "Contains sulfites and egg products."
Wait! What? The sulfite warning isn't surprising: That's been required by U.S. law since around 1990. But egg products? This warning seemed new.
Now, to clarify, the fact that eggs have an occasional role in wine making is no surprise. Egg whites, milk products, bentonite clay, and, more rarely, isinglass from sturgeon bladders and, in older times, dried ox blood, have been used for centuries to clarify wine in production, a process known as "fining." These substances, added to the wine while it ages in barrels or tanks, attracts dead yeast and other hazy matter in the wine and, gradually, draws it to the bottom of the barrel as a heavy sediment that stays behind when the clarified wine is siphoned ("racked") to another container. (See image above from StarChefs.com.)The dead yeast and fining materials, in other words, fall out of the wine and are left behind. None of the material remains in the finished wine, except perhaps in molecular amounts. And therein lies an ongoing, gently simmering controversy. As public attention has focused on protecting the public from allergens in recent years, leading to bans on peanuts in airliners and in schools, regulatory authorities have taken a closer look at potential allergens in wine.
U.S. regulators took a serious look at requiring allergen warning labels on wine in the early 2000s, but the wine industry resisted, arguing that it would be unfair to require a warning for a substance that was used briefly but is no longer in the bottle. As the sulfite warning has amply shown, the mere presence of a warning prompts consumers to assume that the substance of concern is unhealthy and dangerous.
Advocates for warnings argued back that if even minute amounts remain, people with those allergies would be at risk if not warned. But industry opposition, like this angry 2007 rant by writer Dan Berger in the trade publication Wines & Vines, apparently persuaded the federal government not to take action. Wine industry lobbying also apparently persuaded European Union regulators to exempt wine from a list of other food and beverages subject to new allergen-warning rules in 2014.
But Australia and New Zealand, independent neighbors joining forces in this effort, are apparently rushed in where other nations feared to tread.
Australian studies persuaded regulators Down Under that there was no residual protein remaining in Australian red and white wine after fining with egg, fish or milk, and no significant adverse reaction from allergic individuals consuming these wines, so Australian wine labels no longer need to contain an allergy warning for fish and fish products, which are no longer considered to compromise human health.
Yet, according to Australia's Grape and Wine Research and Development Corporation, perhaps in an excess of caution, "Winemakers continue to include a warning statement on the label for egg and milk as a duty of care for the consumer if they are at all uncertain as to whether the wine may contain traces of these processing aids.
"If you have a known allergy to eggs or milk," the Commission warned, "then you consume an allergen-labelled egg and milk fined-wine at your own risk, as there is a still a small chance that traces may be present in the wine."
What's your opinion? Is it a good idea to warn consumers about any possible allergens in wine, or other beverages, or food? Or is it overkill to raise concerns about potential allergens that exist in tiny, unmeasurable quantities if at all? Where would you draw the line?