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19 September 2014

Preservative Free Wine is Not Taste-Free

Ask anyone about ten years ago what they think to preservative free wine and they may very well have turned their nose up at you. Recent times have allowed for producers to invest more time in perfecting the wine type and some bottles can now fetch quite the pretty price.

Supermarkets may be your first port of call when you’re looking for a wine but many neglect to stock any real, high-quality wines and instead opt to sell the widely affordable ranges - the less said about the chain’s own brands, the better. This means that many drinkers will unfortunately not have as many opportunities to try unique preservative free wine varieties which is a shame because their body would definitely thank them the next day.

There are so many preservatives laced into your bottle of wine, just to keep it fresh and to quite literally give it a longer shelf life. Unfortunately, this can also hamper the taste and give it quite a vinegar-y and unsavoury tinge when drinking. In fact, these wines can cause more damage to your body if you have a sulphite allergy and can cause long-term health problems.

The term “preservative free” is actually a bit of a misnomer. All wines need some form of sulphites in them to keep them fresh during the fermentation process but it’s been refined to a point where you can have a minute amount of it within a bottle and it doesn’t affect those with an allergy. Another upside is that it’s believed to eliminate the dreaded hangover completely!

So how do they taste? They might be a bit of a shock to those who are used to regular wine
but once you’ve adjusted to it palate-wise, you will be enjoying tastes close to what some of the original masters of wine making envisaged before chain stores closed in on the market. Though they may not be as widely available as regular wines, these natural wines are worth the wait and are competitively priced.

As for where you can pick them up, be sure to investigate in your local wine shop or track down specialist suppliers online who can help you out. Good Wine Online are one such web-based supplier who offer some of the finest natural wines available, from the likes of Grande Provence and Eagles’ Nest. Find them on their website or call 0845 6432 551 or email info@goodwineonline.co.uk instead.

"Lisboa Blues - a glass of Porto" by www.flickr.com/photos/strolicfurlan, license: creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.0 - 19/09/2014