Thursday 15 August 2013

The prohibitionists now want fruit juice to be called wine...

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There is no end to the nannying. Now they want the EU to "redefine" wine to include drinks that don't have alcohol in them:

Earl Howe, the health minister, claimed that the market for low or reduced alcohol “wines” has been “increasingly rapidly” in recent years.

He insisted that promoting low alcohol wines was in customers’ “best long term interests”, amid concerns over a rise in liver diseases and cancers linked to alcohol consumption.

“The government has consistently made the case for change to the EU wine rules to permit reduced and de-alcoholised products to be called wines,” he said. 

It is interesting to note that the rhetoric of the prohibitionists is changing. Now it's a gentle game that combines divide and rule with bureaucratic lobbying. No-one has a problem with businesses creating low alcohol products by removing alcohol from wine. And that is what the market is doing - without any nudging or prompting from the bureaucrats:

Almost seven million bottles of wine with an alcohol content of less than 8.5 per cent were sold in Britain in 2011, two million more bottles than the year before. 

So leave well alone. And remember:
 
Victoria Moore, the Telegraph’s wine critic, said wine drinkers were already being “clobbered” with high taxes and a stream of political rhetoric warning them not to over-indulge.

Some naturally low-alcohol wines such as moscato from Italy, and German riesling, can be tasty, she said.

However, wine that has been through an artificial process, akin to decaffeinating coffee beans, generally tastes "rubbish".
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