I think many wineries have a legitimate fear of transparency, only because of the negative press that fining, acidification, etc gets.
There's some odd labelling in the photo of a bottle in Asimov's article (presumably it's a Bonny Doon bottle). For example, the label lists "tartaric acid" as an ingredient - but it's an ingredient of any grape wine! I guess the intent is to list tartaric acid as a separately
added ingredient (i.e., not sourced from the grapes themselves), but then yeast nutrient might also be listed there (though the assumption there might be that all the added nutrient was utilised by yeast/bacteria) and listing "indigenous yeast" as being utilised is a little bizarre (as they are not an added ingredient; and what about bacteria - whether they were inoculated for MLF or not?).
Brian Gilp wrote:Its odd but that type of info on a label would not interest me as a consumer these days. Before I started making my own wine, I would probably have had a different idea about some of the things that would be listed. Now that I understand more about what can go into a wine and what they do, it really concerns me less as a consumer.
It's the opposite for me: I'm interested in what other winemakers are doing.