Wine is Not a Banana, Probably

Defining Wine is more fun than you think

Wine is made from Dandelions too. Ray Bradbury wrote a novel called Dandelion Wine in 1957.

“I spent nearly two years working with your federal government to define what wine is.”—Larry Leigon

What is this Wine you Speak of?

For several years, I was the President of Ariel Vineyards non-alcoholic wine. Yes, that’s right. We took the alcohol out of wine and lived to tell about it. Barely.

Now, you may think the biggest problem with non alcoholic wine was the non alcoholic part. Hah! I say unto you. And Hah! again. That’s the easy part. That’s just chemistry—molecules in, molecules out, that sort of thing.

The hard part is the government of these United States. Just like that great vintner Jesus, in the wine business the government is always teaching you to observe whatsoever they have commanded you and lo, they are with you always, even unto the end of time. (more or less Mathew 28:20).

The government lurks in the shadows of every vineyard, scampers under the canopies at night, lies in wait, then rising with the morning dew on the vines at first light strikes when you least expect it.

Specifically, in Ariel’s case, the entire Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms plus the Food and Drug Administration ground to a halt contemplating the greatest existential question of all, “What is wine?”

According to their best minds non alcoholic wine was impossible. Somebody had already drunk at least 60,000 bottles of something, but what it was, the government couldn’t say. I begged them to just define it and tell me what the definition was but they wouldn’t do that. That might get them criticized.

Instead, they said we should go on making it until somebody complained and then they might make a ruling. Maybe. A ruling which might shut down our whole operation and bankrupt all the investors. Here’s a little wine management tip: as a general rule in life, investors don’t enjoy going bankrupt.

The government is like a bad guardian angel that keeps baiting you to do the wrong thing, but doesn’t tell you what the right thing is.

You probably won’t believe this one either, but it is and was painfully, crushingly true. The problem was that the great United States of America, the world’s greatest military power and savior of the entire homo sapiens species, didn’t have a line for non alcoholic wine on any of their forms. Therefore, legally, we did not exist.

We could put a man on the moon, send rovers to Mars and payloads far beyond the edge of the solar system, but we couldn’t figure out which file to put non alcoholic wine in.

Can you hear me Tom Jefferson? Is this what you had in mind? Really? I swear I could hear John Adams stomping through the eel weed and marsh mud on his Massachusetts farm, shouting at the top of his lungs at the Potash and beating the frozen ground into submission with his cane in frustration.

For this, we threw all that tea in the harbor? Good God.

I think it is a great error to consider a heavy tax on wines as a tax on luxury. On the contrary, it is a tax on the health of our citizens. ~ Thomas Jefferson

I spent nearly two years working with your federal government to define what wine is. Clearly, the question of what wine is raises deep spiritual issues of great import. Also, tax basis. I’m going to ignore the spiritual stuff though, and go ahead and report what these United States of America says wine is. It doesn’t take long.

They don’t know.

But, they tax it anyway.

The Government treats wine the way most of us treat pornography. They don’t know what it is, but they know it when they see it. And when they see it they tax it. For one thing, wine has alcohol and is made from grapes, isn’t it?

Well, Ariel non-alcoholic wine was made from grapes but, legally, it had no alcohol. If the Government decided that the amount of alcohol in Ariel was taxable then they would have to tax orange juice, chocolate and Diet Coke for the same reason and they just weren’t up for that.

"When there is plenty of wine, sorrow and worry take wing." - Ovid, "The Art of Love" (c. A.D. 8)

Ariel clearly wasn’t grape juice, because it had been fermented, which took all the sugar out. No sugar, no grape juice. Nature does grape juice with sugar. As a matter of fact, for Nature, sugar is kind of the whole point of grape juice.

Where to turn? For the government bureaucracies of ancient civilizations, it was a lot easier. Everyone knew that wine was God (or Goddess). Geshtinanna the Sumerian Wine Goddess, Roman Bachhus, Persian Spenta Amaiti—you get the idea.

The wine God was not the most stable brick in the load so you didn’t mess with him. It was simple. You don’t tax God. God taxes you. Since it is the firm opinion of the United States Government that wine is not God, it’s more complicated today.

After a year and half of discussions the US Government still couldn’t decide on what wine is. In classic governmental fashion, it opted instead to decide what wine is not. Here are the actual results. I’m not making this up. I could be, but I’m not. I don’t have to. The truth is weird enough all ready.

A Wine can be a banana, but a banana can’t be a wine. It’s a tax thing.

Wine is not a banana.

Due to issues of fermentation, this proved puzzling for all concerned. The definition of wine revolves around fruit. Indeed, one could make a banana wine if one was very strange. But, it was harder to argue that a wine is not a banana than that a banana is not a wine. Taxes and all that. Once you got over that part though, one could reasonably generalize that fact to include all fruit. Wine was probably not a watermelon either. Or, a cumquat.

Wine is not the amount of alcohol.

The government of the United States, as wonderful as it is, is probably not the best choice to define wine. You might know they’d use tax codes. Who would do that? Who would define wine by tax codes? Against all reason, obviously the government did. It seemed random, but then it had the virtue of being enforceable, which was a big plus for tax people.

When I was enjoying frank and open discussions with the FDA and the BATF in Washington over whether Ariel was wine or not, we did tests for alcohol levels in other food products.

We randomly took chocolate, oranges and Seven Up from a very successful health food chain in Los Angeles. All three of them had more alcohol than Ariel. The fresh orange juice was a killer. If drinking Ariel got you wild and crazy, then this orange juice should have been in jail. So, I mused, alcohol in orange juice is OK but not in grape juice. Fruit discrimination.

Like I said, I’m not about to try to tell you for sure what wine is, but it’s definitely not alcohol level. If it was, Ariel non-alcoholic wine really would be a banana. Or, an orange. Tax-wise and all.

Wine can be made by all manner of fruit. Unless you ask the IRS.

Wine is not alcohol itself.

If wine is not the presence of alcohol, maybe it was alcohol itself. But, then, if that were true, wouldn’t Vodka be wine? Vodka has a lot of alcohol. Especially, the ones I buy. You can make Vodka from grapes. Grape Vodka has never really caught on though. Lemon. Raspberry. Orange. Definitely. But, not grape.

It is true that the BATF wanted to make us call Ariel “other than standard wine” on the label. I told them we’d rather write “better than standard wine” but they wouldn’t go for that. Finally, it ended up being “wine without alcohol,” thereby federally decreeing that wine is not alcohol. See, I told you.

Wine is not fermented grape juice. It is probably fermented something, but grapes are irrelevant to whether or not it’s wine. Rice, barley, dandelions, blueberries, apples, pineapples, and pretty much anything else you can get to ferment by adding sugar to it are all wine.

Your general public drinker of wine will probably tell you that wine is fermented grape juice. But, how about Dandelion wine? That stuff your great grandmother used to make. Or, pineapple wine, always a favorite in Hawaii. Ginger wine from England is fortified with brandy (distilled grape juice). What’s that about? Is it wine or is it brandy? Can’t anybody make up their mind here?

Well, I deduced, wine is definitely something that’s been fermented. But, that could be yogurt. Or, sauerkraut. Clearly, more precision was needed. The IRS says that wine is fermented grape juice that is under 14% alcohol.

But, there are gold medal winning Napa Valley cabernets that are taxed as “dessert wines” because they are over 16% alcohol. So what are they? Nobody sober would drink these for dessert. But they are expensive and they win prizes.

Wine may or may not be God.

I’m not really qualified to answer that. I’ll leave that to you.