Recently, in the Mid-Autumn Festival food safety supervision and sampling information released on the website of the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region Market Supervision and Administration Bureau, a batch of ice red wines with the trademark "Fire City" were notified unqualified. The announcement shows that the batch of unqualified products is produced by "Turpan Silk Road Liquor Co., Ltd." and contains "sucralose" ingredients.
In the national standard of "GB/T 25504-2010 Ice Wine" issued in 2011, it is clearly stipulated that "no sugar source is allowed in the production process". Can a product that violates the definition of the national standard still be called ice red wine? The unqualified products of the "wind crime" lifted the lid on the ice wine chaos.
01
With the same Silk Road IP, the product quality is uneven
After the announcement was issued, it aroused the attention of people in the wine industry. On the one hand, "ice wine" is one of the potential products of domestic high-end wines at present, with broad prospects for development; on the other hand, the enterprise behind this "Fire City" brand is named "Turpan Silk Road Wine", which has a similar name to "Xinjiang Silk Road Winery", but the product quality is very different.
This "Silk Road" is not another "Silk Road".
According to the Tianyancha APP, "Turpan Silk Road Wine Co., Ltd." was established in August 2001, the address is the supply and marketing cooperatives in Daheyan Town, Turpan City, Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, with a registered capital of 500,000 yuan, the business scope is the manufacture and sale of wine, and there are two pieces of "unqualified sampling" related information on the news and public opinion interface.
The Xinjiang Silk Road Winery, located in the Ili River Valley region, with a registered capital of 18 million yuan, registered the trademark "Silk Road Winery" as early as 2000, and after 20 years of dedicated development, it has been well known as a business card in Xinjiang. In recent years, Silk Road Winery has won nearly 200 domestic and foreign awards.
WBO noted that there are more than a dozen trading houses that were established between 2011 and 2020 when "Silk Road Winery" was entered into the Tianyan inspection. The IP "Silk Road" is originally taken from the moral of the adventure story of the Silk Road, but under the common good meaning, the quality of the product is uneven.
In a certain liquor investment website, "Turpan Silk Road Co., Ltd." has more than 20 products on the shelves, including a number of products named "ice wine", in the investment information, the LOGO is vague, and there is no clear product introduction. It is worth noting that the product named "Snow Top Premium Ice Wine" is marked as "Turpan" by origin.
02
"Ice wine" from hot appellations
As we all know, Xinjiang is located in the golden dimension of grape cultivation, with a vast area and a long distance between production areas, and there are also differences in grape varieties suitable for growth.
Mass production of ice wine, hot and arid Turpan appellations exist for suitable species?
According to public information, the canadian wine merchants quality alliance (VOA) ice wine implementation standards are generally recognized by the industry, stipulating that the picking and pressing temperature can not exceed -8 ° C; in addition, the "Chinese Grape Winemaking Technical Specification" that began to be implemented in 2003 also set corresponding standards for ice wine: the grapes are delayed harvesting, when the temperature is lower than -7 ° C, so that the grapes remain on the branches for a certain period of time, freeze, and then harvest, press, and the wine made with this grape juice is ice wine.
Strictly speaking, to meet the low temperature frost, long winter, sudden cold and hot climate, there are very few production areas in China that have the conditions to brew ice wine. According to the ecological zoning of ice wine grapes by agricultural experts, from the climatic data from 1981 to 2010, the suitable areas for ice wine grapes are mainly distributed in the southern part of the northeast plain, and the eastern foothills of the southern part of the Daxinganling Mountains and the Ili region of Xinjiang are sub-suitable areas, subject to the snowfall conditions before picking, and the vintage and yield of ice wine can be produced are small.
Since the Ili River Valley region and the Turpan region are separated by nearly a thousand kilometers, in response to the question of "whether the Turpan appellation can produce ice wine", WBO interviewed Zhang Yi (pseudonym), the sales director of a winery in the Turpan Basin, and Zhang Yi confirmed WBO's speculation: "The climate difference between the Turpan appellation and the Ili River Valley is large, the turpan appellation has a higher temperature, the sunshine time is longer, so there is more dry white and sweet white, and there is no pure ice wine at present."
"Among the grape varieties that can make ice wine, Riesling has a kind in Turpan, and there may also be some brands that try to make ice wine." Zhang Yi told WBO, "However, based on regional consumption habits, the output of white grapes in the Turpan region can be said to be very small, and mass production of ice wine is basically impossible." ”
03
Bad money drives out good money, the hidden danger of the industry
In recent years, with the continuous popularity of the ice wine category, inferior wine under the banner of "ice wine" has appeared in the market, with low prices, simple design, exaggerated publicity, and rubbing edges, which is the consistent label of these products. Due to its scarcity, the real "ice wine" is usually priced several times that of ordinary wine, and it is precisely because of this that it is squeezed into the living space by inferior wine. WBO believes that in addition to the price factor, there are the following reasons for the circulation of inferior liquor:
First, consumer awareness is insufficient. As a relatively fresh category, China's ice wine is still in its infancy. A person in charge of a winery that has been engaged in the wine industry for many years told WBO that at present, in addition to a few manufacturers in China who have the conditions and technology for the production of ice wine, similar and imitation ice wines are more common in the market and are easy to attract the attention of consumers. Some consumers confuse the concepts of "ice wine" with "frozen wine".
Second, the system is not standardized and the implementation is not in place. In terms of system, at present, the national standard only "defines" ice wine, and there is no mandatory standard except for the provision that "sugar sources are not allowed in the production process". According to Cai Longlin of Liaoning Sanhe Wine Co., Ltd., the current domestic ice wine "as long as it meets the brewing conditions of ice wine, in principle, it is possible".
In terms of implementation, since 2009, Zhangyu Golden Ice Valley Ice Wine and Dongning Ice Wine have been successively established as ice wine geographical indication protection products. As for other "rubbing heat" products, such as "blueberry ice wine", they are actually "playing edge ball" and "playing word games", which do not belong to the category of ice wine, but are not clearly regulated.
Third, the cost of forgery and OEM is low, and bad merchants have a fluke mentality. For how to identify wines produced by unsatisfactory methods such as sugar and grape juice or artificial frozen grapes, Cai Longlin said that professional knowledge is needed, "To identify inferior ice wine, you need to pass physical and chemical tests, or professionals need to identify through taste and flavor." ”
As a sunrise industry, the rise of domestic wine is a long road, in the face of a complex market, in the face of imported wine and inferior wine "internal and external attack", beware of bad currency expelling good money, in order to get long-term development.