Serendipity: A Bit Of Esoteric Wine History
I was searching the Government Printing Office’s site while researching an article, and I stumbled across the record for this 1986 document titled “Imported wines : identifying and removing wines contaminated with diethylene glycol.”
Sadly, the document’s not available online: Maybe I’ll look it up the next time I’m at the library. Because the reason why there’s a 1986 report about diethylene glycol in wine is that the year before, the international press went ballistic upon learning that a few Austrian producers in the Thermenregion had been adding that chemical to their wine. At the time, Austria followed Germany’s lead and made tankfuls of cloying wine. Diethylene glycol allowed wine makers to sweeten wine even when the grapes didn’t have enough sugar. This might not be a problem, except that diethylene glycol is related to ethylene glycol, an ingredient in antifreeze. (Diethylene glycol is significantly less toxic.)
When the additive was discovered, it obliterated the Austrian wine industry’s international presence. No one would touch the wines for years. But that event shaped the modern-day industry: It wiped out the large producers who had relied on voluminous sales and cleared the way for small producers with integrity to enter the spotlight. It also reversed the trend toward sweeter wines: Today, Austria’s non-dessert whites are bone-dry, in contrast to Germany’s. The incident also spawned every joke about antifreeze in the wine, including the one in the first season of The Simpsons.
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