Adulterated?
Doc Vino brings up a question near and dear to my heart as it involves Austrian wine. Weingut Leth, along the Danube in Austria's Donauland region (not too terribly far from the Wachau), follows an unusual practice with its well-aged wines:
"Franz personally uncorks all of the older vintages as they are withdrawn from the winery's cellar. If they are bad, he discards them. If they are good, he tops them up with the current vintage, adds a shot of SO2 and recorks them.
On the one hand, this is amazing for the consumer since it brings the risk of buying an older vintage of Leth to near zero. This is as close as you get in the wine biz to a guarantee. Buyers would no doubt be willing to pay a premium for it. And Leth probably demands it since they must pour lots of wine down the drain that other wineries might be happy to sell to cnosumers who didn't know any better."
The comments on this post begin with..."it is adulteration" But, is it? I would imagine that the topping up adds less than 5% to each bottle's volume. Thus, for example, a wine that is 97% 1989 and 3% 2006 is still by any definition an '89 vintage. Or is it?
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