Sulphur and Oxygen: the salt and pepper of winemaking

When I watch those celebrity chefs on TV I’m always struck by the amount of salt they add to their dishes, ignoring those warnings about what is ‘safe’ for us in the pursuit of something hedonistically ‘beautiful’ for our sense of taste.  Call me reckless, but I’d rather die at 89 having eaten beautifully than live to 92 having eaten safely.

On every bottle of wine you’ll find the safety message, “Contains sulphur dioxide”.   Sulphur has been added to wine for about as long as we’ve added salt to our food.  It is added at various stages of the wine making process for two reasons: to protect the wine from the effects of oxidation; and to prevent the growth of spoilage bacteria.   Without it, wine would be vinegar; nice for salads, but not for drinking.

Whilst wine needs some sulphur it also needs a little oxygen in the wine making process to balance the sulphur.  Using sulphur completely without oxygen produces ugly aromas like ‘burnt-match’, ‘garlic’ or ‘rotten egg’.  Furthermore a little oxygen is important to some styles of wine.  Red wines generally get less sulphur and more oxygen than whites to soften their tannins.  So sulphur and oxygen are to wine flavour what salt and pepper are to food: the basic ingredients of great chefs and winemakers.

At Summertown Wine Café one of the 12 wines to taste this month is the Henriques & Henriques 1995 Madeira.  Although highly oxidised, it is one of the most extraordinary and delicious wines you’ll ever discover: come and try it.

Rob Malcolm