No Sulfites Added

At Frey Vineyards, we pride ourselves on being a no sulfites added winery, making only wines that are produced without any chemicals added. A lot of people don’t understand what sulfites are, why they are used in winemaking, and why we would choose not to use them. In this episode of Frey Vines, Molly Frey sat down with Eliza Frey to discuss all things sulfite. We hope that this will shed some light for those of you curious about this synthetic additive and why we are committed to making exclusively no sulfites added wines at Frey.

You can listen to this podcast and all of the Frey Vines episodes on your favorite podcast streaming platforms. Or, you can watch and listen on our YouTube Channel.

MOLLY FREY: Welcome to the 9th episode of Frey Vines, the podcast dedicated to telling the story of organic wine. In this episode, we’ll focus on why we are a no-sulfites-added winery. We’ll break down what sulfites are used for, and why we’ve chosen not to add them to any of our wines. 

ELIZA FREY:  In mainstream chemical wine making people add sulfites at a lot of different phases of the process. A lot of wineries who are involved in kind of larger production wine, their grapes sometimes travel very far between the vineyard and where they're being processed. And so sulfites will be added in the fields directly to bins to keep the fruit from browning and changing and oxidizing. 

So sulfites are used as an antioxidant and to slow down the natural processes. They kind of freeze the natural processes of wines. So sulfites are added in the field. They're often added in certain amounts at the crusher: so directly when the wine is leaving a truck and going into a tank. And then there's a really wide variety of how winemakers use sulfites, what form they use them in, how much they use. So, you know, to kind of say that there's one formula isn't really fair; I think there's a lot more nuance and a lot of people are very selective about how they use them.

But definitely sulfite additions can happen at several times throughout the wine-making process. And what usually happens is there's a target final sulfite level that they will adjust at bottling. And so there are different regulations about sulfite use. The legal limit for any kind of sulfites is like 350 parts per million, which is quite high, and a lot of winemakers stay below that.

The legal limit for added sulfites for wines made from organically grown grapes is a hundred parts per million. And so oftentimes what vintners will do is they will check the sulfite levels in the tank as they're getting ready to bottle, and then they'll do a calculation of, of how much they want to add to reach their final target in, in the finished bottle.

MOLLY: It’s important to interject that not all organic wines are qualified the same way. There are currently two tiers of organic wine certification. The first tier is the category of “Made with Organic Grapes.” In this category, wine-makers have organic grapes, but are still allowed to use sulfites in the wine. In the USDA certified organic wine category, which is distinguished by an actual USDA organic seal on the label of the organic wine, no sulfites are allowed to be added at any step of the winemaking process from harvest to bottling. Frey Vineyards makes every wine without the addition of any sulfites, so you can find the USDA Organic seal on every label of every bottle of wine that we produce. 

The Biodynamic winemaking certification currently allows for wines to have sulfites up to a hundred parts per million in the finished bottle. However, at Frey Vineyards, we are committed to providing wines that have no sulfites added at any step of the process; so all of our Biodynamic wines are certified Biodynamic by Demeter and also certified Organic by the USDA. So, our Biodynamic wines feature both the Demeter and the USDA Organic seals on our labels. 

ELIZA: Some people have very strong feelings about sulfites that you simply can't make a good wine without sulfites, or you need them or they aren't the cause of a headache or, you know, all these different things. And for us, what it really boils down to, is our commitment from the inception to make the purest, greenest wine that we can.

And so we don't really like to involve ourselves in opinions of whose wine is better, you know, this or that. But our commitment is just to make a good organic wine. And so we skip sulfites at every step during the wine making process. And we’ve found that, you know, with attention to cleanliness, being aware of keeping wines safe from too much oxygen exposure, you know, we make wines and ship them all over the world without sulfites, and they're wonderful. So sulfites are not something that we miss or that we wish we had access to. We feel quite satisfied making wines the way we do, and we feel like we're getting the results we want with the least intervention.

Definitely excluding synthetic preservatives at every step in the wine making process. Yeah, so those are some of the ways that other vintners will use sulfites. And here at Frey Vineyards, you know, from the beginning we just, our goal was really to make an absolutely pure and organic beverage, and so we've really stuck with that.

MOLLY: For questions or comments about the content shared here, Frey Vineyards, or Frey wines, you can email info@freywine.com or call 1 800 760 3739. Our retail staff is happy to help you Monday through Friday, 9am to 5pm Pacific Standard Time. Thank you for joining us for this episode of the Frey Vines Podcast, telling the story of organic grapes. We hope you'll tune in for our next episodes when we'll pluck more storied fruits off the Frey Vines. To purchase any of our no sulfites added wines, you can visit the Frey Wine Shop. Cheers!