sulfites

[Dick Peterson]

I don't know why anyone would want to drink sulfite free wine. I've tasted several and without exception they were badly oxidized, usually microbial, spoiled liquids without any appeal at all. No fruit, most tasted like vegetable soup; just dead wines.

It's true that most yeasts produce greater or lesser amounts of SO2 during the fermentation. This has the effect of preserving the flavor from oxidation and from bacterial attack. But most of the commercial yeasts in use today don't produce enough to make the wine keep on its own, so winemakers have to add a few parts per million during and after the fermentation.

SO2 slowly disappears from wine because it is oxidized by air a little easier than wine flavors are. So in being oxidized itself to innocuous sulfate, SO2 preserves wine flavor by keeping the oxygen away. I, too, don't believe that anyone REALLY is allergic to ingested SO2. A very miniscule percentage of brittle asthmatics apparently are quite sensitive to INHALED SO2. But the human system is very good at metabolizing the piddling amount of dissolved SO2 (a very few ppm) that occurs in a bottle of wine.