Why Wine Has More Alcohol Than Ever

In the 1970s, actor-turned-Paul-Masson-wine-pitchman Orson Welles admonished, “We shall sell no wine before its time.”

These days, Welles might say, “We shall sell no wine before it’s practically a distilled spirit.”

A new study from the University of California found that the alcohol content in the majority of wines, both white and red, sold in the world over the last decade is, on average, 0.42% higher than claimed on the label.

That number may seem small—who’s getting drunk on 0.42% extra alcohol?—but it is an example of the steady increase in wine’s alcohol content in recent years.

James T. Lapsley, Ph.D, a Professor of Viticulture at the University of California, Davis—who co-authored a 2011 paper on the subject for the Journal of Wine Economics, tellingly titled “Too Much of a Good Thing?”—claims that the grape sugar levels in wine have increased between 7 and 10 percent over the past few decades.


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