Anti-freeze nonsense (Re: Aussie red wines ...)

in news: snipped-for-privacy@g47g2000cwa.googlegroups.com...

You must be thinking of Austria, where someone put ethylene glycol in > their white wines to make it smoother and sweeter - a famous scandal in > its time (1985). > >

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The 1985 Austrian so-called "anti-freeze" wine scandal is a true scandal, but it's about journalists, not winemakers. The additive that a handful of winemakers used was diethylene glycol, a sweet food additive that is not anti-freeze. _Ethylene_ glycol is anti-freeze and is poisonous. However, some people publicized the additive wrongly as ethylene glycol (after all, if they themselves don't know one glycol from another, how could it be important?). "Diethylene glycol is in fact less toxic than alcohol, so adding it actually made the wines less poisonous." (From Tom Stevenson, _New Sotheby's Wine Encyclopedia,_ Third edition 2001, ISBN 0789480395.) Amazingly, the link above repeats this same long-discredited error.

The actual addition of d.e.g. was illegal I believe, via wine-nomenclature and labeling laws, but not a health issue. I recall one interesting side story as that some of the adulterated Austrian wine surfaced under German labels, via blending I think (another wine-labeling violation).

I'm cross-posting to AFW where this may belong (and where many knowledgeable people read, including from Austria).

Cheers -- Max

Reply to
Max Hauser
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There was a very long thread on this subject in relation to Austria in this group about a year ago. The subject is very complicated, and I see no need to drag this up again. However, if anyone is interested in the many complex details, you probably can find the thread using Google. Your quoted reference barely scratches the surface of this very complicated issue.

Reply to snipped-for-privacy@cwdjr.net .

Reply to
Cwdjrx _

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Diethylene glycol can be used as an anti-freeze, like a number of other water-soluble chemicals

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Thanks for the correction. I've got a Ph.D. in chemistry, and do understand the difference between monoethylene glycol, diethylene glycol and triethylene glycol (Ethane-1,2-diol, 3-Oxypentane-1,5-diol,

3,6-Dioxa-1,8-octanediol)though it is a lot easier if you see the structural formulas

HO-CH2CH2-OH, HO-CH2CH2-O-CH2CH2-OH, HO-CH2CH2-O-CH2CH2-O-CH2CH2-OH

This advantage won't have been shared by the British reporters who wrote the articles (in the Guardian and the Observer) where I originally heard about the scandal, and I'm not surprised that I wasn't exposed to this information at the time.

It may seem odd that British science journalists don't have to have had any kind of science education to qualify them for the job, but it is part of the same delusion that lets the British establishment see themselves as omnicompetent superior people, rather than slap-dash amateurs. The most intelligent British manager I ever worked for still managed to make the occasional idiotic decision because he didn't have the time to work through the detailed reasoning that had led us to specific recommendaions about (crucial) matters of detail that didn't fit his (necessarily) over-simplified global model, and was arrogant enough to over-ride our recommendations.

------- Bill Sloman, Nijmegen

Reply to
bill.sloman

Which has nothing whatsoever to do with the fact that it's far less toxic than alcohol. With an average adulteration of 3 g/l of DEG, to get toxic effects, you have to drink something like 30 to

50 liters of wine - which would have killed you long before from the 100 g/l of ethanol to be found in wine.

M.

Reply to
Michael Pronay

I recall the ethylene glycol scandal---it took almost 15 years for Austrian wines to be any factor in the market.

Talk about overkill a few stores in Maryland didn't remove Austrian wines from shelves. Instead they put shrink wrap around them and hung signs saying something like "Sales of these wines suspended until further notice" This left an impression with consumers and of course wine buyers that something was wrong with wines from Austria. The irony was there could be

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wine-nomenclature

Reply to
Joseph B. Rosenberg

Hi Bill -- of course my posting on this wasn't aimed at you at all, but at the misconception behind the "anti-freeze" story, which somehow refuses to die. It is an unusually harmful example of a technical misconception becoming popular. My point is not so much about journalistic technical hubris as journalistic irresponsibility. This created a public perception of poisoned products that wrongly stigmatized a whole nation's wine and killed its sales dead. I don't know the whole history of the case, but isn't this exactly why many publications do fact-checking, and why we have libel laws?

in news: snipped-for-privacy@g43g2000cwa.googlegroups.com...

I for one am surprised that what wine experts consider a long-discredited harmful misconception, which popular wine reference books clarify plainly, is still asserted in a February 2005 article by a current journalist, Jeni Port (in article cited in the earlier link). And who knows where else.

Reply to
Max Hauser

"Cwdjrx _" in news: snipped-for-privacy@storefull-3173.bay.webtv.net...

Thanks for the reference, I found a thread, February 2005, I believe I followed it at the time. It mostly restates what is also in the standard Anglophone wine reference books (Stevenson which I quoted; _Oxford Companion to Wine_ first and second editions) and many other printed accounts current at the time and since. (By the way I value the Merck Index too, I have both ancient and modern editions, and many related references.) Glycols, glycerin, glycine, etc. in general are slightly sweet to the taste, by the way -- that 's how they were named. (Grk. "glyka" = sweets.)

One can dive into minutiae of the case and the chemicals to the extent of losing sight of the main reality Stevenson summarized. The adulterations weren't a health issue, and the confusion of chemical names made them sound so. Surely it's proper to raise this topic again, and if necessary in the future, if writers still promote the old misconception.

Reply to
Max Hauser

Hi Leo, please also see my recent AFW posting on this subject, not cross-posted to SED.

I'll confirm Cwdjrx's February citation of a recent Merck Index oral rat LD50 (50% lethality level) for diethylene glycol of 20.76 g/kg of body weight, and add the badly needed comparison, which I haven't seen in the technical citations so far here, which is ethyl alcohol's corresponding LD50, "13.0 ml/kg" (same source -- these are standard sources, rather than online ones), which at anhydrous density of 0.80 g/ml is 16.25 g/kg. In other words it takes more ethylene glycol than alcohol to kill a rat.

(I am missing the appeal of the minutiae of, or what look almost like defenses of, the old misconception -- as if it were an old friend. This is all Very Old News, discussed for years among people acquainted with the Austria episode. No, I don't advocate drinking diethylene glycol. No, that's not the point.)

Cheers -- Max

Reply to
Max Hauser

"Max Hauser" in news: snipped-for-privacy@corp.supernews.com...

Sorry about the arithmetic above. 13 ml/kg x 0.8 g/ml = 10.4 g/kg for alcohol's LD50. The case is stronger than stated above.

Reply to
Max Hauser

Whoever wrote about media behavior(I got lost in Chemistry 106-has half the story. The retailer themselves fueled the doubts. Why:

1) Austrian wine were distributed & imported by small firms--the only things that sols were the nectars which were 60-75% of the German prices 2) The stores wanted to show they were concerned about health issues---you can't imagine how much concern there was when the BATF mandated "Contains Sulfites" on all label. I was working retail then. Many consumers refused to buy wines that had the sulfite notice, explaining to them that the wines they liked always had sulfites evoked the response "should I go to the Doctor, I've been drinking this poison for twenty years/" We used magazine & newspaper articles to overcome the phobias but then if a wine didn't have the sulfite notice the customer was concerned unless it said "organic". So retailers could take a stand on Austrian wine without hurting their favorite wholesaler. BTW stores that would not carry South African Wine even after the end of apartheid, were the most vociferous in proclaiming their expulsion of Austrian from their premises.

  1. The detritus of the Roman Leimer scandal---Mr. Leimer brought Austrian wines into the East Coast in the late 70's early 80's following the path pf Kermit Lynch & Terry Thiese. Stores loved him because prices were low and he gave away free goods and so the store made a little extra profit on each sale. One day a truck Mr., Leimer was driving caught on fire and he was pronounced dead, Wine writers wrote touching obituaries about this pioneer. Then about two weeks later Virginia State Police revealed that Mr. Leimer was alive and well in New Orleans and the bones that were found were from a pig. Mr. Leimer owed almost everyone he dealt with and he faked his death. Stores were deprived of his product as there were no more shipments and except for Brundelmeyer there were no more Austrian wine to buy for a few years.

Reply to
Joseph B. Rosenberg

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