What's Actually Added to Most Wine — and What We Leave Out

Wine looks simple — grapes, time, a bottle. But conventional winemaking allows dozens of additives, and almost none of them have to appear on the label.

What can go into a conventional bottle

• Added sugar (chaptalization) to boost alcohol.
• Commercial yeasts engineered for a predictable flavor.
• Mega Purple and other grape-concentrate colorants to deepen color.
• Acids, tannin powder, and oak chips to fake structure and age.
• Fining agents and heavy filtration to strip the wine clean.
• Generous added sulfites to keep it all stable.

What we leave out

Low-intervention winemaking is defined by what's absent. The growers we work with ferment with native yeasts, add no sugar, use no industrial additives or colorants, and keep added sulfites minimal or at zero. What's left is grapes, fermented and bottled with intent.

Why it matters in the glass

Fewer inputs means a wine that tastes of its place and vintage, with texture and energy you can feel — not a formula engineered to taste the same every year.

Every wine in The Standing Case is made with nothing added. Build your case →