In many cases, mulled wine ingredients are more than unclear

Ingredients and nutritional values ​​are usually missing on the bottle
In the pre-Christmas season, mulled wine is a particularly popular drink. However, anyone who uses a ready-made preparation in the bottle may buy "the cat in a poke". As informed by the Bavarian Consumer Advice Center, the consumer usually does not learn anything about the actual ingredients of the hot drink due to incomplete or missing information. The reason for this is the Europe-wide valid Food Information Regulation, according to which manufacturers of alcoholic beverages do not have to provide a list of ingredients and nutritional values.
Verbraucherzentrale Bayern is testing 22 ready-to-use mulled wines
How much sugar is in this mulled wine? Does the intense taste of real spices or artificial aromas come? Questions like these usually remain unanswered for consumers. Because according to information of the consumer center Bavaria is on the labels of most bottles not recognizable, from which the alcoholic beverage is exactly.

Ingredients in mulled wine often not mentioned. Picture: drubig-photo - fotolia

The VZ had randomly sampled 22 ready-to-serve (including six organic) products from retail outlets and verified to what extent labels such as "just natural flavors", "fine spice composition", "selected reds" and "traditional recipe" actually matched the ingredients. Since March 2015, it has been stated, among other things, that mulled wine must contain at least 7% by volume of alcohol, only certain sugars and no added water.

Only two products with an informative list of ingredients
It turned out that the quality promises could only be reproduced with two organic products ("hot deer" from Denns and "fairtrade mulled wine" from Tengelmann) through an ingredient list. For all other mulled wines, the testers groped in the dark, as there were no lists of ingredients or nutritional information on the bottles. This would be because - unlike most other foods - for drinks with an alcohol content above 1.2 percent by volume, ingredients and nutritional values ​​would not have to be declared on the bottle, informs the Consumer Center.

According to the experts, this is "completely incomprehensible: it contradicts any logic that the Europe-wide Food Information Regulation allows exceptions here." Consumers should instead be able to understand what is in the bottle with alcoholic mixed drinks, liqueurs and spirits. Accordingly, the Consumer Center calls on the German legislator to work with the European Commission for a quick correction of the special status of alcoholic beverages, so that information on ingredients and nutritional values ​​become mandatory in the future. (No)