(PressDemocrat) - It’s the secret wine makers almost universally decline to admit: More additives are used in wine around the world today than ever before.

Which accounts for the fact that wine today is better than it has ever been.

The real problem is that no wine maker ever wants to admit to the use of additives, no matter how legal the practice, how beneficial, how benign or economical.

I got to thinking about this the other day when a wine maker and friend, in an off-the-record aside, admitted that he used gum arabic in some of his least expensive wines, which by coincidence I had praised for their remarkable value.

These were not great wines. Each sold for well under $7 a bottle. Twenty years ago similar wines would have been all but undrinkable.

Today they serve a useful purpose: they provide good values for those on a budget.

Gum arabic, sometimes called guar gum, is a byproduct of Acacia trees and helps to deal with unpleasant tannins in otherwise rough and rugged red wines. It is also widely used in the production of many foods.

I have spoken with literally thousands of wine makers in the nearly four decades I have written about wine, and rarely has anyone denied to my face the use of a legal additive. But their comments always start with, “Off the record….”

I know of only one additive that wine makers are so proud of they brag about it: French oak barrels. They are widely used to make the best cabernet sauvignons and thus the priciest.

Wine makers around the globe usually have a “little black box” that contains all sorts of things they add to a wine to improve it. In general, such additives benefit the consumer by giving the wine something the grapes never had in them. Or it deals with a problem that arises during production.

This is far more evident with inexpensive pinot noir than any other grape. It’s nearly impossible to make pinot taste like the grape when using mediocre fruit.

It’s one reason why truly great pinot noir costs a lot of money. Such greatness comes only from great grapes and great barrels, and such wines generally are made in only tiny amounts.