(NWW) - Potassium Sorbate (K-sorbate) is a relatively recent wine additive (it only first started to be used about 50 years ago), used primarily as a preservative to help prevent re-fermentation of sweet or semi-sweet wines. It is widely used in many types of foods ranging from cheese and yogurt to dried fruit and meat. It is even used in cosmetics to help give them a stable shelf life. It is generally considered as safe, having about the same toxicity as table salt. To be honest, I hadn’t heard much of wineries using K-sorbate before returning to Minnesota, and had never used it in off-dry or sweet wines in either Alsace or Australia, and now I get questions about it on a regular basis. So, I’ve been doing a bit of research on it lately and figured I’d share with you what I have learned.