Lawsuit Claims That Your Favorite Wine Contains Arsenic

Bad news for cheap wine lovers and broke 20-somethings everywhere–many beloved budget wine brands just got slammed with a class-action lawsuit filed yesterday in California. Allegations are being made that some of those wines include unsafe levels of arsenic.

The brands named in the lawsuit include Franzia, Menage a Trois, Sutter Home, Wine Cube, Charles Shaw, Glen Ellen, Cupcake, Beringer, and Vendage. These are all pretty popular brands–Franzia actually call itself “the world’s most popular wine,” and consistently has extremely high sales.

The arsenic contamination was found by a company called BeverageGrades, founded by Kevin Hicks, who previously worked in the wine distribution business. The Denver-based company started running tests on different brands of wine to see what sorts of ingredients are found in the most popular ones. The lab looked at 1,300 different kinds of wine and terrifyingly, approximately one quarter of them tested for a high level of arsenic.

Hicks did say that there were some odd trends in the wines that tested positive, however. The cheaper the wine, the more arsenic Hicks’ lab detected. Also, the problem appeared to be with white wines from the aforementioned brands, but not necessarily from the red.

Hicks filed the class-action lawsuit after he claims that he tried to bring the issue to the attention of the wine producers, and they ignored him. The lawsuit alleges that the companies misrepresented themselves to customers.

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) does allow some arsenic in water, as small amounts aren’t necessarily harmful. Some of the wines though had up to 500 percent of what the EPA allows in drinking water. However, the wine producers argue that using water as a comparison doesn’t make much sense. After all, we drink a lot more water than we do wine, so overall arsenic intake from wine won’t be as high. While our federal government doesn’t regulate how much arsenic can be in wine, Canada’s does. The arsenic levels found in the American wines would have passed under the Canadian standard, even though it’s above the EPA standards for water. That doesn’t necessarily mean that those levels of arsenic are acceptable. Allan Smith, associate director of the Arsenic Health Effects research program at U.C. Berkeley, told CBS that arsenic, even in very small amounts, is very dangerous.

Whether or not this lawsuit will actually go anywhere remains to be seen as it was just filed this week. There are certainly some questions about the validity of Hicks’ claims as well, as when CBS News tried to check his results, they didn’t yield nearly as much arsenic as he claimed.

The companies will presumably be arguing against the allegations. Some of the companies involved in the suit, including Trader Joes, have already said that they are in compliance with all existing regulations.

It’s no surprise that cheap wine isn’t the best thing out there for you, but the fact that it has quite that much arsenic is somewhat surprising. If anything, maybe this lawsuit will push the U.S. government toward more regulation of the wine industry.

Anneliese Mahoney

Anneliese Mahoney is Managing Editor at Law Street and a Connecticut transplant to Washington D.C. She has a Bachelor’s degree in International Affairs from the George Washington University, and a passion for law, politics, and social issues. Contact Anneliese at amahoney@LawStreetMedia.com.