California wines are full of arsenic, or are they?

This week 83 bottles of Californian wine from 28 wineries were cited in a lawsuit as having dangerously high levels of arsenic. But, before we all panic, the person filing the lawsuit is Kevin Hicks, founder of Denver-based lab BeverageGrades, who happens to be marketing his company’s testing services to winemakers, who might now be unduly concerned about arsenic in their wine. Hoax or PR stunt?

On further investigation it seems you'd have to consume significant quantities of wine on a daily basis and therefore you'd have drunk yourself dead before the arsenic poisoning could harm you.

But the story could be damaging to the Californian wine industry (and beyond) in terms of the perception and the impression left in consumers' minds.

The CA Wine Institute has already discredited the report and issued a fact sheet at www.wineinstitute.org/resources/pressroom/03202015