If you have ever drunk a bottle of wine made the "old-fashioned" way (stomped grape juice put in a barrel in a warm, damp cave for a few weeks/months) then you will understand both why wars were fought and industrial winemaking looks to chemistry.
Between what was between the toes of the grapestompers and what was floating in the air was the difference between something Rectalavius needed Naveluum to hold a spear on him to drink it and what you could buy whole provinces for with a few clay jugs of the stuff. And every what came out of the cave changed depending on which way the winds were blowing. Sometimes just a bit, sometimes a lot.
When customers began wanting more wine that tasted pretty much the same from batch to batch and year to year they started adding stuff to do certain things so that it would all come out that way.
From expereience I will tell you that synthesyzing distilled spirits is a whole lot easier that synthesyzing wine. Back when I had access to the ingredients I could whip up a bottle of 10-, or 20-, or 30-year old Scotch or a gallon of gin in less than half an hour. Run it through a gas chromatograph and the machine would swear it was the real stuff. Even with all the necessary engredients it was more difficult to produce anything that was not Annie Greensprings (for those hippies out there who still remember that taste).
IMHO if it were not for the unholy influence of the wine snobs who want to be able to pick out Brand C every time, the industry would go back to living with the variations and celebrating them. If that were to happen, last Thursday afternoon's Two-Buck Chuck could compete with the post 1870s Lafite Rothchilds' for vintage snobbery.
stay safe.
