Interesting article, as linked in WineTerroirist, on 750Daily:
750Daily:Reductive Notes
on why low-sulfur/no-sulfur “natural” wines can oft develop reductive notes.
Part of the article seems to admonish lovers of “natural” wines to “suck it up and live with it”.
Another interesting aspect of the article is that some/many of the “natural” winemaker will sterile filter rather than use added SO2 to insure shelf stability. Must be shocking to SweetAlice to hear they’re monkeying around with her “natural” wines.
Tom
I was thinking about this over the weekend. Drank a bottle of natural California syrah and it was flawed. Not a slight flaw but enough VA to make the wine hardly drinkable. I have had this producer’s Orange wine in the past and was blown away with how great it was so the syrah left me bummed. I thought about returning the bottle, or at least contacting the distributor or producer but backed off. “suck it up and live with it” was my decision since the distributor is all natty and the producer is a small operation led by one person.
I’m sorry to say that this article really does not make much sense at all. I understand the concept of some wines becoming ‘reductive’ during the fermentation process - clear signal that the yeast is stressed and that you either need to add nutrients or, more often, you need to give the wine oxygen. Unless you are completely absent from the fermentation process, you will smell this - and you will take action. This is true not only in the production of ‘natural’ wines but in any and all wine fermentations.
I personally have not experienced any ‘natural’ wines with reductive qualities - wondering if anyone else out there has? Please speak up so I can understand more.
As the article states, and as Hank mentioned above, you are bound to find the opposite happening a lot more - oxidative notes and lots and lots of VA, similar to many sour beers. With wine, without the use of SO2, you will always risk this happening.
Now this is NOT to say that you cannot produce wines sans soufre, as many on this board have pointed out. There are wonderful examples - just as their are wonderful examples of ‘natural wines’ that do not show either reductive or oxidative characteristics. But one of the biggest challenges with both of these types of wines is provenance in both shipping and storage - elevated temps are not good for any wine, but these types of wines are much more ‘fragile’ and stand a higher chance of being ‘affected’ by these temperature swings . . .
Cheers.
This is as stupid as it gets. A reduced wine is a faulty wine IMO. It should be delivered back to the retailer for a refund. Reduction has nothing to do with territory. Yes, some grapes are prone to be more reductive than others, but there are ways of handling that in the cellar. The non-sulfured, high tech, anti-natural Valreas of Grande Bellane is a good example of how to do a non-sulfured syrah.
Could not agree more - but try convincing ‘hip’ retailers of that concept . . .
Cheers
I’ve had plenty of reductive natural wines, some from Burgundy, lots from the Jura including classic producers like Puffeney. And plenty from CA as well. Also how can it not be at all related to “territory” when the YAN of the fruit is related to the nutrient uptake and soil profile?
And regarding taking action on reductive wines in barrel/tank, sure you can stir or circulate, but sometimes you’re just walking that line of how much oxygen is too much when you are trying to avoid oxidation without an additional sulfur add. We have also stirred with a copper rod, another “low intervention” trick that is an alternative to adding powdered copper sulfate. Both can only go so far when fruit is coming it at 80mg/L YAN and you don’t add any nutrient.