I haven’t had a chance to open Jamie Goode’s new book, Flawless: Understanding Faults in Wine, but he seems like the perfect man to review natural wines. And he has – in parody form – on his blog: A clichéd natural wine producer review.
A couple of parts I particularly liked:
[T]heir white [is] a blend of most of the white grapes on the estate. Chardonnay, Sauvignon, Pinot Blanc, Garganega and Petit Manseng. These were all harvested together and whole-bunch pressed, and went to old barrels without settling, where it fermented using indigenous yeasts and no sulfites. Two of the four barrels went reductive and one developed a bit of mousiness. After 8 months in bottle, the wine was blended into tank and bottled unfiltered and unfined. Analysis showed it had a pH of 2.8 and a TA of 14 g/l, but they are happy because they say that they are acid freaks and you can’t have too much acidity. VA was 1.3 g/litre, and residual sugar was 6 g/l because one of the barrels stuck. The wine has strong matchstick reduction with searing acidity and flavours of lemons, lime, honey, bruised apple and disappointment. There’s also a slight vinegary edge, and a gentle taper on the finish into strong mousiness. This demonstrates that it is possible to have reduction and oxidation in the same wine. The wine is also slightly spritzy because it decided to do some malolactic fermentation in bottle.
Next up: their orange wine. … So they took a couple of tons of white grapes (Catarrato, Muscat and Riesling) and fermented them on the skins in a couple of macro bins, one of which was whole bunch (the destemmer broke half way through vintage). After fermentation slowed down, they covered the bins and added some carbon dioxide and left them in the corner of the cellar. Six weeks later after a holiday to New Zealand they were moving some barrels and they rediscovered the ferments (which they sheepishly admit to having forgotten about), so they pressed them off to and old foudre and left the wine without sulfites for another 6 months… The wine is a copper colour with a hint of vinegar, some grippy tannins, attractive apricot and peach notes, and a strong medicinal, phenolic, germolene edge. When someone suggested the wine might have brett, they were surprised, but lab analysis showed a 4EP level of 2600 mg/litre. They admit that this might have something to do with the pH of 4.2 and the absence of any added sulfites.
The idea that natural wine makers aren’t good winemakers as a whole is as silly as natural wine lovers thinking everything not natural wine is spoofed wine.
He prefaces this by saying: “I love natural wine (well, whatever that is…), but as with any style of wine there’s good and there’s bad and then there’s some stuff in the middle. So, here in a spirit of friendly fun-poking, here is my prototype clichéd natural wine producer review.”
Jamie has also written reams of praise for wines that fall into the natural wine category, so he’s not just taking cheap shots at natural wine and that context matters to me. Here’s an example of a more nuanced post: The Real Wine Fair, some thoughts – Jamie Goode's wine blog.
Of their red, he says, “The grapes hand picked at varying maturities (the average was 19 Brix, and they picked five weeks earlier than their neighbours in late July)… This infusion-style wine is a pale red in colour, and tart and acidic, with notes of cranberry, herbs, undergrowth, green apples and regret.”
Timely post John. The group I taste with met up last week and looked at “alternative whites”. I took a natural field blend made in 2016 from a cultish producer in Tasmania. It was terrible. Below is the group TN.
Yellow in colour and very cloudy. Sulphides, burnt rubber, stale cider granny smith apples and laundry detergent. The flat apple cider follows through to the palate, almost to the point of apple puree, and there’s crisp acidity. The blend consists of sauvignon blanc, chardonnay, Riesling and pinot blanc.
We have a winner! Great guess Graeme. It was my first wine from Simha and I was quite honestly looking forward to it expecting something both unique and palatable. I was quite disappointed. It didn’t seem like a bottling fault either and was under stelvin so my expectation is that the wine was like this before bottling.