Iâve had good and bad natural wines. I can see the appeal for some. Iâm not a big fan as I donât trust them to be free of spoilage. I prefer wines with aged complexity and the risk associated with cellaring natural wines is too high.
Iâm all for sustainable and organic farming. And for minimal intervention if the end result is more to my taste. But to claim the best practices are those used millennia ago doesnât make sense to me. Iâm not ready to give up barrel aging or indoor plumbing. After saying âeverything is bottled - bits and all,â the âitâs totally pureâ line from Riffault hits the arrogance and ignorance exacta.
Iâm starting to believe that being the antithesis to this sort of wine is exactly the appeal for a lot of natural wine fans in this new generation. The most famous wines for cellaring in Bordeaux, Burgundy, Barolo, etc are priced well out of their zone and have a waiting list/chain of access impossible to crack. Many of the noted natural producers are fairly new, and this generation is getting in on the ground floor without having to wait for them to mature and enjoy. A lot of the emphasis is on the âprocessâ instead of the quality of the vineyard (in fact a lot of producers speak about using âorphanedâ or âforgottenâ sites), so they donât have have to be tied to the cost of the most expensive terroirs. Even the desired flavor profiles run contrary to the âtraditionalâ. The natural wine fans really arenât concerned with the same wine standards for what they would consider âgreatâ and cellar potential isnât one of them.
I see nothing wrong with those who prefer natural wine, whether itâs because they prefer the flavor profiles to the aged complexity of the classics, or if itâs in rebellion to price or tradition. The proselytizing is what bothers me, especially when value judgments are presented as facts.
âWine is passed thru electrical fields to prevent buildup of calcium and potassium crystalsâ. Not heard of this technique before. Can somebody edumacate me??
Tom
We were in Copenhagen in June, and yes, natural wines are a thing there. So many local bars and restaurants were serving them, it was almost impossible to avoid them. However, I must admit, I enjoyed most of them. Some were a bit âdifferent,â some were fun, many enjoyable, but almost none that I would want to buy a bottle of unless it was cheap and for quaffing on the patio. They were tasty and fun, and perfect for drinking as you watch the world walk by.
What year was this article written? It seems like a recycle from ten years ago, not 2018. And who is the author? Seems like some douche who doesnât know much about wine discovered that there was a group of people who championed ânatural wineâ. That was the most exciting discovery of his or her life and had to be shared.
And ignoring reason and history, the writer jumps right in:
In a way, they represent a return to the core elements that made human beings fall in love with wine when we first began making it, around 6,000 years ago. . .Their ambition is to strip away the artificial trappings that have developed in tandem with the industryâs decades-long economic boom, and let wine be wine.
As if 6000 years ago people would have eschewed air conditioning, refrigeration, clean water, antibiotics, lice-free bodies, and wine that wouldnât turn to vinegar or something worse within weeks, if not days? Those âcore elementsâ would be vermin, bacterial spoilage, VA, maybe some risk of disease from the rats that scurried about the pots and pans?
And he needs to learn a little history.
In the 1950s, the area had started making âbeaujolais nouveauâ, a cheap, easy-drinking wine that was produced quickly and released early in the season.
Imagine that! And here I assumed that most wine regions produced a young wine to celebrate the harvest. In fact, that was probably the only wine produced for thousands of years. I thought it was 1985 or thereabouts that the region decided the release of the nouveau would always be a Thursday because that gave people the whole weekend to celebrate.
ChĂąteau Palmer makes dense, highly concentrated wines that wonât age into their full potential for decades. It is wine for the yacht, the private jet and the futures market.
Well, GregâŠstated a bit more strongly than I would haveâŠbut pretty much have to agree. The author (whoever he be) makes it sound
like itâs natural winemakers against the rest of the evil wine industry. I think weâve heard this story a fair number of times before.
Itâs getting a little threadbare. Most of these articles tries to set it up as us vs. them. They ignore the fact that there is a whole spectrum
of winemakers that donât fall in either camp. That occupy the middle groundâŠusing some of the ânaturalâ winemaking techniques, but are,
first & foremost, focused on delivering good/tasty wines that arenât a crap shoot when you open a btl.
Tom
The whole genesis to setting out to make my own wine (harebrained as it is), was to fuse the ethos of natural winemaking (a return to basics of kind), with something thatâs actually age-worthy or that you can have with food. Wines that taste like real wines and not just glou-glou. Too many natural wines (and I say this as a huge fan and drinker of them for years) are either bad winemaking, as in flawed, or simply bottled too early and lacking in elevage. I get it it - making wine is expensive and as a small producer it makes sense to get it out there as soon as possible, not mess with expensive barreling etc, but thatâs also the problem with most of them. Theyâre summery, zesty, fun wines and nothing else. Most of them you couldnât drink with any kind of meal and they get one-note very quickly.
I wanted my wines not to be like that, I wanted them to be "real " wines. And itâs entirely possible to make natural wines that way, itâs just that most smaller producers donât. Natural fermentation wines happens at every level - Ridge, Sean Thackery and thousands of other do it, too. Limiting SO2 doesnât mean a wine will be flawed either - going from 400ppm to the 50ppm (which is the agreed standard natural wine cutoff at Raw Wine) makes not much difference to a wineâs age-ability. And if it makes no difference on the age-ability of a wine, why not use less SO2? That stuff taste like crap if youâve ever tried a wine right after it has been hit. Takes weeks for it to settle down again and absorb it. Not to mention all the chemicals some of the wineries put in their wine that we never know about or the Round Up they spray on their vines - why not try to eliminate as much of that as possible?
But I admit, I have moved away slightly from using the word natural wines when it comes to my own, just because of the many bad experiences consumers have had with flawed natural wines etc. I think low-intervention is better and thatâs what Iâm now calling them. But maybe Iâm damned if I do and damned if I donât in both camps by doing thatâŠ
Adam,
I hope nobody is spraying RoundUp actually on their vines. But I assume some non-lethal residual may actually get onto their vines.
Not many folks actually use ânatural wineâ on their labels. But you have to look at their WebSite if theyâre in the ânaturalâ camp.
But being known as a ânaturalâ wine is probably going to drive more customers away from buying then itâs going to attract from
the ânaturalâ wine lovers. âLow-interventionâ is a good compromise. Ridge uses âpre-industrialâ which is sorta the same thing, I think.
There are a lot of winemakers that are pretty dogmatic about being ânaturalâ. Iâm always a bit hesitant to jump for one of their
wines if Iâve had no experience. But there are plenty of ânaturalâ winemakers, like MarthaStouman, which Iâve had no problems with
over numerous btls. I buy reliably from them.
Tom
I meant around it, haha! But someone had done a lab test of a lot of regular wine and the levels of glyphosate were through the roof on some of them, especially the cheaper brands. I honestly think this is info that should be known to the consumer.
We forget that wine is the last food or beverage group that has yet to experience the organic or low-intervention revolution every other food group has had. Weâve been buying organic eggs and grass fed beef for 20 years already, no trans-fat chips, probiotic this or that, but wine is still in the dark ages when it comes to all that. Even beer has been there. The general public (who might be more casual wine drinkers and not as informed), have no idea how much questionable stuff goes into wine. Itâs gonna happen one way or the other for wine, weâve just started scratching the surface on that. Organic and less chemically produced wines will be huge one day. Even if it doesnât mean it needs to be labeled natural wine.
Itâs a very fine line to walk as a new producer. By going full natural, I can much more easily get into those who cater to that and be a bigger player in a small pond from the get go. Itâs a much smaller market. By not doing it, and going the conventional route, I have to fight against all the Constellation Brands, Kendall-Jacksons, Galloâs of this world for shelf space, which is a fight thatâs impossible to win. Especially with strange grape varietals. I think my bets are best in the first camp, without going full natural on people (ânever go full naturalâ). But Iâll take any advice you or anyone else might have on how to best do it! Iâm not joking!
Love Martha Stoumenâs stuff. Never had a bad wine from her. Have you tried any of these low-intervention producers?:
UhhhâŠAdamâŠif youâre going to take marketing advice from a Computational PhysicistâŠyou be in a heap of trouble!!
Iâve tried a lot of these.
Love Martha Stoumenâs stuff. Never had a bad wine from her. Have you tried any of these low-intervention producers?:
Harrington (buy everything he makes)
Inconnu (nope)
Donkey & Goat (yupâŠconsistently very good)
Dirty & Rowdy (same story)
Deux Punx (nope)
Broc Cellars (same story)
Stirm (nope)
Ambyth (yupâŠvariable experienceâŠa bit gun-shy)
Scholium (yupâŠmostly very good experienceâŠa few clunkers, though)
Arnot-Roberts (yupâŠbut their style is a bit too lean/eviscerated for my tastes)
Eyrie Vineyards (yupâŠgood experience)
Tessier (nope)
Ruth Lewandowski (nope)
Adam - the point is, as Tom said, the âargumentâ is threadbare to say the least. The idea that most wine makers do everything they can to dump as much sulfur into their wine is ridiculous. And the idea that every single wine other than those made by members of the congregation of ânaturalâ wine is full of chemicals, has been taken apart and put back together, has been artificially flavored, colored and textured - thatâs just a load of BS. It is very costly to make a few million bottles of wine that end up as a standardized product but if the only wines available are those on the bottom shelves of the supermarket or those made by the natural congregation, that means that most of the wines that people on this board drink donât even exist. How can that be since I have many bottles in my cellar?
Itâs why those people shrieking about natural wine are so obnoxious. Thereâs either Gallo or them. Someone who makes a few thousand cases but doesnât dance naked in the vineyards at moonlight is basically exactly the same as Yellow Tail.
In politics today, youâre either a devil or a saint. Thereâs no middle ground. If you like something I am required to hate it and if I like something you are required to hate it. Go to the politics forum to see how ugly it is. Even if we agree on something we canât admit it or work on it because we hate other things about each other so we feel it is better simply to screech at each other than work together.
Sorry Adam, but low intervention was exactly what most what my favorite winemakers in the Willamette Valley were calling themselves back before I started making my own low intervention wines is 2002. The low intervention, quality farming, site driven wines revolution started many years before the turn of the millinium.
AlsoâŠthe last time I had Scholium Project wines(a few years ago), the Gewurztraminer was 15% abv. The red wine I had was 16.2%(Prince in his Caves I believe). They may not have any SO2 added and be ânaturalâ wines, but those abvs are far from what was natural 6000 years ago. They are also high enough in alcohol to have a far greater chance of microbial stability than any winemaker, historical or current, from a region that produces abvs of a natural level of 12-13.5% could ever hope for.
Point taken, but itâs also the problem why this whole debate has come up in the first place. We donât know whoâs dumping shit into their wines or not, because thereâs no way to find out unless your chummy with the winemaker. If people knew, we could eliminate these histrionics. For all I know Screaming Eagle might be absolutely full of junk and Franziaâs 10-buck Cab might not be at all.
Of course youâre right, but doesnât it feel like it just started for the average consumer, tho? Every 2nd girl I meet in her mid-20âs is now either a vegan or a vegetarian, it feels like. Every 2nd boy is keto. These are the customers that will eventually shape the demand of the wine industry in the future. They will buy wines labeled vegan, keto, natural, low-intervention, organic, biodynamic, unfiltered, unfined, low sulfites etc, etc. Itâs inevitable. More transparency will have to come to the wine industry eventually if we want to sell wine. We can bitch about it, but we will have to adapt.
I like Hallidayâs quote in The Weekend Australian with regards to Brian Croserâs thoughts on Natural Wines (or Accidental wine as he calls them). âFine wine is made from good to very good grapes handled consistently in the winery; it is the careful use of equipment resulting in minimal modulation of the finished wine that provides pleasure. Accidental wine (Croserâs expression) provides precious little pleasure and maximum uncertainty.â
In a way, they represent a return to the core elements that made human beings fall in love with wine when we first began making it, around 6,000 years ago.
Actually we have archeological evidence of winemaking from 8,000 years ago. Maybe no one really cares about the precise date, but by most human standards being 2,000 years out is a very long time.
Right. It was Iran, then they found some earlier fermentation jars in Armenia and then they found some older ones in Georgia. All of them are pretty old!
But the farther back we go, the more unlikely it is that they were making wine anything like what we would consider wine today.
The ânatural wineâ folks are aiming for a target that is based on some imaginary past that never existed. Kind of like hunting for griffins and encountering a bonnacon.
But it sure would be interesting to see what those folks were actually making.