And probably smashed and/or rotten grapes. Is it still natural if picked midday? Or if the winemaker does anything?
A friend that markets exclusively “natural” wines as this to say:
Seems to me that comparing an optical sorter to heavy machinery is like characterizing a surgeon’s scapel as a meat cleaver…they both cut meat.
I guess I would also classify some of the wine presses used by “natural” winemakers as in the heavy machinery category.
So the bottom line is that a “natural” wine can only be made by a small producer. And since Alice is the GrandPoobah for “natural”
wine, we’ll have to let her tell us what the production level must be capped at to be a “natural” producer. That’ll simplify things quite a lot.
Now I need to understand what an “authentic” wine is. It’s getting to be a little too woo-woo for a simple computational physicist’s mind.
Tom
Of course, if David accuses me of ![[stirthepothal.gif]](/uploads/db3686/original/2X/f/f40faec63ca1018898a40805efbf9f0066a3d205.gif "[stirthepothal.gif]"){kind=small}
; I’ll deny it.
It seems “natural” is becoming a bullshit buzzword on both ends of the spectrum.
What is the “natural wine” yeast rule?
Can vines be grafted?
It seems they allow some sulfites, but it has to be within an arbitrary range.
Filtration is OK, but only “gross filtration.”
I wonder if “Kambucha Cellars” has been trademarked.
Is it size or profitability that’s the determinant here? If they can afford one but don’t have one, are they still disqualified? Do we need to see their tax returns?
Bryan - it’s OK. I actually get it. And I agree that pursuing something for its own sake can be satisfying absent any, or very much, remuneration. I live with someone who does that, as did her parents before her.
The friends of mine who used ARPA Net to share information and who thought that would be the ultimate purpose of it, were appalled at the arrival of business and porn and advertising. And most of them missed out on the cash grab because that was never their motivation.
My problem is with Alice, who’s tried for years to claim some responsibility for something that was occurring completely without her. I defy anyone to find a wine maker who read one of her tedious books and decided to change his or her wine making as a result. The popularity of “natural” wine was fairly described above as resulting from numerous factors - generational, price inflation, the popularity of “organic” and “natural” items generally, the search for something new and different, etc. None had anything to do with her. Nor was Parker’s reputation ever damaged by her mewling. In many ways, his decline was inevitable and also partly self-generated.
More importantly, the whole concept of “natural” wine implies a binary choice, i.e. “manipulated” or “natural”. The proponents of “natural” wine have a hard time defining it with precision and instead use weasel terms like “minimal” sulfur, etc. Then they can comfortably accuse wines they dislike as being manipulated. It’s like politics today where cartoonish caricatures are the only choices.
In life, everyone jumps on the train at a different time. While they may be passionate about an issue and devote their lives to it, there are always people before and always people who will show up afterwards. If “natural” wine is a good thing, it would seem nice to have more people enjoy it. And absent a government monopoly, that’s going to happen by people making more and selling more. In other words, by commerce. Alice claimed that she saved the entire world from bad wine. So I’m surprised that she’s not claiming complete responsibility for the increase in the number of wines claiming to be natural. And as she’s the leader, they should all be paying attention to her.
But nobody is.
Anyhow, I think most of the folks on this board understand what you’re saying so eloquently. We just like to go off on tangents! ![[cheers.gif]](/uploads/db3686/original/2X/0/0ff9bfcdb0964982cd3240b6159868fbdf215b1a.gif "cheers"){kind=small}
It is funny that most “selected” yeasts were selected from naturally occurring strains in different vineyard areas. While I don’t add yeast to any of the Pinot Noirs, I’m looking for biodiversity(ideally good microbes) in the fermentation. And cultured yeasts are perfectly natural. They just aren’t really connected to site/terroir until they become well established enough to be a/the “natural” yeast in a cellar.
A most excellent point! I bake, although these days only as an amateur. People trade their sourdough starters. I started a new one last week. Found a local miller who sourced some local wheat so I mixed up a little bit with some water and set it on the counter to see what happens. There’s now some dough rising in the fridge.
Didn’t people in the old days bring over a bucket of fermenting juice when someone built a new barn? Maybe to get something going in the new place?
If you can take grapes from one continent to another and call them natural, why not yeast?
As many are here, I was of multiple minds on this article. I sympathize with the author’s worry that this thing she loves has gone mainstream enough that it is so much less unknown, rare, obscure, or cool. She sees a loss, feels it, and expresses it eloquently. Her tone puts me off as a bit self-righteous, but that is typical for strong POV writing.
My bigger struggle is with natural wine overall. With utterly bogus and vague definitions it seems at best weak and at worst pointless. And the wines rarely seem to match my palate. Yes, there are dedicated craftsmen trying to do something beautiful. But I think they are focusing on the wrong things, these odd artificial constraints.
It also seems like the success of natural wine is mostly driven by somms/retailers looking for a new niche within which to differentiate themselves. ‘Natural’ seems more like a trick to catch the attention of those who want healthier diet alternatives than a truly meaningful wine making approach. IMHO, of course.
Guilty as charged, m’lud. I have done both, but with younger cheeks for the blockbuster reds.
But this is only because I want to explore the full range of wine styles. I am not sure I would buy a wine sold as “faulty and uneyoyable”, but have certainly bought natural wines sold as “challenging” with no regrets. I do not drink weird shit all the time. But on the rare occasions I am in a shop with a good selection of natural wines I don’t want to just buy wine I could get any number of other places.
Some strains are isolated for the fruity esters they produce. That’s probably the biggest difference in “style” between “Old World” and “New World” wines. If the native yeasts do their job in every way, there’s no reason to inoculate. Of course most isolate strains came from Europe, where they were dominant somewhere.
Alice’s approach to wine comes from preference, which lead her to discover “natural” wines. She has evolved hew position over the years. But, her old stated position has partially a natural wine should seem natural, not just be natural. (And, she likes wines that aren’t “natural”, but have those same traits she likes.) So, if some organic European wine made without SO2 or cultured yeast just happened to get a shitload of clove-y aromatics from a resident yeast?
What if the local yeasts don’t do their job? Going natural means always getting off-aromas and some stuck ferms. Some natural wine folks say it’s okay to add just enough SO2 to fend off the naughty microbes as the pokey good ones plod along. What if inoculating with a “neutral” yeast meant you didn’t need to add SO2 and yielded a consistently better, more “natural” seeming wine?
Especially since most of them have a live scoby in the bottle.
For me, I drink wine mainly due to taste. The overwhelming majority of natural wines I’ve had just don’t do it for me taste wise. Rarely have I tasted a “conventional wine” that tastes horrible, as in I don’t want to finish the glass. For me, natural wine have a MUCH higher frequency of tasting poor in comparison. Love the spirit of why and how to make wine “natural”, but taste wise I just don’t gravitate to them at all. I know many people who do and it’s great to have diversity in that manner.
There are certainly some great points here - including what ‘expectations’ should be when tasting a natural wine. I get it that these wines are not ‘normal’ and may have aromas and flavors that are ‘unusual’ or ‘unexpected’. That ‘makes sense’ but if the idea here is to show the ‘transparency’ of the vineyard/winemaking style, then flaws that are oftentimes present mask exactly what that goal is meant to be - and that’s where I have ’ issues’ . . .
As far as the popularity of the category - it is definitely ‘bigger’ than most think it is, but there are still plenty of folks out there, including some leading somms and retailers, who are not ‘buying in’ to the concept en masse, but instead, using the same ‘litmus test’ to evaluate and make purchasing decisions on these wines as they do all others.
Cheers.
Bingo, Gabe…this pretty much mirrors my take on natural wines. I like to try natural wines simply because I’m very adventuresome when it comes to wine.
But these natural wines can be rather hit or miss. They oftentimes just taste “different”. But I find more “misses” w/ natural wines than I do w/ “unnatural” wines.
Bottom line is we like that wine with which we’re “familiar”. So when I taste a natural wine w/ a different taste, I then have to think about it if I like that “different” taste or not.
If it tastes like a Kansas outhouse on a hot Summer day, most people are not going to like that. But, for me, I’ve taken some of my most pleasurable dumps
in such a facility. So I might semi-like that wine. But, generally, not a character I like in my wine.
So I like to try natural wines just in order to expand my vinous horizons. Some of the worst wines I’ve had (like Bichi Pais), the DNPIM kind of wine, have been natural
wines. I don’t recall trying a natural wine that blew me away like a Carlisle or Bedrock or Harrington. Mostly, my reaction is “Well that’s different. That’s kinda interesting”.
As for the philosophy backing up a natural wine, I guess I don’t really give a rat’s a$$. I just want the wine to taste “good”, by whatever standard I choose. If it just tastes “interesting”,
well that’s OK…it engages my intellect, which is worth something.
Tom
Here’s another article on the subject:
that offers a more balanced take w/o the polemics you find in SweetAlice’s article.
In particular, JonBonne identifies the badly flawed natural wines he’s had as being made
with zero sulfur additions.
Tom