Like I said, I’m not a doctor, and I don’t frankly know what people could be using in the vineyard that would make folks sick. There was that arsenic scare years ago in grocery store stuff, but I didn’t know if it was at a level that could make folks sick?
I’m not sure how we got to where not putting poisons in wine is a call out for so-called “natural wines”. That would be an issue for any wine regardless of any identifier any random wine seller wants to slap on their marketing spiel.
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The copper sulfate in “Bordeaux Mixture” is a poison that is widely used in but it doesn’t make it into the wine. The worry with arsenic and other heavy metals is that there can be a cumulative effect. Toxic Mechanisms of Five Heavy Metals: Mercury, Lead, Chromium, Cadmium, and Arsenic - PMC
You’d probably die from alcohol poisoning before drinking enough wine to become acutely ill from anything applied in the vineyard. You might get more arsenic from the rice in the sushi accompanying your 2007 CduP. 
Adding ethylene glycol to the finished product, however…
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It is a very well written article Keith. With a lot of good points.
But i still think people are often very far from each other in their discussion of natural wine. People certainly are on this forum. So i still think we are very far from uniformly agreeing on something. My comment was also more about agreeing on some official rules that applied, not the term.
And don’t scare people by calling Allemand natural 
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That was a fun read and an excellent argument. However, it appears to support the position that a universal or commonly agreed-upon meaning for “natural wine” is lacking. I certainly wouldn’t call that damning. I’d say maybe confusing or unclear.
You shared an understanding with your sommelier. Yet other knowledgeable people like Steinberger and Schildknecht apparently don’t. Let’s dismiss them as possibly being more interested in making a point than in understanding the term. A less knowledgeable consumer without an axe to grind (me?) might recognize the Allemands and Selosses as positive examples. But I also know about some of the less positive examples that suffer from instability.
If a wine I’m unfamiliar with is described as natural, I have no way of knowing which category it belongs to. Hopefully a brief discussion with the sommelier or salesperson can clear that up. Unless their knowledge runs no deeper than the ability to parrot a marketing term. Or their threshold for enjoying a biology experiment gone wrong is significantly different from mine.
In and of itself, “natural wine” leaves me uncertain about what I’ll find in the bottle. Not damning. Unhelpful.
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So maybe damning is a harsh term, but the lack of uniformity among the people who make what they call “natural wine” is certainly misleading to consumers. It’s kind of hard to find an equal argument elsewhere, but it’s kind of like buying fish. How much stuff is labeled as Dover Sole or Chilean Sea Bass, and actually isn’t? The lack of regulation and policing causes a market full of misleading product hitting the market.
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Apparently a bit of sulphur is good for you
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Never underestimate the power of regulators
I get more scared when I see the price tag 
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Condemning a whole category of wine because you’ve had some you didn’t like is akin to condemning a school because half the students are below average.
I’ve had plenty of shitty burgundy, but I love the category.
I’ve had plenty of shitty natural wine, but a good orange wine (a common natural choice) on a Friday afternoon makes the journey worthy.
Yesterday’s flight provided three good examples from Argentina, France, and Hungary. No mousiness at all.
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Keith’s piece which I recall reading on release is still largely applicable, but seems a bit quaint now given the success of natural wine and the unicorn status bestowed on his several examples.
The core argument stands - the people that make it and buy it generally know what it is, so a definition isn’t necessary. That no one desires to define it doesn’t really matter either. As I wrote, it’s an aesthetic. A movement. I general idea.
Sulfer, organic, biodynamic, etc are already defined. They are sometimes included within natural, but not required.
The only impactful aspect not covered by Keith which has become a reality over the decade+ since publishing is the gatekeeping by members of the natural wine movement. Ironically the crux of the article’s complaint about the complainers! Which rules are these rulers enforcing if they’re all agreed there aren’t any rules?
NB: referring to American football players as “hired millionaire thugs” is chef’s kiss within an article titled “on language and dogma”
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No doubt an informed or engaged consumer can ask questions and separate the wheat from the chaff, whether Burgundy or natural wine.
I lack enough experience with natural wines to be sure of how the odds of an uneducated consumer randomly picking a good bottle compare between those two. My guess is that chance heavily favors the Burgundy drinker. Which is funny because thirty years ago I would have called Burgundy the poster child for crapshoot.
Getting shitty wine picks I would blame on 1) who sold it to you or 2) not getting enough good info before you bought it.
The issue with natural wine is that you can get a lot of bad bottles, which can make you THINK it’s a shitty category. Unfortunately though I think there are people making natural wine for the sake of making natural wine, and aren’t the best winemakers to begin with, creating a lot of shitty wine.
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Defined, but a lot of it is not regulated because the wineries choose to opt out of certification (and those certifications are not cheap either). Plenty of uncertified wines in those categories.
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i think focusing on certification of any kind is just totally irrelevant in a conversation about the natural wine movement. no one engaging with the movement cares, nor should they.
Let them eat “Dover Sole” then
I don’t think it’s irrelevant, but I do sort of get your point.
i see it akin to opting out of an AOC status. i see your rules, i don’t care about them. if you say i can’t write certain magical words on my label, that’s fine with me.
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Tangental to this- it’s interesting to see what happens to those wines when they hit an auction. Prices don’t generally take off like a rocket ship. I see them listed for far more at retail. No real discussion to be had about this, just an observation.
I think Tuscany would have been a better example 
Funny though, a lot of wines that “opt out of AOC status” I later find out they are natural wines. Makes you wonder if the AOC doesn’t view their winemaking methods as within the standards?
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I agree with the bolded.
As to a definition… unnecessary for those who generally know what it is. I was going to say that for those who don’t, a more rigorous definition or classification could shorten the learning curve. But I’m not sure that it would. They’ll still have to learn to distinguish the good from the bad.
the value of that insight is around when that article was published compared to now and how much has changed since.
unicorns can be made overnight now with the right importer and instagram. there are too numerous examples to note, but mark angeli immediately comes to mind as a recent one. it’s impossible to keep up.
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