I am reading about more and more traditional producers becoming less and less interventionalist, and using less and less sulphur. What is the line between this and being a natural wine? At what point does winemaking lead to a mousey, cloudy wine? What are natural producers doing different than that low interventionalists still aren’t doing? Does 0 sulphur make THAT much of a difference than “low” sulphur (and how is ‘low’ even defined?)
Background: I had a poor and expensive experience with natural Cossard wine over the weekend. It turned me off exploring natural red wine in a big way, but then I remembered that a few wines I like are by winemakers who seem to be using similar jargon as natural winemakers (biodynamic, low sulphur, natural yeast, etc.). Regarding the Cossard, it was cloudy and had a mousey feeling on the swallow that made me not want to drink it at all (I scored it relatively low on my scale… nearly undrinkable). The somm said the wine was correct and was nice (FWIW, I struggle to think that was a correct bottle of wine that people would pay 200 euro for - but I don’t really know). Re the Cossard experience… are the best traditional producers using similar thresholds to produce wines that aren’t mousey, cloudy or feral? What is the Cossard doing that differently? Is it JUST the 0 sulphur or something more?
Yup…people who have natural wine to sell have a pretty low threshold on what they view as acceptable. This is often their response.
I had a Radikon Rosso that was so volatile/high VA it burnt when you smelled or tasted it, it was painful to smell & drink. I returned it to the retailer & Bryan tasted it and told me that was the way the wine was supposed to be. I had a winemaker run the VA on it and it was over three times the 0.12 gm/100 ml legal limit on VA in redwine. The wine was illegal to sell.
Yet there are natural winemakers who can do it right. The wines of Elisabetta Foradori are one such shining example. The Broc and the Martha Stouman are another example.
For natural winemakers and lovers of natural wines, feeling sanctimonious about drinking a pure wine is part of the experience and leads them to like wines that are horrendously flawed.
Tom
I think the right framework for understanding “natural wine” today is that it is an aesthetic movement that sees itself as rebelling against “conventional wine” rather than a defined set of standards. So it’s quite hard to generalize among natural wine producers. Lassaigne is on many natural wine lists, but other than his Coteaux experiments, I’ve never had a flawed Champagne from him.
Wines made today by “conventional winemakers” that are drunk by posters on this forum usually bear little resemblance to what natural wine adherents claim to be rebelling against. DRC is close to making natural wine by many definitions, and by some definitions actually qualifies. Also, because it is an aesthetic, many producers who would be within the definition of natural wine actively would not want the tag because it means something from a marketing perspective. As Selosse has said (while somewhat eliding the question), the practice of growing a monoculture in a field is inherently unnatural, so the entire concept is moot to him.
I’ll say what I said in another thread, that natural wine thrived for many years before anybody declared it had anything whatsoever to do with avoiding sulfur.
As you already noticed, most wines that get discussed on this board and that you like already share a lot of characteristics with natural wine w/r/t farming and winemaking practices. Natural wine is more of a subculture than an actual set of practices, and whether or not the producer considers themselves to be part of the subculture or not. Many times natural wine is a better shorthand for producers doing “unconventional” things in their region with the grapes the work with or their winemaking practices - by this metric, super tuscans would have been natural wine when they started since they had to declassify.
0 sulphur/zero zero is a smaller subset of the natural wine subculture and can be very dogmatic about nothing added nothing taken away, rather than capable of adhering to the practices while producing wine that tastes good. I’ve had great no sulphur wines, and other times it’s an excuse to put something mousey in bottle, all depends on the producers skill.
this is precisely how i’ve discussed this for years, and honestly, i don’t know how any objective person could come to any other conclusion.
in more modern parlance, it’s a vibe.
what is natural wine? it’s whatever people that like, produce, sell, and consume it say it is.
i do believe that it’s a net positive for the industry for various reasons, but that’s perhaps another thread topic and not really relevant to “what” it is.
and of course, there are frustrating dogmatic elements, but that exists in every industry, hobby, etc.
Agreed… It’s funny how much of the conversation is reduced to the use of sulfur. There are natural wines with (low amounts of) sulfur and “conventional” wines without it.
If I remember correctly, a significant portion of people can’t detect mousey taint. I am sure that sensitivity to it varies extremely widely, as with many other things. My guess is that most people who champion “natural” wines (using the word) and create lists/porfolios full of them are lucky enough to be relatively insensitive to that and several other faults (VA, brett, other bacterial issues).
Well, it’s a somewhat obvious metric to use, especially for people with little experience with natural wines. It’s the first thing to point at when a wine is flawed, but people forget the dozens of other decisions in the vineyard and cellar that matter.
A lot of wines people here enjoy are “low interventionist”, meaning as little manipulation, additives, new oak, etc. If done well, these produce some of the best wines out there, natural or not. But if done poorly, the flaws are amplified and it gives the natural wine movement a bit of a bad rep…
Not that I would want to drink a poorly made wine (natural or not). Actually, I’d prefer the natty juice over an overoaked, overextraced, highly suflured plonk
Another point to make is that some methods to protect the wine in bottle that are not sulfur (e.g. low amount of CO2 or VA) can be perceived as flaws. But they do actually dissipate over time and I feel that many natural wines are drunk much too early. If well made, they age just as well as a “conventional” wine and IMO need more air/time when very young.
VA to protect the wine in bottle, and it dissipates over time? I don’t think either characteristic makes sense.
I’ve bought and aged a good bit of natural wine. One problem I have is that those low-level faults can become more pronounced, even with proper storage. Aging just as well as clean wines (in general) and needing time is the opposite of quite a bit of experience of mine. That’s not to say no natural wines age well, but my investment in future enjoyment goes places where I can be more confident in what I’ll get, years down the road. There are exceptions whose wines are consistently clean (or as close to consistent as is reasonable to expect), and Musar, which I love for all of its idiosyncrasies. It’s worth noting that I have never seen any of these producers call their wines “natural”.
Not a chemist or winemaker, but I’ve read this multiple times. Some old school Italian wines are a good example, they tend to have quite high amounts of VA and age beautifully.
If they aged beautifully with VA, it’s not because of the VA, it’s despite it.
Unless you heavily filter the wine or pasteurize it, if there’s VA, there are almost certainly aceto bacteria in the wine, and they feed on alcohol to make acetic acid. They are not a stabilizing factor!
I’m also pretty sure that older Italian wines were made with a decent amount of sulfur, which helps keep VA in check.
Also, I think CO2 helps stabilize a wine, as I recall.
Uh a bit of a Pandora’s Box when it comes to wine discussions.
But as it has already been mentioned. Then no or low amounts of added sulfur equals “natural wine” for many it seems.
Maybe the french term Vin Nature is a bit better, where nature is closer to something like “plain” if I understand it correctly. Google gives an example of youghurt natural which I actually think is a somehwat fitting example as there is not added sugar, flavour and so on but is still a humanly produced product.
So basically wine with as little additives added or other things that will influence the grapes and taste.
Natural yeasts.
No added sulfur.
No added sugar.
No added anything.
No fining.
No filtration.
Neutral vessels.
Grapes grown with as little chemicals as possible.
I drink and cellar a good amount of low sulfites wines. When winemakers succeeds with the approach I often find the wines to have an extra aromatic gear. But there are a lot of junk out there as it is very difficult to create wines like these without making faulty wines.
I also feel that many serious winemakers these days are a bit more pragmatic about it and follows most of what would define a “natural wine” but adjusts where they feel it is required. Greg’s post kinda explains this I guess.
The thing that makes me sad is when people easily give up on them. They had a few bad experiences and gives up on it. But the term covers so many wines from all around the world, so it is almost like giving up on German og French wines after a few misses because they were misguided.
My thought of traditional winemaking is pretty much natural. Ambient fermentation, neutral vessels, no additives other than minimal sulfite. Or, really, no sulfite added, sort of. Producers used sulfur sticks to protect their barrels. Enough to protect the barrels while in storage can be enough to protect the wines. Martin Ray never added sulfite. David Bruce followed for a decade, until he had problems with riper, high pH wines. I’m wondering how many “natural” winemakers use sulfur sticks. Wouldn’t they appeal as the most “natural” way to protect their barrels?
The move away from traditional/natural winemaking was modern innovations in the 20th century. In France. I suspect that began while bringing back the industry from phylloxera. But, the new techniques, including pasteurization, toxic sprays, various additives, reached the United States with Repeal. Large producers implemented that stuff, but others never did.
A push-back against the bad practices was called for. But, we don’t need the confusion, hysteria, misinformation. Exploration on the margins is great, too. But, some proponents of natural wine have lauded an ignorant approach. I know several microbiologists-turned-winemakers. They are the last to worry about native yeasts spoiling a wine, the last to want to do anything that would mask the natural process that allows the grape variety and site to show clearly. That’s not ignorance, that’s curiosity, passion and expertise.
I found this explanation on the Natural Coast Natural Wine Fest to be helpful in understanding what is considered a natural wine by the natural wine movement. Scroll down on their about page to see what they require of participants (i have no affiliation with this group, just interested in what they’re doing)
Personally, I feel I’ve been drinking natural wines for years. Producers like Matthiason, Corison, Beta, Jonata, Sine Qua Non and countless others make what I consider to be naturally made wines that are sound. My sense is that it’s really semantics, but I’d also like to understand the movement and give it its due.
To be honest this has rarely been my experience and I’ve probably cellared more of these as science experiments than most people have. The Venn diagram between the natural wine category and the “glou-glou” category has always had significant overlap and very few glou-glou wines reward cellar time even from terroirs with a long aging track record. They are still fun to drink young for their pure juicy fruit though.
I will have to leave it to the chemists to comment on whether CO2 protects wine in the bottle but I certainly can’t think of what the mechanism would be. It might be a byproduct of OTHER things (such as avoiding oxygen exposure) that have some potential to protect the wine in the bottle, although Rioja that gets racked into old oak 9 times has historically been far more bulletproof in the bottle than fizzy natural wines made in sealed stainless tanks.
I’ve seen fining and filtration often mentioned as things those bent on being ‘natural’ try to use infrequently if at all.
I think the term “natural wine” is an unfortunate moniker in that it’s really terrible at delivering the message that it’s devotees wish to deliver. It’s one of those terms where the messaging is way out of step with the what the actual term means which often causes frustration and bafflement to those that understand something about how wine is made.
That said, I can’t imagine any modern list of ‘natural wines’ that houses like Jonata and SQN would even come near. That seems a bit like calling James Cameron and Zach Snyder indie filmmakers.
