you picked them?? interventionist!
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No, of course not. Keith waits till they drop from the vine.
Every time I smell a wine with brett I deadass stare at the wine rep and ask “is this wine biodynamic?”
lol. Plenty of good natural wines in the world that don’t fall under the flawed category, but I think so many producers scream NATURAL when their wine is a bit f’d.
Unless it’s the wild grapes growing in the old parts of the country of Georgia… my response to natural wine claims is…
How natural is it for grapes and clones to be transported across the world to a climate they may or may not be suited for. How natural is it to plant vineyards in rows and then harvest and press the juice out?
How natural is it to bottle said juice then transport across the world? The pius nature of some “natural” wine makers can be too heavy handed. I mostly tell customers that many good wineries already produce regeneratively or sustainably and limit or do not use any chemicals in their fields. The biggest hurdle is added sulfites when people talk about natural wines. To me this is the same issue as MSG and blaming MSG for headaches when maybe they’re just dehydrated and ate like 3 lbs of fried orange chicken. One rep will tell every customer “100s of additives are in wine that they don’t have to disclose”… and sure this might be true… just don’t buy wine from shitty winemakers. If you’re buying $3 bottles of wine sure, there is a chance they’re heavily manipulating the wine.
I feel like if you’re spending a reasonable amount on the wine and comes from a reputable producer this worry about random additives isn’t an issue.
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This is once again a textbook example of failure to understand that “nature” in French means “plain” or “naked”. It has nothing to do with something being “natural” and other wines “unnatural”.
Not that even many natural producers themselves they were making something “natural” as opposed to their non-natural winemaker neighbors…
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Connotation vs. denotation
Many words have additional meaning than what the an arbitrary book definition once was. What does “natural flavors” mean on like any box or bag of food in the US mean? Many people know it doesn’t mean anything, but in the same token many people don’t know and can be fooled by carefully worded marketing.
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Of course, but still I think it doesn’t make sense asking WhAt NaTuRaL iS AbOuT MaKiNg WiNe if that has never been the idea with these wines. The denotation of “naturalness” in natural wines has come only after “vin nature” was translated to English language and its meaning was lost in translation.
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You don’t get the same buzz though.
Discussions regarding natural wine are often unproductive because they tend to generate these kind of reductive statements. I am not a fan of dogmatic winemaking (good wine is wine that tastes good), but it is just not true that winemakers “scream NATURAL” to justify flaws - it would be more correct to say that natural winemakers (and natural wine importers) expect their customers to tolerate some flaws as an inevitable part of the process. Fans of natural wine explicitly state this - “learn to love the flaw”, so to speak.*
As for the comment about biodynamics, Roederer’s Cristal is made biodynamically, let me know if you get brett in those wines.
*I have a different view of this as a consumer of wine, but that’s a different topic.
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Some of these producers would say openly that they are not “natural winemakers”, which is where this all gets very difficult. Allemand makes one unsulfured cuvee, and only rarely! Ganevat does not consistently check many of the “natural wine” boxes.
Lots of Rhone and Bordeaux wines were bretty long before “natural” became fashionable. But I guess they are generally cleaner than they were a few decades ago.
The flaw I find in too many low sulfur wines these days is mousiness, but many people are insensitive to it. I’ve eaten in a very good new restaurant in the Hudson Valley four times recently and have been poured mousy wines twice, one red, one white. Sigh.
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Perhaps it’s an importer issue because these are the wine reps I deal with regularly.
I’m not saying all biodynamically produced wine tastes like that. I often say something very similarly good wine is good wine.
I am working on my own experience with the how these wines are sold to me and also the restaurant scene in the area. We work with many low intervention exclusive importers/distributors and I have been spun stories like “this rose is supposed to be slightly sparkling” and I have a hard time believing that when even the importer themselves was like… telling the winemakers they need to increase the sulfite levels to make it from Italy to the US. These are the type of importing companies that have the “natural” in some way shape or form even in their company name.
Sure, I’m being a little facetious when I ask if I wine is biodynamic if it has a certain skunkiness to it, but I don’t think that’s an unfair comment. At the end of the day I agree that good wine is good wine period, but there is 100% elitist dogma when it comes to “natural” or low intervention wines at last when it comes to importers because I hear these statements like “it’s HEALTHIER for you!” and I roll my eyes.
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You know what i mean…
I was at the well regarded Snail Bar at Oakland and one of my companions ordered a pet-nat orange wine. I tasted it and it was distinctly mousy. My companion didn’t mind it and when I mentioned it later to the guy behind the bar he basically shrugged and said yeah it’s a little mousy.
It is a real problem and will continue to be until there’s enough pushback.
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W A N T R L S A O T M K I N W N
I’ve spent the last 15 minutes figuring out what i was supposed to make out off those letters to then realize you weren’t throwing a Scrabble challenge 
correct - and from what I see from our restaurant customers, diners specifically ask for funky wines. a virtuous feedback loop. retailers, same.
False. It is a legally defined term for naturally derived flavors (from plant or animal matter). Contrast that to “artificial flavors”, which are synthetic.
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Sure, vanillin is natural because it’s extracted out of beaver glands, but the connotation of saying that this vanilla cookie is made with natural flavors the customer might make the assumption they’re using vanilla bean.
It’s the same person who always brings up the fact tomatoes are fruits although its use case seems to be “like a vegetable” or a peanut isn’t a nut.
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Conflating natural wine with statements made by wine reps who are trying to sell you wine is an obviously incorrect approach to discussing natural wine.
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An opinion is an opinion.
It’s a part of the discussion if that’s what’s being put out into the universe whether you agree with it or not.
There are tons of people who think white zinfandel is the best wine. It doesn’t make it less true for them.
Absolutely the people who are bringing the wine into the country are part of the discussion.