Worth a read.
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Thanks for sharing.
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tl;dr - She met some Germans who satisfied her standard for natural wine and also didnāt like Trump.
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donāt be jealous because she ruined allocations of silver water keith
Iām sure Alice is a really nice person, but I just find her writing REALLY off putting. I mean come onā¦she canāt even stomach a wine that was made using sulfer!?! She might have some really interesting things to sayā¦but between 'non-ānatutalā wine making her sneeze and then all the politics, it makes for a brutally horrible article that I find absolutely zero value in.
Side noteā¦whatās the board rules for sharing politically charged articles?? Should this be moved to the politics forum??
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Thanks. It was a great read for me. I did not know her background, but it is very similar to my own, except that my parents did not send me to HANC. Iām working on getting over the same visceral reaction, but it is a slow process. I still occasionally get creeped out when I meet some of the German winemakers. I met one guy, who I will not name because it is not his fault, at Zachyās. He was a very nice guy and his wines were good, but I couldnāt stop thinking that I was talking to a guy who worked for the Gestapo. My fault, not his.
I wonder if she has food allergies and other concerns like that. I know a couple of people developed sensitivity to red wine later in life; one was a pretty hard drinker too so he had some adjustments to make. Maybe they were just reacting to the sulfur, and natural wines could have helped them still enjoy red wine.
Her preferences are what led her to natural wines (as well as skewing her definition a bit, since she generally doesnāt like riper wines). Those arenāt the only wines she likes, but maybe saying she leans heavily on low intervention with a light-handed approach. The last article of hers I read (2-3 years ago) she was railing against major flaws in some natural wines, which is a nice evolution from promoting ignorance as a virtue in winemaking.
Weāre adults. We should be able to read such an article and get some insight where the author is coming from, without having to fulfill some compulsive need to interject our own political opinion.
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So Iām probably around Feiringās age. My grandparents also arrived here prior to WWI, but all the family who stayed in Europe died in the Holocaust. My parents were also rabidly anti-German and wouldnāt buy German products. But, really, by the 1980s, having had German and Austrian friends in grad school, and being able to read sufficiently to know that Germany was hardly the source of modern facism and anti-semitism in the world, and that most Holocaust deniers I read about werenāt German (though Iām sure there are some),I really didnāt and donāt have her reaction to Germans. I also expect that German winemakers she meets, unless they are her age, had grandfathers and not fathers alive during WWII. How long do the sins of the fathers get passed on to the children and when do you start facing your own? Although she has a bug up her ass about natural wine that drives everything she writes, in this case, that wasnāt the point of the story. Although I think she has been rather late to her realization.
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Interesting article and politics & history aside but Iām quite sure that big part of Loosenās wines was fermented with natural yeast also back in 2005 as was the case with most of the traditional Austrian producers with their better wines (erstes & smaragds, riesling & grĆ¼ner) also in 2010. Yeah I know this article is all about of natural - 0-sulfur wines but Iām kinda sad that the author seems to miss 99% of great wines made in Germany & Austria due to this. True there are good amount of really good ānaturalā producers in both countries now and community is getting bigger all the time but it is not reason to miss/diss traditional German riesling as most of the sweeter prƤdikat wines are not even possible to produce without hefty sulfur addition nor most of the great wines such as GGs are really not natural in sulfur/filter sense while almost, if not all, are spontan fermented. Also during the last 10 years most estates has taken over by new generation and the way of thinking in vineyards and cellars has massively changed so this seems to be really outdated article for Trink magazine. I actually had to check twice whether it was published in 2021.
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Johan,
Thanks for your post and your insights. Iām sure you are correct in that many wines being produced in 2005 and 2010 were produced as you mentioned - the difference is that producers did not feel the need to publicize that information because it was not important to them. What was important - and should still be important - is the final product, no?
I know that they are many who really love the romance and story of how a wine is made - the story of the vineyards, the painstaking winemaking process, etc - but at the end of the day, the litmus test should be ādo I enjoy this wine and find it interestingā, right?
Cheers.
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One other aspect makes me grin - for anyone who might think VW, Mercedes, BMW et al are selling them āGermanā carsā¦those manufacturers are assembling many models in Chatanooga, Vance, and Spartanburg respectively.
Imagine if you bought a bottle of āGermanā riesling and it was actually from the Finger Lakes!
I strongly suspect that you and I are on different ends of the political spectrum, but I think your take is spot on. I found her tone incredibly off putting.
Maybe she is in the wrong line of work. Like a restaurant critic with shellfish allergies.
Not going to comment on her social content in the article, as I cannot put myself in her shoes, but to imply (as she does) that in 2010 all the Austrian winemakers she visited were using the same commercial yeast is hardly believable. Sounds like a classic Alice opinion passed off as natural wine āfact.ā
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My biggest problem with the article is that itās simplify the whole traditional winemaking in two largest riesling producer country in the world. Yes, both had and still has, a lot of not so quality -orientated producers that does ferment their wines with āpackaged yeastā (direct quote from the article) and with max amount of so2 but(!) very large percentage of top-tier producers does ferment even their āsimpleā estate wines with natural (or ambient) yeasts, some even bottle without filtering, and with smallest possible amount of so2. This is nothing new or recently invented fashion stuff and that fact could have been googled in around 10 seconds before publishing the article that bash the traditional winemaking. Also the author seems not to have any idea of prƤdikat system of German wines so she would have probably not spotted if Ernie would have give naturally stopped fruity sweet kabinett without any so2 additions. And yeah Loosen actually does some natural wines with very low so2-levels in these days alas they are probably too clean for hard core natural wine folks. In a wine sense this is probably the weakest article published on Trink ever and somehow I canāt think any other reason for this article than to get away the fact that she really does not like traditional riesling or grĆ¼ner no matter how they are vinified. I really donāt want to go to history aspect so my views are only on wine side.
Edit: I found an German article which states that Dr. Loosen whole wine range is spontan fermented at least since 1991 (Ernie took over in 1988 if I remember right). But yeah iāll stop here 
.
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+1. Hated every moment of the article and not even sure what she was really trying to accomplish. Hard pass on future articles from her.
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This is . How can anyone be surprised?
![[shrug.gif]](/uploads/db3686/original/2X/4/48636ebda2a440a43ad8d24c83be20ac20c53420.gif "shrug"){kind=small}
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This might be the tamest Alice Feiring thread on this board.
If he is under 95, it is highly unlikely he worked for the Gestapo. Jay, I understand these feelings. I remember having them standing in line in 1984 during my first trip to France waiting to get into Versailles with a German couple behind me in line. I knew a number of Holocaust survivors growing up, including the Cantor of my synagogue and a cousin of my fatherās. And, not unusually, most of our family that did not leave Eastern Europe before the war was killed in the Holocaust.
But we really donāt need anymore 1000 year enemies.
I also always remember this. After WWI, the Germans were severely punished. The world ended up with Hitler. After WWII, Truman instituted the Marshall Plan, helping to rebuild Germany and Japan. The world ended up with two stable democracies that have now lasted over 75 years.
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