Jim - that’s what Neal was talking about. As to who is natural and who is not - it’s the writers who dictate that isn’t it? A producer can claim to be “natural” and do things another claimant would not do, but it’s writers who tend to be the most strident about it. Even Joly, who is all biodynamic and everything, is utterly charming when he talks about it and even in his writing. He’s a salesman first and foremost and has convinced people that the story matters more than the wine, and some writers carried that banner. But I think there’s less and less conversation about it, at least less than there was a few years ago., Perhaps people decided at some point that splitting academic hairs is silly when we should all be enjoying the wines we like.
BTW, contrast Neal’s piece with Bob’s tweet. Note that Ian said he found it to be a little biased, regardless of whether it was against the hectoring, not the wine.
Perhaps. But we all agree that overall it was quite reasonable and measured.
That’s why it won’t be remembered as well as the wonderful AFWE!
This reminds me of the whole “Oak is the Devil” v “How do you know it’s wine if it’s not really oaky?” fight.
In general I do lean toward the movement, but I have a hard time with people passing off dirty bad wine with “it’s natural”. Clean and natural are not opposing concepts.
I think it really all boils down to three questions.
Would I prefer the wine I am buying be as natural as possible? Yes
Does the wine taste good and like it should? Yes
Would I like more then a passing resemblance bottle to bottle? Yes
An interesting branch to the discussion - asking if Natural wine movement is more consumer / wine writer / sommelier driven, than driven by the wineries. I’m not close enough to say, but it certainly does appear that way.
Well, obviously Mr Martin hasn’t had the chance to taste an aged Chauvet wine… and I doubt his knowledge of Chauvet’s work is first hand. Sounds like coming from something like “Chauvet for dummies”.
Disappointing for the least. Nor really surprising though
I was at dinner in portland a couple weeks ago where the wine pairings were included. Somm was big on the all natural wine movement, just completely trashing all non-natural wine as an abomination and how you’re ingesting all these disgusting chemicals in your body etc. So I guess i’d say she’s at least pushing it ha ha.
I’m critical of much of the dogmatic hyperbole from some around some natural wine, and rarely if ever buy a wine just because it is a “natural wine.” But I’ve had enough extraordinary natural wines that I find the broad negative generalizations about them to be profoundly stupid. I also don’t find noticeably fewer incidents of brett, VA, and other flaws in conventionally made wines from highly regarded producers as I do from good natural wine producers.
Good enough results that I probably have at least several hundred bottles in the cellar. I would buy by importer. Look for Louis/Dressner, Selection Massale, Jenny & Francois, and FiFi as a starting point. Not every wine imported by each of them is going to qualify as a “natural wine” to the most dogmatic, but I don’t care much for the opinions of the most dogmatic.
Biodynamic producers such as Huet, Leroy, Nikolaihof, and Zind Humbrecht pretty much all qualify as natural wines by any rational definition as well. Funny how the critics don’t seem to mention them when painting with a broad brush about the tendency of natural wines to be flawed and unstable.
I’m choking back a rant about the asinine fixation on sulfur by some in the natural wine camp. My own standard would be organic or biodynamic farming (though I have absolutely no problem with lutte raisonée, I’m not convinced it qualifies as natural winemaking), ambient yeast fermentation, not adding anything or taking anything out so no filtration or fining, with the exception to not adding anything being at most a judicious sulfur addition at bottling,
I’m a lot less dogmatic about natural wine than many. I’m comfortable with that. It isn’t a moral or religious crusade for me, it is about trying to drink the most interesting wines I can, and many of the most stunning, pure, transparent and expressive examples I’ve had have been natural wine. In regions where cheap industrial wines are very common, like Beaujolais and much of the Loire, natural winemaking is also an indication that producers are striving for quality instead of making a commodity.
I’ve also had great success aging modesty priced natural wines from the Loire and Beaujolais in particular for two decades or more, which is one reason I scoff at some of the claims of their fragility. There is a lot of unclean crap being produced under the natural wine mantle. But there is a lot of crap being produced by conventional producers as well, including a lot of wines that aren’t unclean only because they been stripped of their souls in pursuit of avoiding such flaws.
The standard I gave is pretty consistent with that I’ve seen from most of the standard bearers of the natural wine camp. Kind of makes me wonder what all the anti-natural wine fuss is about.
Yeah. I believe that most of the California producers I purchase from are generally within that standard. All of Turley’s vineyards, for example, are organically farmed and they use native yeasts, minimal sulfur, etc. Ridge has long served as a standard bearer for minimal intervention (and listing any and all intervention on the label). Rhys vineyards are essentially biodynamic.
Hi Mike
I think the extremist positions on either side of the debate cause the fuss. Emotive arguments (e.g. the sommelier mentioned upthread, some of Alice Feiring’s views, etc.). Then there is the “it’s all cider and vomit, that’s got a half life of 20 mins” rhetoric from the other trench. Not really the material to promote a grown-up discussion.
I guess that any listing of factors should also extend to vineyard practices, most obviously in the use / non-use of sprays and other chemical treatments, but also potentially to use of machinery vs. hand labour. If we wanted to get too hung up on a strident view of what ‘natural’ is, then vine training and pruning would be banned as well!!
We’re human, it’s natural (oops) to latch onto a single idea (S02 additions) and make it the be all and end all of the debate, but there is much more to it than that. However trying to lay down a precise cut-off to a binary decision then either becomes farcical, or false.
I think the difference is that the producers you mentioned have been making great wines for years (if not decades). They are fantastic winemakers before they are natural winemakers.
Most of the critics of natural wines are fed up with poor winemaking being mistaken for natural.
This bolded statement is along the lines of a point I was about to make. When I see something like this:
, my reaction is that such statements are against bad winemaking (which so often nowadays passes as acceptable if one calls it “natural”) rather than being against “natural” wine. If I said a lot of mass market jug wine tastes boring and homogenized, I wouldn’t be against all typical winemaking, would I? Or against all large-scale wine production? Even in Ian’s mostly reasonable response, I think this one line shows that “us vs. them” mentality that so drives me crazy about this movement. It doesn’t need to be read into Neal’s piece, in my opinion. If hipster somms, writers, and the like weren’t too busy telling the story to consider whether or not a wine is delicious and clearly expresses its origins (of grape variety(-ies) and of place), people wouldn’t need to call attention to the fact that quite a few wines currently on the market, and even on wine lists in big cities, do actually smell like cider and vomit. I would say that only something akin to religious zeal would cause so many winemakers, writers, and wine buyers to think this is acceptable.
This is not to say that a relatively hands-off approach is automatically wrong. I think the huge difference, and what distinguishes the several truly great biodynamic producers from the “natural” camp, is that the former would never sell such blatantly faulty wines. They would, and obviously do, take measures to prevent those problems from becoming so severe, in whatever ways they think will achieve that result with the least amount of intervention. Far too many of those who call themselves “natural” (a group with whom I suspect Leroy, Huet, ZH, etc. have no interest in being associated) will simply do nothing and then sell extremely flawed wines wines based on that dogmatic approach.
One doesn’t need to think the basic idea of doing as little as possible is wrong to point out the obvious ridiculousness of this movement. The big question is what the intended end result is, which should really define what “as little as possible” means. On its own, that idea leads to vinegar or worse. With appropriate goals, it can lead to some of the best wines out there. Of course, despite what the most vocal advocates tell us, it isn’t the only way to get there, and it certainly isn’t the only way to produce wine that is not unhealthy to consume in moderation.
most of the dogma abiding producers are very young and have only jumped onboard rather recently. obviously the veterans who have been making wine for decades tend to produce a more cogent wine. also, it is possible to make clean and stunning wine completely sans soufre. it is also very difficult to do so. that is why i prefer the producers who at least use a bit at bottling. sticking with louis dressner producers is another safe bet. jenny and francois not so much, for me their selection is a bit of a minefield. for the record, i greatly dislike the natural wine scene but there are some truly special wines you would miss out on if you wrote it off completely.