I think someone needs to reboot Otto. Greg froze him. 
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Like most things the natural wine movement is a bit of a trade off. Despite my personal annoyance with some of the misinformation and holier than thou attitudes of some natural producers, or sometimes getting stuck pouring next to some overly hygienic sideburn wizard with an average bottle of wine who is happy to break eggs all over the backs of the people that established the region (the Willamette Valley) that he’s now casually participating in, the overall return to wines that have a broad range of personalities, styles, and even flaws is, IMO, a MUCH better place than the narrowing of wine to the fruit forward, overly safe, almost algorhythmic insistence on serving us the same wine repeatedly because it’s what 'we’re supposed to like".
So yes, at this point the wines themselves, flawed at times and great at times, are very much a net positive on the world of wine overall. But it’s also time to put a bullet in the head of the holier than thou misinformation roiling around the category.
On the whole “natural” really means attempting to make wines with minimal input in the cellar. And if sulfur is needed post malo, a LOT of Natural producers will do it. Some of them will filter now, and in 10 years probably more of them will. Some of them, like Eric Texier, are transparent about choosing no sulfites at bottling if he has microbially stable wines. But there’s no enforcement of any kind regarding what actually happens in the cellar. Though with plenty of natty wines, you can see that the producer stuck to their beliefs even at the expense of their consumers.
And bluntly, I still fail to see the to-do over KMBS as an add after malo to help with microbial stability and keeping the wines from oxidizing. That’s coming from someone who makes a significant amount of sparkling wines where we are working with no or very, very minimal SO2 during the pre-tirage aging process. I also pick at some of the lowest pHs in the Willamette Valley which gives our still wines a very minimal need for SO2 in terms of amounts. Even if I made san souffre still wines, I would still think the demonization of SO2 is mostly horseshit and primarily a marketing ploy to create a difference between a set of (Dressner) producers and everyone else, by said demonizartion of a addition that is so innocuous that it’s use was extremely widespread. Even by producers like Pepiere and Rougeard. I realize that now even events like RAW wines allow the use of up to 50ppm SO2, but in the beginning that was not how it was presented.
Why does SO2 matter if it’s relatively innocuous? Best answer is twofold. 1) microbial stability, mouse pee is offputting. For some, so is the smell of body odor, along with any number of other elements. Does suful leech out fruit? No, it binds it up and then releases it back into the wine later on. A wine with sulfur added post malo does appear to have less density of flavor, but with time that all comes back. This is why a very large aspect of current natural wines is offering very enjoyable early drinking, crushable, wines. Nothing wrong with that, especially in offering wines to younger consumers, or anyone really, who is looking for something fun to drink.
But it does come with a cost. While some 'natural wines" ,may sustain in the bottle for a while, many do not. As the pursuit of low/no sulfur wines expands, the number of winemakers able to pour their fathers wines but not their own previous efforts will increase. That may not be all natural wines by any means. But the effort and singular occurrence that is wine production is something that should be offered the opportunity to be a legacy. The dogma of natural is a powerful story, and, IMO, it will come with a cost in the legacy of the wines.
Lots of people do not care about aging wines, but for me the vast majority of great wines I have had were cellared for a significant time. And the exploration of a low/no input process doesn’t inhibit that with a certainty, but I see a lot of what look like nice cafe wines from local natural people. They’re crushable but not profound, and most won’t last 5 years much less 20.
It’s not a binary world, so I don’t see a problem with wines that are meant to be consumed now. But Allemand and Lapierre’s choices to make both versions seem very smart, even if their sons souffre wines age better than 99% of other no sulfite wines.
I think that’s why I prefer a middle path that doesn’t have a need for someone to be the “right” way and someone to be the “wrong”.
And as Otto said, it was some winemakers who decided everyone else was using too many chemicals etc. in their wines. That was patently incorrect, there were many low impact producers out there who weren’t using many chemicals at all. The low interventionists like Pepiere, and most of the Willamette Valley it seemed like when I started making wine. They were not slaves to winery supply outlets in anyway, and the characterization as such is something that should go away as soon as possible. Something Otto, as knowledgeable as he is, should also know.
My understanding was that it began with several Beaujolais producers who ran into an older winemaker who claimed not using sulfur on the fruit before processing gave better/more fruitful wines. And they began to espouse not using sulfur when processing the fruit. Somewhere after that it became the mantra of not using SO2 at all in the wines (though as noted, in the vineyard was fine…), and then it became a “sulfur is a toxin, poison, and what Vladimir Putin uses to remove dissidents with” mantra from some people (Joe Dressner and grandstanding sideburn wizards).
Last, it also has resulted in the lowering of quality of several producers, IMO, specifically Domaine du Closel in the Loire. When I was first sold those wines (Clos Papillon), it was the 1998 vintage, and the sales rep specifically told me they needed 10-15 years to become what they should be. I bought 6 and buried them, and from 2008-2018 drank through them. They were fantastic. I bought another few bottles of the 2014 vintage and they were mostly dead by 2020. The majority of them went down the drain.
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Just to clarify, they didn’t “decide” anything. They were Beaujolais producers who agreed with Jules Chauvet’s view that the traditional style of Beaujolais wine and its terroir was lost due to excessive use of weed killers and antifungal sprays, overcropping the vineyards, over-sulfiting the wines and reliance on the commercial yeasts resulting in bubblegum-y wines. Chauvet’s view on using sulfur right before harvest and on must during harvest time prevented indigenous yeasts from doing their thing during fermentation - nothing about more fruitful wines or anything like that. He just hoped the local producers would stop using commercial yeasts.
So, in essence, Chauvet nor the Beaujolais producers didn’t “decide” everyone else in France or anywhere else the world were using too much chemicals - they thought the style of Beaujolais just wasn’t what it used to be. It was just a counter-culture movement against the very local style. And it started really to pick up momentum elsewhere only more than a decade later, so it really was more of a local thing.
I really didn’t understand your point here.
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@Eric_Texier had a lot of interesting things to say about this in the past. Hope he chimes in again.
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Well what I can say at this point is that Mr Goodfellow has strictly no clue about the origins, aims and foundations of the early “natural” wine movement in Beaujolais and Otto has a rather precise and insightful view on it.
There is just, in addition, a political aspect to it that would be a bit difficult to explain here…
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The old natural wine threads seemed to always start in reaction to some “controversial” (ie. false) statement by some writer or merchant. Like i said, other than a few unhelpful drive-by comments, it was minimal interventionists questioning apparent hypocrisies and dogmatists irrationally defending the “truths” of the authors and merchants they unquestioningly followed. A few years down the road someone interviewed a few of their most lauded French natural winemakers. They did what was necessary to make high quality wines and had no problem with winemakers in other regions, different circumstance, employing different minimal necessary interventions to make good wines.
That should’ve been the end of it. The pundits had their contradictory sets of what is and isn’t allowable. They had their self-importance and a self-interest in making outrageous provocative declarations. The winemakers they promoted were reasonable, pragmatic artisans.
Iirc, it was Joe Dressner who declared it wasn’t possible to make natural wine in California.
It’s been noted that a lot of natural wine producers who start off making flawed wines do seem to transition to clean wines. Why wouldnt they get tired of the flaws? Aesthetically, financially, ethically.
It seems to me like the low-knowledge, self-important, self-interested and self-promoting mansplaining middlepeople have been a problem. It’s not a brightside when its an exclusive niche for petty narcissists with a tolerance for off-putting wines, loaded with misinformation. What would be a positive for the wine industry is an honest representation of an honest pursuit of an ideal. Instead of alienating the vast majority of the market, appeal to and embrace them. That’s how you bring in a new generation of wine drinkers.
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not to nitpick. what he actually said was very much in line with what you said:
“Is there really a difference between Natural, Biodynamic, Real and Organic wines? There sure is, but is it really productive to blab about the differences? We like mystery and suspense and so do you or you wouldn’t be glued to your television sets watching CSI New York. The Natural Wine Movement hates precision, detail and facts. For instance, when someone asks a member of The Natural Wine Movement for the exact variety composition of a blend, we just make up some percentages. Often they don’t add up to 100% because no one really cares. We don’t care and you don’t care. If the terroir is expressive then the grape varieties are transparent. We are not in California.”
is worth reading it all:
https://captaintumorman.com/comment/48/524/
joe did a lot and said a lot. not all of what he said was his best as brain cancer finally beat him. but even as it happened he was far smarter than teh comments in this thread would have you believe.
fb. (delurking, in respect of those that can’t.)
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My point Otto was that your first statement about how natural wine began was what I typically hear, it’s quoted above. I would guess you posted it fairly quickly and your second post clarifying the situation with Chauvet is much different. It specifies Beaujolais producers and it implies they felt other Beaujolais producers were who they were talking about.
Your first post just says that some winemakers thought every other wine producer was using a bunch of chemical inputs. Which isn’t true. I won’t speak for France, but in Oregon minimal inputs and low intervention winemaking was the focus of most of the winemakers I looked up to in 2002 when I started making wines.
But the story I heard was only that. If @Eric_Texier wants to enlighten us, I’d love to hear that as well.
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While it may not seem it from above, I actually think Joe Dressner was pretty brilliant and bought wines from many, many of his producers. His words you quoted are about as honest as you can get. Barring perhaps the statement about California.
He’s mostly saying that when the grapes are great, you don’t need a bunch of other stuff added in. And he definitely sold more of those wines for making strong statements, which was his job. The controversy hasn’t hurt the category.
But it will be nice when the controversy can go away and the wines can just be the wines.
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I’m sorry, as we were talking about how the natural wine movement began, I thought it was common knowledge that it began in Beaujolais in the late 1970’s or early 1980’s. I didn’t understand I needed to specify this.
I really don’t understand how this pertains to the point. Natural wine movement was fairly unknown still in the 1980’s but by the late 1990’s there were already numerous naturalists all around the world. In 2002 the natural wine movement was in full force - your point how it was in Oregon in 2002 has nothing to do with how the natural wine move began.
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I guess the original natural wine movement deserves much better than second hands opinions, including mine.
Beyond the simple but sharp explanation made by Otto, and If you really want first hand informations, you will have to read the 3 main protagonists of this odyssey :
- Jules Chauvet (his books that are still available)
- Jacques Néauport (his writtings)
- Marcel Lapierre (a complete story wrote by a brilliant journalist)
Your, not far from injurious and, for the least, totally untrue, description of Jules Chauvet shows your arrogance and the immense depth of your ignorance.
Very relevant of these present times…
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Lol, relax. Can everybody please tone down the passive-aggressivity 
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Well the trainwreck that a simple thread about the irrefutable observation that Natural wine is bringing lots of younger people into wine has devolved into did some good as it brought Fatboy out of lurkdom and I found out that Joe’s site is still there!
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Thank you Eric. Do you know if any of these have been translated into English?
Also for those looking for an English book. The Wild Bunch was one of the Early books on Natural wine:
Sorry Eric.
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I didn’t name any winemakers.
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the reference there was not to Jules Chauvet. So I’m not sure how it applies to him.
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funny how natural winemakers can accuse everyone else of using all types of chemical inputs and Joe Dressner can state thay none of you care about the truth, but I’m “injurious” for recounting a story I was told?
Absurd but fine. I retract my comment on avoiding the use of sulfur at processing having anything to do with wine style or quality.
And thank you the recommendations for reading.
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I was wondering - who were you talking about here, if not Chauvet?
Um, sir, this is a Wendy’s,
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I’ve been staying out of the thread, mostly because I feel too close to the subject, but over the last couple of years I’ve been interviewing many US natural and low intervention winemakers. You can hear from them in their own words on my “Indie Wine Podcast”. Please excuse the self promotion. It’s not solely focussed on “natural” producers, it does have a large amount of CA wine history also, but they do make up a large part of the people I speak with. If you’re a sceptic about natural or low intervention wines, the interviews with producers like Ruth Lewandowski, Stagiaire, Florez, Broc, Les Lunes, La Clarine etc. might give you insight at least into the thoughts and ideas behind some current US producers.
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Robert,
Le vin en questions has 2 parts : one in french and one in english.
I think “l’ esthétique du vin” has been translated. Not sure for the others.