Thank you Eric. Much appreciated.
Matt,
I have not listened to these episodes in particulara - care to paraphrase?
Many natural winemakers talk about site and philosophy in general rather than the nuts and bolts of practice. And of the names mentioned, I’ve had at least one that consistently has ‘off aromas and flavors’ to me . . .
Cheers
I would rather not paraphrase because it’s all a part of a larger conversation and not linear in nature. I try to stay away from sound bites and simplifying for the interview as well as the history episodes because I believe in the deep dive and that small details can make a big difference in the story. All the producers have their unique and nuanced views also. With the ways that words can be parsed, I would prefer to let their comments and views stand on their own.
Without going into any producer specifically - Some are more dogmatic than others and strictly 0/0, others add S02 if they believe a wine needs it and others are adding S02 to essentially every wine - but no other inputs or filtration or fining.
Of the episodes I mentioned, I think we go the most into the nuts and bolts on the Stagiaire and Ruth Lewandowski episodes. Both give really good insights into the way they make wine and why and both episodes are nearing 2 hours. FWIW there’s no ads and I make no money from listens, only when someone subscribes to the Patreon.
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Thanks for highlighting these interviews. I look forward to checking them out.
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The story I was told, by someone selling me wines from the Dressner portfolio, simply referenced that the original Gang of Four in Beaujolais had run into an un-named older winemaker who was saying that he never added sulfur pre-ferment. The winemaker was not attached to any named domaine, nor were they implied to be more than an old farmer.
Looking at it, it could easily be “urban” legened, but since it was coming from the Dressner rep it was easy to buy into. And to be frank, in the experiments we’ve done with no SO2 at processing often the wines do show more fruit character. I don’t find them to be more complex than ferments done with the low SO2 adds at processing that were not uncommon in non-inoculated ferments (50ppm or less). Nor was my comment on that story meant to be injurious to anyone. Oxidizing white juice is a common practice for us, and not adding SO2 pre-ferment to reds should have some of the same benefits. I generally tend to believe that in our frrments, the natural
Anti-oxidants in the skins and stems of red ferments makes the oxidation a little less effective than it is with white juice. But that shoukdn’t stop anyone from not adding SO2. In general, compromised fruit is the place where I am concerned enough about issues that we would definitely make a n add at processing.
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Exactly.
Definitely an urban legend. Sounds like somebody has either understood something wrong quite badly, or just mangled up the story themselves.
This “un-named older winemaker” was Jules Chauvet, who was a négociant, chemist and winemaker in Beaujolais. And the “original Gang of Four” didn’t run into an old farmer, but instead Marcel Lapierre met Chauvet and was inspired by his understanding of wine and winemaking philosophy. In turn, Lapierre and his wines started to convert new producers in Beaujolais (and in nearby regions, like Jura (Overnoy) and Loire (Puzelat).
Also, a propos, that “original Gang of Four” is a somewhat misleading term, because originally a bigger group started to push for higher-quality Beaujolais with minimal input. The term “Gang of Four” was coined by Kermit Lynch as a marketing term for those four producers who were inspired by Chauvet’s philosophy, but in turn disregards those “naturalists” who were not represented by KL, like Chamonard or Yvon Métras.
And as I said before, Chauvet didn’t oppose to using SO2 as a whole. He opposed using SO2 before ferments to prevent indigenous yeasts from doing their thing, making people rely on commercial yeasts, which he viewed one of the main reasons why (then) contemporary Beaujolais was so far removed from the traditional style.
Even many of the Gang of Four or their contemporary peers didn’t oppose to using SO2 - many actually used small amounts of SO2 whenever needed and only made completely sans soufre bottlings as separate releases - as a sort of an experiment to push the envelope in the field of making wine without inputs or taking anything away.
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A good article on Jules Chauvet and involves another Otto!
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A good article - although terms like “mid-palette” and “MIF” (for “MLF”) make me question how much the writer actually knows about wine or wine making.
It’s wild to think how far “natural wine” as a term has gone from this as this should be a starting point for making a good & interesting wine. In practice you should only need a large amount of SO2 before ferments if you want to halt indigenous yeasts / spontan fermentation and rely on cultured yeasts or if there is something very wrong with the raw material (which in case never make a good wine be it sulfited or not). And as you said you can even use up to surprisingly large amount of SO2 to keep unwanted things away without killing spontan fermentation and technically the wine would be also natural wine regarding to Chauvet cellar guidelines. Sure I don’t know what were his practices for post-fermentation / bottling but as has been mentioned many times before in this thread there are gigantic amounts of producers that are not known for their “natural wines” or categorized as one but are not using herbicides, adding SO2 before fermentation for their best wines, nor filter them and this is probably closest what was the original idea of Chauvet natural wines but drinker hardly recognize them as such because in natural wine circles often has this idea that you somehow need to understand that you are now drinking the natural wine so it also needs to be very different (appearance, smell, taste) than any other so called conventional wine.
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Urban myth also suggests that one too many hangovers was involved in the movement towards 0/0 to low S02 additions.