Jon has not written for the Chron for over a yr. He moved to NYC and mostly writes for Punch.
Tom
Bonnes analogy is all messed up; Johnny Rotten was a singer and couldn’t play an instrument (or hit a note) to save his life. And the worse stuff came later, not before.
You really believe that? People are not drinking them because the wines are just delicious, but instead because they want to be iconoclasts? I find it hard picturing somebody picking up a bottle of Dard & Ribo in a shop thinking “Yeah! This’ll show 'em!”
I wondered this as well, thinking this analogy didn’t make any sense! 
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I wondered this as well, thinking this analogy didn’t make any sense! [/quote]
Lydon, before he created the Rotten persona, spent some time busking the streets of london with a violin, so technically he could actually play an instrument. The Sex Pistols were a boy band created by Malcolm McLaren/Bernie Rhodes. If Public Image Ltd. is beyond your palate, that’s fine, but also your issue. I find natural wine is less analogous to punk rock (although that has been floated out there many times) and more to the truly postmodern no wave movement that was afoot in New York in the early 80s (the swans, teenage jesus and the jerks, pussy galore, early sonic youth) and also some of the extreme free jazz. John Zorn comes to mind.
I’m reminded of a conversation I had with an art school dean about Basquiat at a cocktail party once. He said he loved Basquiat, the art, the scene around him, the statement. But that he then had to deal with two decades of college kids thinking that because they could draw stick figures, they were neo-expressionists. I think making wine with nothing added is an elevated form of the craft, I have found few producers that were up to that challenge.
With regard to natural wines and terroir, the best way I’ve found to think about it is in terms of communication; i.e. there is a language of terroir we have learned to understand through tasting wines and studying places, a language that has been refined over centuries. Natural wine is working on a separate dialect, maybe one that is more based on local microbial populations than conventional production, and it’s still in the early stages. I’m enjoying watching that process move forward in real time, even if certain parts of the process aren’t things I want to put in my mouth. It might turn out that those wines being beyond my palate is my issue.
I always appreciate a good John Zorn reference. Thank you for that. (seriously, one of the most amazing live performances I have ever seen, back in NY at the Knitting Factory in the mi-90s)
Great post, Ian! ![[welldone.gif]](/uploads/db3686/original/2X/f/fc9709a841aa9379fd892a9cf0b535b05f473b86.gif "[welldone.gif]"){kind=small}
Yes. What a ridiculous implication.
Also who is bottling unfiltered and unsulfured wines with RS? No natural producers that I am familiar with. I’ll grant the point if you can give me one example. I guess maybe Lino Maga. Is he one of those newfangled natural producers everyone is railing on here? Sure looks like one:
I will grant that occasionally some non-MLF-complete wines get bottled, but in most cases I’ve seen producers put them under crown cap and be up front with distributors/consumers about that.
Todd,
Thanks for the reply. You and I both know that there are a plethora of folks out there making ‘non-interventionist’ wines, some of which are better than others. And we also know that there are many folks out there making these wines that do not necessarily ‘understand’ all of the chemistries and micro-biologgy involved with the process from start to finish. My statement was not a blanket statement for all producers.
The same could certainly be said for ‘traditional’ producers as well. My guess is that there are a number of CdP producers who would ‘not be happy’ to experience overly bretty bottles of their wines that had bloomed somewhere along the way and had become something ‘different’ than what they had envisioned.
And that was my ‘point’.
Cheers.
Yeah sorry for getting snippy, late night after a long day of beetle combat and winery tours. 
I definitely agree that there are good and bad wines out there from the non-interventionists. But that and the fact that there are good and bad wines from small-scale interventionist winemakers right up through industrial “wineries” should be all that needs saying anymore.
Nothing inherently makes natural wines good or bad or interventionist wines good or bad (although I won’t say the same for industrial wines, which I wish we could all direct our negative energy towards, although that invites a class discussion on whether wine should be affordable and at what cost.)
My point is just that there are people making wines with love and care at all ends of the intervention spectrum, and disparaging one group as opportunists making a cash grab is a broad generalization that I wouldn’t make in the other direction.
Absolutely. Don’t know how things are in Finland, but in NYC that’s not unusual at all and Dard & Ribo is a great example. The folks who import, or at least used to import it, were fine folks, but they sold their stories hard and the hipster wine people bought in heavily. People may not know anything whatsoever about wine, but if they’re given the right story, they’ll go with it. It’s happened on this forum too.
People “into” wine for a couple years dismiss wines they’ve never even had. It’s a signifier - I listen to this music, like these movies, eat this food, drink this wine, wear these clothes because they signify to others what tribe I want to belong to.
I agree. Dressner is probably the best example (the man and the company as a whole), so it’s very fitting that one of their producers got mentioned. The cultural effects of trying to fit in somewhere and be “cool” are enormous. There’s no way the amount of horribly flawed wine that’s being successfully sold happens without the help of that influence.
Turns out he’s 27 years old.
Hah!
I can actually back this up with empirical evidence. I live in New York and I drink a shitload of Paul Pernot and lesser (but still decent) amounts of Koehler-Ruprecht. The wines are dog shit but I’ve made some pretty decent connections at hipster wine bars and once got invited to a new restaurant that served modified French bistro fare from locavore ingredients in a very crowded room (I was too nervous too eat). One thing I have never been able to figure out: am I supposed to turn the bottle so the front label faces out and people can identify the wine, or do I turn it around so that people just see the Louis Dressner label?
You do realize that Koehler-Ruprecht is not a natural wine producer, and that by lumping in their wines you look more than a little foolish.
You may not like K-R, but they are not at all in the potentially flawed natural camp, and are in fact a hugely respected producer of German Riesling.
What? Thank you! I had no idea it was German and certainly no idea it was well-respected. Sounds like I should definitely be drinking these Dressner label out, otherwise I might actually be increasing the social pressure.
The part where the wines are described as dig shit reveals Gillette is tongue in cheek, at least about that part.
Dog dog to the cool crowd in the restaurant.
Pernot is naturally beautiful.
It’s not a label thing Alex. As far as K-R it’s not a Dressner thing at all. K-R was with Terry Theise for decades. If you don’t care for the style that’s fine. Calling them dogshit is frankly bullshit.
I love the K-R style. Natural wine with top notes of poo. Total dog shit to me, but maybe closer to bullshit as you suggest. I’ve never done a side-by-side comparison of the two.