Every once in a while there are discussion of human intervention and natural wine and such, which do not seem to recognize some important historic facts.
In today’s viticulture Vitis Vinifera (VV), the species from which most better wines are made, is unable to survive on its own and needs human assistance. This is surprising to many as it is thriving all over the world. But it is thriving because of human intervention.
Here are the facts:
In the 1800’s there were several “accidents” that saw the introduction of new diseases into Europe, with catastrophic consequences. These included the potato blight and the famine that followed it. In viticulture the phylloxera was introduced when viticulturists sought to hybridize the native american vine, vitis labrusca (VL), with vitis vinifera, to produce more cold tolerant varieties, as European winters were still rather cold in those days. Little did they know that by taking cuttings of VL they took along the microscopic insect, phylloxera, which barely survived on the tough roots of VL. When VL cuttings were planted that insect found geat food in the very tender roots of VV and litterally exploded out of control, devastating European vineyards. In order to maintain viticulture’s prominent economic role, a major replanting took place, using VV grafted of VL roots. There was a major export of grafted vines from the US into Europe. Out of that accident it is no longer economically feasible to plant VV on its own roots.
Around the same time together with the potato famine, began to appear new diseases that later would be described as downy mildew and powdery mildew. As a kid studying French history, I learned of the introduction of “le mildiou” as a major economic disaster together with the potato fanmine. There was no French word for it so they adopted a phonetic version of it. It is believed that these fungi were exported from the US on the grafted vines that were to save viticulture in Europe.
Serendipitously a cure was discovered when grapegrowers, it is said, used to spray the rows adjacent to the roadways with a combination of copper sulphate and lime, a bluish looking solution, to deter passersby from picking the fruit. It so happens that a researcher observed that these rows were clean whereas unsprayed rows were diseased. That was the birth of what became known as the Bordeaux Mixture.
It can be seen from the above that in order to grow VV the following actions have to be taken to cure defects that did not exist in the VV’s natural habitat:
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VV cultivars have to be grafted on VL roots, a human intervention
Powdery mildew has to be prevented by the use of chemical sprays, a human intervention. Whether these sprays can be organic, biodynamic or whatever is for practical purposes a marketing argument.
Downy mildew must also be prevented by the use of chemical sprays, a human intervention. Whether these sprays can be organic, biodynamic or whatever is for practical purposes a marketing argument.
So in conclusion, those who sincerely believe in minimal human intervention in grapegrowing or winemaking, should realize that there would be no viiculture or winemaking today if it was not for human intervention as VV has lost its native habitat where it did not have to confront these three devastating events for which it is not equipped.
Ok, since VV has trouble staying healthy in mono-culture agriculture (like every plant), let the producers do whatever they want to the wines. Who cares if it strips away terroir characteristics or completley changes the wine’s flavor and texture. That makes perfect sense.
Why does it make any sense that responsible intervention, with man-made products and techniques (as opposed to using intervention to boost yields) would strip away terroir. Nature doesn’t want wine grapes to grow in burgundy. Everything delicious that comes from a wine in burgundy or the Mosel or a million other places is Man’s hand. It has precious little to do with nature.
Obviously there are places where grape vines just do their thing and naturally ripen and you press them and et voila decent wine appears, but (a) those tend to be hot, dry climates and (b) the wine generally sucks.
I think its more the actions in the cellar that can strip away terroir. Sorry if I wasn’t clear.
Actually alot of evidence points to Pinot Noir being indigenous to the Burgundy Region of France. I’d be happy to lay out the evidence when I have some more time if you remind me.
Of course farming is a human endeavor. And making wine, too. But it seems a jump in logic to then conclude that all manipulation is ok. Anything that alters the existing chemistry, flavor or structure of the grape/wine, is, to me, excessive.
But, to each his/her own.
There is an interesting idea put out by Jamie Goode in his new book that Saccharomyces cerevisiae may have evolved along with humans making wine, as it seems to be optimized for conditions (grape must) which do not occur in nature.
Adding a selected strain of Saccharomyces cerevisiae to your must is quite different than relying on the existing (and complex) strains of various yeasts on the grapes and in the winery. Yeasts which change and adapt to each year’s vintage conditions, thus (hopefully) conveying a more direct link between the grape, vine, vineyard, farmer and the resulting wine.
Berry beat me to it - the manipulations you’re talking about in this article are not required for VV to survive, they’re required for it to be productive in industrial-scale, monocultural farming.
Sigh. The “planting grapes and making wine at all is intervention, hence any intervention is fine” is possibly the stupidest red herring argument in this debate. It’s sad to see a winemaker as respected as Charles trot it out.
Hank - why is that any different from selecting a particular grape variety to plant? Moreover, there is no way to know exactly what it is on your grapes. Are you really really 100% certain that it’s not some yeast that escaped from your neighbor? And why would a particular strain appear one year and not the next but then again in the third year? Or am I misunderstanding how they change and adapt to each vintage?
Charles - it’s a lost cause. You my friend, just don’t have the gift of faith. It’s religion, not logic that you’re addressing and that means it’s mere sophistry to point out that buttering your bread on one side is little different from buttering it on the other. The people who butter on side A know there’s something correct about it because a lot of them do it and recognize when other people do it. Case closed.
Moreover, you’re uniquely unqualified to discuss the issue because you’re not a blogger or writer.
But thanks for weighing in. As I’ve said before, I don’t know why people need to be dogmatic about something that is ultimately quite arbitrary. As all winemaking is based on human intervention, that’s ultimately what we’re preferring or dismissing - the specific interventions of the particular winemaker.
Oh bullshit Greg. Those of us who want minimal intervention aren’t illogical, we simply have a different aesthetic. Charles post is condescending and yours is more so. Do you really think we don’t realize that vinifera is introduced to regions, that farming it is different than letting it grow wild, etc.? Of COURSE we do. All we advocate is that wineries intervene as little as possible so that we can get a wine that’s an expression of that variety grown in that place during that vintage. “As little as possible” will be very little indeed in years where everything goes right. It may be pretty heavy in bad years. What we want to see avoided is manipulation that is done as a heavy handed imposition of the winemaker’s tastes. The discussion is interesting when it’s an honest one about where the line is drawn and why. It’s annoying bullshit when people do what you and Charles are doing and condescend to people who, even if we’re not winemakers, are intelligent, concerned enthusiasts who care about wine.
That is a straw man argument. You are interjecting a LOT into what Charles said. He is simply making the point that all viticulture is interventionist on some level. That in no way says that anything and everything should be allowed. It is simply a starting point that so many people seem to ignore in these arguments. There is no magic place where you can make 100% natural, non-interventionist wine that we should strive for. You have to accept what you have to work with and start from there. It puts all the rest in perspective, at least for me. Gnashing teeth over this farming approach or this wine making tech doesn’t really further anything. Seeing what they do in the final product and trying to variety of techniques out there is a lot more instructive. If there is a technique or tech that imparts some character into the wine that we may not like, won’t that show up in the glass?
Hank,
What do you think of that idea that Jamie tossed out???
I recall that they said, even w/ natural fermentations, that it’s the S.Cerevisiae that eventually takes over the fermentation. And that there’s not much S.Cerevisiae
on the bloom of the grapes in the vnyd. So I presume it must come from the wnry enviornment. Which seems like not much of an expression of terrior,
which is, of course, the ultimate expression of any wine.
Tom
I almost hesitate to tell you all this - but it’s going to happen eventually - so what the heck.
But when Pierce’s Disease gets a foothold* in Europe - and it will, eventually - when that happens, you can just kiss the entire European wine industry the hell goodbye.
You need about three nights every winter at or below 15F to kill the sharpshooters which carry the PD, and I don’t know if even the Mosel or the Nahe sees temperatures that low.
And the warmer regions - Bordeaux, the Rhone, the Languedoc, most of Italy, all of Spain - those regions are going to vanish in the blink of an eye.
Watching Pierce’s Disease make its way through a vineyard is like watching one of those zombie shows on late-night television [The Omega Man, Night of the Living Dead, The Walking Dead] - one day you have healthy, vigorous vines, and then suddenly, just a few weeks later, they’re all dead.
All.
Dead.
*Apparently [u]the PD was in Kosovo very briefly[/u], but I guess they must have moved quickly to isolate and destroy the vines [and fumigate whatever sharpshooter colonies they had in the region].
I like the idea, actually. I like that there’s a mutually beneficial event going on.
Yes, it seems that S.C. does end up dominating every fermentation. Its probably good so. And as far as an expression of terroir…isn’t the winery part of that expression? Isn’t that why every decision made in the cellar can have long term effects on the expression of the terroir? My experience has made it impossible for me to separate the vineyard from the winery.
Ideally, a winery should be equipped to deal with a specific vineyard in the most non-interventionist way possible. Reality is, most wineries deal with grapes from many different locations, and the process becomes more “mechanical” in nature. Squaring the circle. One size fits all.
That’s where, I think, the small guys have an advantage. Its easier to closely track fermentations and wine development when you are small. But you gotta pay attention!
I think they perfect people to discuss what they want to buy/consume is: wine consumers. Even if they are wine writers or bloggers.
Certainly, if a wine producer can dispell a misconception about how wine is made, then great, but I think its a bit bizzare to suggest that wine consumer should not have an opinion about where they want to spend their money or put in their mouth. And its not like Charles was invoking techincal wine issues in his argumnent, he was invoking history and I’d say we are alll potentially qualified to discuss wine history and its implications.
There are always going to be people who are dogmatic about stuff on both sides and can’t add intellegently to a conversation but most people are just looking for correlations between wines they like and how those wines are made. Whats wrong with people wanting producers to make more wine in the style they like? Its not a moral issue, its a self-interest issue.
What I got from him is basically the argument “viticulture and winemaking is intevention in and of itself so don’t complain about any type of intervention”. Maybe I’m dense but that seems to be the only way to read his point.
Honestly, I think that is a straw man argument right there. I don’t think even the dogmatic crowd has ever made that point.
Like I said above, all a lot of us want is more wine made in a style we like. We talk to winemakers to try and find the correlations between wine styles we like and the processes used to produce those wines. Speaking for myself, I find that winemakers who tend to intervene on average less that their peers (the status quo) seem to produce wine I really like. I want more people to make wine in that manner. Why? Because I am acting in my own self-interest. If enough people agree with me and we vote with our dollars then there is the financial incentive to satisfy our market demand. What is so controversial about this?
Perhaps you should read my post again. I read it after your comment and did not see where I suggested anything about any intervention being fine. What I wrote are facts, unless you have data to dispute them. The conclusion is yours only. I merely suggested that in many of the conversations/discussions about so called natural wines, these facts are not always understood.
As to “natural” wines, I have a few problems with this characterization:
There is not an agreed upon definition that withstands scrutiny.
The word “natural” suggests that other wines are not natural which makes no sense.
It is problematic to take a word and use it for what it is not. Unless there is wine which is synthetic, all wine by definition is natural since it is made so by living organisms ( yeast and bacteria).
Now:
If a consumer prefers wine made with minimal intervention, it is absolutely fine with me.
That a consumer may wish to get wines based on personal preferences is absoluely fine with me.
That such low intervention wines may be called a certain name is also fine with me. Find a name as was done when the CA wine industry wanted to identify red blends and they coined, successfully, the word “Meritage”.
But we may not mislead the public in using a specific english adjective and assign it a meaning that it does not have.
It is linguistically incorrect and if used commercially it may be argued that it is not legal.
