Wine's naturalistic fallacy

[Jonathan_Loesberg]

What do you mean that French doesn’t have a word for winemaker? What is “vigneron?” The fact that it doesn’t have the French word for “make” in it doesn’t mean that that isn’t what the word means?

It depends which definition you take e.g. Merriam-Webster:
Winemaker: a person who makes wine, specifically : one who supervises the wine-making process at a winery
It doesn’t relate to growing or tending the vines. But the web also provides the following definition: A producer of wine; a winegrower.

Whereas vigneron always included the work at the vineyard e.g. Larousse:
Vigneron: Personne qui cultive la vigne, fait du vin.

So it depends who you ask .

Yes and no. Technically, the word for someone who manages the work in the vineyard is viticulteur. It is true, as a matter of usage, that both words usually mean both things. Nevertheless, you will find on some bottles that the winemaker refers to himself as a viticulteur/vigneron to distinguish himself from someone who does one or the other (are there feminines for these terms: viticulteuse? vigneronne?).

[Phil_T_r_o_t_t_e_r]

Yes and no. Technically, the word for someone who manages the work in the vineyard is viticulteur. It is true, as a matter of usage, that both words usually mean both things. Nevertheless, you will find on some bottles that the winemaker refers to himself as a viticulteur/vigneron to distinguish himself from someone who does one or the other (are there feminines for these terms: viticulteuse? vigneronne?).

That isn’t the most common definition though. Viticulteur is used when the person works in the vineyard but does not also produce the wine. Vigneron is used when the viticulteur also produces the wine. A good link to this distinction here: Viticulteur et vigneron : connaissez-vous la différence ? - Avenue des Vins

[Phil_T_r_o_t_t_e_r]

Ah and yes for vigneronne and viticultrice.

[brigcampbell]

My signature on the Cellartracker discussion forum is, “Terroir is not a flavor.” It seems germane here.

There is something to be said for varietal, or site-specific, “typicity”; but it’s not the end-all be-all. And that’s said without even touching the third rail of “defining “typicity”.”

Had a discussion with someone just recently, they’re free to identify themselves, and this person knows napa wines and said basically “I’m coming to the conclusion that barrel selection/toast levels are the most important factor”. It’s a interesting take in the face of terroir because french/american oak is anything but terroir.

[LasseK1]

I always questioned myself on the notion of terrior. I agree some places can produce better/different grape material than others. But at that point the winemaking choices is too influential.

When people geek out on Burgundy or other famous areas, they can set vineyards apart because, at some point, people set some common rules/norms for how wine should be made in that area.

But could you pick out your favourite white Grand Cru vineyard blind if the grapes had macerated for an extended period? No?

[Jonathan_Loesberg]

Yes and no. Technically, the word for someone who manages the work in the vineyard is viticulteur. It is true, as a matter of usage, that both words usually mean both things. Nevertheless, you will find on some bottles that the winemaker refers to himself as a viticulteur/vigneron to distinguish himself from someone who does one or the other (are there feminines for these terms: viticulteuse? vigneronne?).

That isn’t the most common definition though. Viticulteur is used when the person works in the vineyard but does not also produce the wine. Vigneron is used when the viticulteur also produces the wine. A good link to this distinction here: Viticulteur et vigneron : connaissez-vous la différence ? - Avenue des Vins

Well, my Petit Robert gives viticulteur as a synonym for vigneron. I have heard the words used as distinct and as identical. it does give vigneronne as the feminine but gives no feminine for viticulteur. Erich Rohmer gives viticulteuse (in an Autumny Story) but as an awkward nonce word. I’ll accept yours since I have no good information to the contrary.

[William_Kelley]

Yes and no. Technically, the word for someone who manages the work in the vineyard is viticulteur. It is true, as a matter of usage, that both words usually mean both things. Nevertheless, you will find on some bottles that the winemaker refers to himself as a viticulteur/vigneron to distinguish himself from someone who does one or the other (are there feminines for these terms: viticulteuse? vigneronne?).

That isn’t the most common definition though. Viticulteur is used when the person works in the vineyard but does not also produce the wine. Vigneron is used when the viticulteur also produces the wine. A good link to this distinction here: Viticulteur et vigneron : connaissez-vous la différence ? - Avenue des Vins

I think there are also nuances to do with social status in the French class system. If I’m not mistaken (and such things are complex), “viticulteur” is a bit humbler in its connotations, peasant vs proprietor if you like, but not in a pejorative sense. The Coche-Dury sign, for example, says “Coche-Dury, viticulteurs”, and Jayer’s label says “Henri Jayer, viticulteur à Vosne-Romanée” - that is how those producers prefer/d to describe themselves.

[William_Kelley]

Yes and no. Technically, the word for someone who manages the work in the vineyard is viticulteur. It is true, as a matter of usage, that both words usually mean both things. Nevertheless, you will find on some bottles that the winemaker refers to himself as a viticulteur/vigneron to distinguish himself from someone who does one or the other (are there feminines for these terms: viticulteuse? vigneronne?).

That isn’t the most common definition though. Viticulteur is used when the person works in the vineyard but does not also produce the wine. Vigneron is used when the viticulteur also produces the wine. A good link to this distinction here: Viticulteur et vigneron : connaissez-vous la différence ? - Avenue des Vins

Well, my Petit Robert gives viticulteur as a synonym for vigneron. I have heard the words used as distinct and as identical. it does give vigneronne as the feminine but gives no feminine for viticulteur. Erich Rohmer gives viticulteuse (in an Autumny Story) but as an awkward nonce word. I’ll accept yours since I have no good information to the contrary.

viticultrice is the feminine

[William_Kelley]

The pedant in me wants to note that the “naturlistic fallacy,” is the fallacy of believing that nature has human feeling, that when it rains, nature weeps, etc.

Isn’t that the pathetic fallacy?

[Marcu_Stanley]

As soon as I saw the author and title of this, I knew it was going to be great, and it is. William artfully dodges direct engagement in the old “natural wines” fight, but of course this is directly relevant to that debate, as the the fundamental conceptual incoherence in the “natural wine” discourse is that a wine can ever be a purely natural product as opposed to a craft product. Here for example is a paragraph explaining “natural wines” from a recent Simon and Schuster book on becoming a sommelier which gives a good perspective on how the term gets used:

“she’s a champion of ‘natural wines’, an imperfect but serviceable designation generally taken to mean wines to which nothing is added nor taken away during their making…This is exactly how wine was made during most of its thousands of years in existence. But the production of wine changed dramatically during the second half of the 20th century, when chemical interventions, additions of natural and artificial flavors and colorants, and other ‘innovations’ were introduced to the process”

This explanation, given in a fairly advanced book, is totally misleading and false about the nature and history of winemaking. It would even be more accurate to say that additions of natural and artificial flavors were typical of winemaking for thousands of years. More than that, it’s conceptually incoherent, since winemaking is fundamentally about choices of how exactly you interfere with natural processes, add to or take away from them, during the making of the wine.

What’s great about this article is rather than quarrel about the conceptual definition of “natural”, it really tries to bring home the way in which winemaking is a complex series of unavoidable choices each of which has complex impacts and cannot be abdicated or left entirely to nature. So it’s in its essence a craft or artistic process which bears the mark and interpretation of the maker, like a chef’s relationship with food. The danger in modern winemaking is not the replacement of the natural by the artificial, but the craft or artistic by the industrial. This latter danger is very real. But as William points out toward the end of the article, wrongly conceptualizing the issue as “natural vs artificial” can in certain ways make the threat of industrialization harder to defend against. If I take his point there correctly, he is saying that trying to strip away the artificial can strip away craftsmanship and individual signature and encourage homogenization of wine under the label of “purity”. That’s a really crucial and important point.

[David_Bu3ker]

Life is itself a series of choices - interventions if you will. If one chooses to pursue a completely “natural” life then I would expect them to have very short life span.

[Wes_Barton]

The best example for me is the discussion of adding sulfites. In the genre of “natural wine” i have never understood why this is seen as such a special no-go for many, when it comes to the perception of showing true terrior. It is not like other choices had not effect…
And what annoys me the most about it, is that it removes focus from what is important to me, farming the land we use for a luxury product, with care, while producing thrilling wines!

It’s an important exploration zone. As noted above, this has been an important movement, to learn, to expand horizons. SO2 isn’t neutral. It adds character, darkens fruit expression, adds structure, mutes aromatics, etc. Wines with no or low SO2 can be a glorious revelation, a new realm of expression. Of course, making an unstable or vulnerable wine is problematic or going too far. For a few years we made experimental no SO2 versions of a few (different each vintage) wines (using an isolated grape seed compound that served as an anti-microbial and anti-oxidant). Tasting these side by side, the no SO2 version was usually better by quite a lot, though one was a virtual tie in opinion and one was a clear loser.

So, there might be a lot of scare tactics, misinformation and hysteria on the side of the marketing, media and consumer, there’s a Holy Grail aspect to producers.

[Wes_Barton]

What do you mean that French doesn’t have a word for winemaker? What is “vigneron?” The fact that it doesn’t have the French word for “make” in it doesn’t mean that that isn’t what the word means?

It depends which definition you take e.g. Merriam-Webster:
Winemaker: a person who makes wine, specifically : one who supervises the wine-making process at a winery
It doesn’t relate to growing or tending the vines. But the web also provides the following definition: A producer of wine; a winegrower.

Whereas vigneron always included the work at the vineyard e.g. Larousse:
Vigneron: Personne qui cultive la vigne, fait du vin.

So it depends who you ask .

To put it bluntly, in the U.S. “winemaker” is a title, not an indication of what the person did.

[larry_schaffer]

Love the piece, William. And to me, it is ‘spot on’. I love the concept of ‘patina’ in a wine - it’s not fully ‘definable’ but you know it when you experience it.

I guess what this boils down to is that ‘dogma’ in wine is rarely ever a good thing - there will be exceptions to every rule. The basic definition of terroir - speaking of from a specific place, etc - is easy to ‘understand’ but very very difficult to ‘achieve’ because it simply is very difficult to truly be ‘transparent’ in the way wine is made.

As you point out, the myriad of decisions that winemakers are faced with - some requiring action and some requiring no action whatsoever - all come with ‘consequences’, and these ‘consequences’ may not come to fruition for months, years or even decades.

I can’t wait to follow this thread and see what others have to say about it - as long as it doesn’t get too philosophical, that is

Cheers

[Alan_Rath]

If I have William’s basic premise right, it is that the winemaker’s intervention, his stamp on the wine, is as important as the place it came from. Or, at least, that the winemaker’s stamp is a critical component in setting a wine apart from its peers, and that the most “interesting” wines have that stamp. I have mixed feelings about that conclusion. There are most definitely wines which have a “stamp” that makes them more interesting, more enticing, more cerebral perhaps. But there are an equal - perhaps much greater - number where that obvious stamp obliterates the wine, masking it’s intrinsic character with aspects not at all “native”.

Personally, I find myself drawn more to wines that have a less obvious winemaker’s “signature”, though there are important exceptions: Jamet’s Cote Rotie, for example, is clearly apart from its peers in style, which suggests something unique about the winemaking. Rougeard’s Saumur wines the same. When you find that unique combination of winemaking signature and terroir, it is truly magical. The problem, as I see it, is those successful combinations are few and far between.

My premise is more that all wines are, unavoidably, the result of how producers answer the myriad questions posed by wine production; so all wines bear a stamp. So, as I put it in the essay, any winemaking style that seems to be more “transparent,” offering a less obviously mediated expression of grape and place, is in fact only a subtler and more deceptive form of artifice. The concept of “transparency to terroir”, in other words, doesn’t do justice to the complexity of what is actually going on.

Yes, your first point kind of goes without saying. Grape vines/wines don’t plant themselves in rows, prune themselves, green harvest themselves, crush themselves, rack themselves, etc. All choices, big and small influence the final wine in bottle.

I was more addressing what seemed to be your point that some of what you consider to be the “best” or most interesting wines have quite a strong winemaking stamp, or did I misinterpret your thoughts? My own experience says that can be the case, but that it’s far more the case that the strong winemaking stamp is a detraction, not an addition. So, for me, the highs can be higher, but the average is lower. It’s why I find myself gravitating toward producers with less of an (apparent) winemaking stamp. It’s also partly that most of the truly great “stampers” are pretty well known, and command a price premium, so there is a strong economic factor as well in my own case.

[David_Bu3ker]

Some of those light “stamps” might be a necessity since producers are working with less heralded dirt in growing the raw materials.

[Rodrigo_B]

If I have William’s basic premise right, it is that the winemaker’s intervention, his stamp on the wine, is as important as the place it came from. Or, at least, that the winemaker’s stamp is a critical component in setting a wine apart from its peers, and that the most “interesting” wines have that stamp. I have mixed feelings about that conclusion. There are most definitely wines which have a “stamp” that makes them more interesting, more enticing, more cerebral perhaps. But there are an equal - perhaps much greater - number where that obvious stamp obliterates the wine, masking it’s intrinsic character with aspects not at all “native”.

Personally, I find myself drawn more to wines that have a less obvious winemaker’s “signature”, though there are important exceptions: Jamet’s Cote Rotie, for example, is clearly apart from its peers in style, which suggests something unique about the winemaking. Rougeard’s Saumur wines the same. When you find that unique combination of winemaking signature and terroir, it is truly magical. The problem, as I see it, is those successful combinations are few and far between.

My premise is more that all wines are, unavoidably, the result of how producers answer the myriad questions posed by wine production; so all wines bear a stamp. So, as I put it in the essay, any winemaking style that seems to be more “transparent,” offering a less obviously mediated expression of grape and place, is in fact only a subtler and more deceptive form of artifice. The concept of “transparency to terroir”, in other words, doesn’t do justice to the complexity of what is actually going on.

Yes, your first point kind of goes without saying. Grape vines/wines don’t plant themselves in rows, prune themselves, green harvest themselves, crush themselves, rack themselves, etc. All choices, big and small influence the final wine in bottle.

I was more addressing what seemed to be your point that some of what you consider to be the “best” or most interesting wines have quite a strong winemaking stamp, or did I misinterpret your thoughts? My own experience says that can be the case, but that it’s far more the case that the strong winemaking stamp is a detraction, not an addition. So, for me, the highs can be higher, but the average is lower. It’s why I find myself gravitating toward producers with less of an (apparent) winemaking stamp. It’s also partly that most of the truly great “stampers” are pretty well known, and command a price premium, so there is a strong economic factor as well in my own case.

I’d say that the characteristics of the wines you note you gravitate towards are “stamps” of those winemakers. A “stamp” doesn’t necessarily mean big, bold, strong, or clearly overt, but rather that in one form or another the wine gives you a sense that it is tied not only to a place, but also to the individuals who crafted it.

I think the point is that in terroir, the sense of place is intrinsically tied to the people that produce the wine. William succinctly put it a few posts back: “today, the appellation cannot really be meaningfully be given without the producer as a qualifier: Jayer’s Echezeaux, Ramonet’s Montrachet—and, maybe even more emphatically, Dureuil’s Rully, Guffens’ Mâcon.”

[Alan_Rath]

I’d say that the characteristics of the wines you note you gravitate towards are “stamps” of those winemakers. A “stamp” doesn’t necessarily mean big, bold, strong, or clearly overt, but rather that in one form or another the wine gives you a sense that it is tied not only to a place, but also to the individuals who crafted it.

I think the point is that in terroir, the sense of place is intrinsically tied to the people that produce the wine. William succinctly put it a few posts back: “today, the appellation cannot really be meaningfully be given without the producer as a qualifier: Jayer’s Echezeaux, Ramonet’s Montrachet—and, maybe even more emphatically, Dureuil’s Rully, Guffens’ Mâcon.”

Assume we’ve all stipulated (I hope) that every wine has its winemaker’s stamp on it, big or small. There are lots of examples of producers who make wines from multiple sources (or terroirs, if you prefer). In some cases, tasting through those wines you can perceive noticeable differences across the wines, and in some cases you first notice the winemaking stamp, then the source differences at almost a more background level. Maybe there are some wines (I guess the natural inclination would be to say Grand Cru Burgundies) that can absorb that heavier stamp, and still show the source, particularly with age. In my experience, the sense of place can be more or less apparent, depending on the winemaking choices. Is Ramonet’s Montrachet the best representation of its source? or is it more a great representation of winemaking? Isn’t that the question? Assuming someone believes the Ramonet version to actually be the “best”; I don’t drink at that level, so I have to recuse myself from that conversation

[William_Kelley]

There are lots of examples of producers who make wines from multiple sources (or terroirs, if you prefer). In some cases, tasting through those wines you can perceive noticeable differences across the wines, and in some cases you first notice the winemaking stamp, then the source differences at almost a more background level.

I think—and this was really the argument of the piece—that this is a false choice. We notice some winemaking “artifacts” because we have been trained to recognize them, and we ignore others that have become (to repurpose your formulation) part of the “background”. But this is all about context. Most of Chablis is vinified in stainless steel; most Meursault is vinified in oak barrels. Meursault vinified in stainless steel would taste very, very different, and by contrast Meursault vinified in wood would reveal a strong “winemaking stamp”. To prove the point in the other direction, Chablis vinified in wood often tastes totally disorienting (even Raveneau and Dauvissat, remember, ferment in steel before they age in mostly used wood).

So, to my mind, it is really a fruitless task to start trying to parse where the terroir ends and the winemaking begins. It’s more interesting to talk about how compelling a producer’s chosen aesthetic is—with, certainly, a strong case to be made for understatement, elegance etc by all means. Is this mere semantics, you might ask? And I would reply that, no, I see producers making less characterful, personal wines because they are so anxious to efface any kind of winemaking “signature”. Herwig has given one example above, for his palate, and I can think of others. This is a very personal thing, which is why I permitted myself to use to first person in my essay, but I am happy to learn about the winemaker as well as the vineyard when I drink a bottle of wine, and I don’t believe these are mutually exclusive. To be clear, I am not saying it’s great if Nuits-Saint-Georges tastes like over-oaked, but rather that I’m happy for it to taste, diversely, like Chevillon, Mugneret-Gibourg, or Mugnier.

To take approach, and to make things more concrete, which are the producers you have in mind where you feel that the winemaking takes a backseat to the site?

[RichardFlack]

Oh, it’s a beautiful piece, William.

I think about this question most often when I’ve been at certain biodynamic places like Pearl Morissette in Ontario. Lots of attention to making some very unique wines, and yet (for me) their idiosyncrasies in flavors and mouthfeel are somewhat of a roller coaster for my own enjoyment . And is that because I grew up on Old World wines so devoutly? If I were new to wines in my 30s, and had a massive variety of wine making diversity in my first 500 bottles of wine tasted/consumed would my own palate flexibility have a much larger degree of variance? Would I embrace ‘quirky’ wine making techniques more readily?

I do indeed think about this often. Both on the personal, anecdotal levels as well as what they mean for the artisanal world at large.

This is a key point I think. Do we want, for a particular wine, a roller coaster or a reasonable predictability (given the vintage character)?

Maybe it depends on the situation. In a restaurant for example I want some confidence a wine is what I expect. For my cellar I may take more chances but only within limits.

Champagne is an interesting case of the basic point (consistency). The premise of the grandes marques is consistency of a ‘brand’. But grower champagnes, which are all the rage (perhaps rightly so), are based on a different premise.

As may be apparent, I’m not sure where I’m going with this. I have always thought that a key element of biodynamic is simply lavishing full attention to what’s happening in the vineyard. (Burying rams horns in the vineyard, or whatever, not so much).

For me wine making, from vineyard to bottle, is always a mixture of nature , art, and science. For great wine, these all need to be in balance. Natural wines perhaps get this out of balance sometimes.