Surprised I didn’t see any posts on this. We went to the LA version of this today, it seemed like they also had a rendition in NY recently as well. On the one hand, I know a lot of people here have mixed feelings on the whole “natural” wine movement, and I can see why – I suppose it can be aggressively proselytized, and sometimes appears to be a cover-up for flawed or at least questionable wine-making practices. But the sentiments in general are admirable, and it was a really cool experience. Pretty overwhelming variety of producers from all over the world, occasionally it was a challenge since my Spanish is very basic and I don’t know any Italian, etc., sometimes a gracious importer or distributor had to translate haha. Also got very crowded in the afternoon. I had thought it was just an open fair-type of thing but it seemed to be more of an industry type of event that happened to let in the public.
-orange wines seem to be a thing. many producers from all over the world had extended-skin-contact pinot gris and other varietals. It got to a point where I saw some industry people just ask producers off-the-bat how many days of skin-contact after the wine was poured, lol
-sulfur. Some producers were open about not using any, others seemed more coy, others more pragmatic
-concrete egg versus amphora versus old oak. surprised to see that some producers did use some new oak but they professed to be very particular about toasting and barrel selection
Too many producers to list favorites, and I don’t trust my palate yet at this point to be able to distinguish noteworthy ones. I will say that it was really cool to meet Hardy Wallace from Dirty & Rowdy, after reading many of his helpful posts on Napa, etc. Mike Roth from Lo-Fi and Coquelicot was also very nice/personable. Hope others from this board can chime in if they were able to go or are planning on going tomorrow (Monday).
Thanks for the report, Fred. It sounds like a great event - wish I could make it there. Always enjoy the wines from Hardy and from Mike - glad you got to meet both of them. I’m looking forward to the third annual Brumaire tasting next March in Oakland, a smaller event that features a similar group of producers from the US, Europe, and Latin America.
I would think that your demographic would be where this fair needs to aim to some extent - those with an interest in wine and an open-mindedness to try new things.
Therefore, forgetting about the ‘personalities’, my question is what did you think of the wines in general? Did the stereotypes hold at all? 50% of the wines?
What did you actually like about the wines you tried? Disliked?
Truly and honestly curious for your further insights.
NY this year was great as well. I am working with a grower near me in the Hudson Valley that was open to more holistic growing methods, and wanted to see what was out there in the “natural wine” world, and I feel like the producers here were a great introduction. Though I DID spend most of the time tasting with producers I already knew in order to introduce the growers to what I knew were good wines, I definitely noticed fewer flawed wines than last year among the producers that were new to me. Minimal brett and VA issues and only the occasional mousey wine (that would unfortunately taint the glass for hours afterward if it wasn’t properly rinsed and cleaned!)
And I didn’t notice any larger percentage of skin-contact whites than last year, but maybe I’m just used to it.
Pro-tips for next year:
Bring a coffee cup to spit into, buckets at the tables were often over-crowded
Bring a flask of vodka to sterilize glasses, just in case
Wear a mask to avoid the “taste for 5 min, chitchat with friends you run into for 55 min of every hour” until you get through all the tastings you wanted to
I attended both the NY and LA fairs (we had a producer pouring in NY, Clos Massotte from the Roussillon). I will second what was said above, the quality of the wines has improved dramatically. As an example, during my first visit to La Dive in the Loire several years ago I could barely taste anything, there were so many flawed wines.
Both the NY & LA fairs were very enjoyable, and I found some new things and of course networked and saw lots of people I know.
I liken the “natural” wine movement to where Organic wines were about 20-30 years ago: lots of wild and unpredictable things, but overall improving year over year as winemakers learn how to stabilize their wines with a minimal use of sulfur or other compounds. I am not a fan of the term “natural” as it tends to be polarizing, understandably enough. And of course, unlike Biodynamic or Organic, there are no legal definitions of “natural” (yet). Still, I think there’s lots of potential and love seeing how things evolve.
Disclaimer= we import Organic, Biodynamic and Natural wines so whatever I said above must be taken with a grain, nay, a boulder of salt.
Michel - sorry to have missed you. We were there from about 10 until 1:30 on Sunday.
We enjoyed the fair, but in general, I’d consider myself agnostic on “Natural” wines. I saw it as an opportunity to taste with a number of small wineries from France, Italy and Austria that we otherwise would not have the opportunity to try. Having a few “names” such as Gravner, Foradori, Cornellison, as well as U.S. favorites such as Dirty and Rowdy sweetened the deal of course.
I was impressed by the quality overall, and nice to have the opportunity to chat with a number of the winemakers, although there were a few I just had to nod my head and smile as they pointed to maps and photos and mentioned varietals I was not familiar with. All part of the fun. And yes, it was definitely less crowded in the morning. I’ll caveat that we probably tasted at less than a quarter of the 112 tables…so undoubtedly missed a few gems along the way.
We also had a good time at a few of the associated commercial events and dinner on Saturday afternoon/evening, primarily due to the opportunity to taste some of the wines in a more relaxed setting and with food. We had a chance for extended chats with Henri Bungener of Le Clos de Caveau (Vacqueyras) and Mattieu Deiss of Le Vignoble du Reveur (Alsace), as well as a lengthy wine-paired dinner with Christian Binner (Alsace). Although some of the pre-fair events could have been better organized, I’d recommend checking them out for anyone attending a future RAW fest.
Not Todd…but “mousey” is a term I often use. When you’re cleaning out/restacking a wood pile, you come
upon an old mouse’s nest. It has a very distinctive aroma to it. Of stale mouse piss and mouse $hit.
I also call it the “hantavirus” smell…because from those old mouse nests you can pick up hantavirus.
But “hantavirus” is a bit more subtle than “mousey”. You have to have been there.
If you wanta come restack my woodpile, Markus, I can introduce you to “mousey”.
Tom
Thanks for the report, Fred. I’d like to attend this event someday.
The amount of skin contact can be an important factor. Some will use only 4-6-7-8 days of skin contact. Some will keep the skin-contact all the way thru
fermentation. Some will maintain the skin-contact for days/week/months after frmtation (extended skin-contact). It can make a huge difference
in the character of the wine. With extended skin-contact, the wine can lose varietal character (as we recognize it) and carry a large
phenolic loading and be unpleasant to taste by itself, often needing food to accompany it to tame the tannins. So that is an important
question to ask in skin-contact whites.
I agree to Larry’s question:
You can only sell so much wine to SweetAlice’s sheep.
But the important question…what color of eyeglasses was Hardy wearing???
Tom
Neat, thanks for posting. I’d love to go to a US one at some point. I went to a Catalan version of something similar earlier this year which was my first experience (Salon Indigenes). Quite fun and neat, even for someone who doesn’t speak Spanish, French, or Catalan…
It’s hard to describe, but when you taste it you understand it right away. Rather acrid and unpleasant, and usually at the end of the palate. In terms of flaws, I usually get an unpleasant wild animal and/or rancid walnut note in wines that are off, usually at the back of the palate (if it’s up front or on the nose, then run away). I think, like TCA, sensitivity to it depends on the individual and context. There have been times when I was tasting with someone who picked it up and I didn’t, and vice versa. It also tends to come and go with air, and completely randomly (I’ve had seemingly off bottles improve and vice versa).
This is one of the reasons we taste a wine over the course of a few days to see how it develops and evolves before deciding to import it. If you’re going to sell something, make sure it’s top quality, no matter how it was made.
Mousiness is a retronasal taste/smell sensation that only presents itself after a wines finish, when the saliva on your tongue has sufficiently raised the pH for the molecules to volatilize. The flavor can range from mildly corny (I used to confuse it with diacetyl) through moldy corn flakes all the way to the “mouse cage” that it is named for. It is the one flaw that I absolutely can’t look past, and has forced me to dump many bottles. I believe the chemistry and preventative measures are still somewhat in dispute, but in my experience I’ve only had it in true zero-sulfur wines, so I think at least a mild sulfur regimen would help. I’ve also had a wine that showed perfectly on day 1 be undrinkably mousey on day 2.
That’s pretty consistent w/ my experience, Todd. It doesn’t show up until later after the wine’s been opened and
mostly in the aftertaste. I have recalled it in some wines that carried a low-sulfer dose, though.
Tom
Thanks Fred for the report. I’ve never had orange wine and it’s been on my list of things to try.
I’d echo Larry and ask you about your thoughts on the wines.
The wines were highly variable, to me. Some wines seemed more “clean,” actually surprisingly conventional, others seemed more aggressively risk-taking and “natural,” in the sense of taking chances with long skin contact, almost underripe/green notes, lack of sulfur, etc. I wasn’t close to trying most of the wines so I’m hesitant to make sweeping judgments otherwise, but I will say that as a country lol I really liked the Austrian wines, overall they all seemed to be enjoyable and well-made in the sense of no off-putting flavors. Hopefully more of us can make it out to future years and post some more detailed tasting notes.
Thanks for the reply. The Austrian reds or whites? I wouldn’t think there would be much of the former there - but I certainly could be mistaken. And I wonder if the Austrian whites came across ‘better’ because perhaps they have higher natural acidity and lower pH’s, resulting in less need for SO2? Just a guess . . .
Follow up to the RAW event, just read this article:
The truth is that these wines, when they’re on, inspire proselytization, not because they’re the greatest wines ever made, but because they’re the most volatile, the most alive. You can taste the chaos of nature in them, the sour tang of yeast conversion, of biochemical transmogrification, and of wild fermentation.
Wondering if others can chime in whether they can taste the difference between wine made with wild yeasts vs wine inoculated with cultivated yeast?
Honestly, if all that was the only difference, I sincerely doubt it (and I work primarily with wines made using native yeasts). However, usually those who rely on native yeasts also aspire to a more “pure” winemaking, which will inevitably mark the wine (for better or worse, depending on the winemaker). It’s not just the one little thing that sets them apart, it’s the whole winemaking process.
To me, biodynamic/natural wines have a more wild, alive element to them, there’s an energy to them that you can feel. Let’s just say they’re not boring, and can be downright fantastic.
I think that the challenge here is ‘defining’ what yeast ‘add’ to the final wine - and what is ‘everything else’.
There is do doubt that with a ‘native’ or ‘natural’ yeast fermentation, the kinetics are different; different ‘yeast strains’ show up at during stages of the fermentation. What ‘starts’ the fermentation yeast-wise is not what finishes it.
Now’s where it gets ‘tricky’ - doing a ‘carbonic’ or ‘partial carbonic’ fermentation? That ‘process’ usually ‘takes over’ much of the characteristic of the finished wine. Aging for it any length of time? The longer you age a wine, the less I find any uniques characteristics that one would derive from ‘yeast selection’.
I believe this has been said again and again, but the only ‘real way’ to truly know what differences may arise would be to do multiple ferments over multiple varieties over multiple years using both ‘native’ and ‘commercial’ yeasts - and then trying those wines over periods of time after aging and betting. Again and again.
Or we can continue to have the conversation - and I agree with Michel that those who choose to use native yeasts as a part of going the ‘natural’ way do so as a part of an entire process, not just for that reason.
Love the conversation - and would love others who have more experience with both types of ferments to jump in an comment, especially with some ‘empirical data’ if possible.
Wondering if others can chime in whether they can taste the difference between wine made with wild yeasts vs wine inoculated with cultivated yeast?
To add to the above, there are how many kinds of grape varieties? Multiply that many times and that’s how many yeasts there are. Since most people can’t tell the difference between Syrah and Merlot poured blind, there’s even less chance that people will know yeast A vs yeast B vs yeast C.
And let’s not forget that the cultivated yeasts were for the most part - cultivated. They may well have been “wild” at one point and were just propagated because they were good. Kind of like most wine grapes actually.
Then there’s all the rest that people above have mentioned. So I think the short answer is no.
And to drive that point home, there’s a guy who owns one of the most highly-revered wine stores in NYC who claims to be able to tell. Didn’t buy wine from me one day because he said it was a “commercial” yeast used in it. Dead ass wrong of course, but he’s the acknowledged expert so who was I to question him. (He’s actually a good guy so I’m not outing him.)
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