James Molesworth on Natural wine

he’s not wrong! should be a good thread.

I like James stance, and it echos a lot of my thoughts on the topic… he just said it much more eloquently than I ever could.

I also think it’s telling about the state of media, that this mini-write up was shared via Instagram. Gut says it wouldn’t have generated nearly the readership or engagement if shared on .com

I never look at Instagram and have no account, but I suppose I’m in the minority here.

No problem with what he was saying, but seems like he’s stirring a pot that was set out back a few years ago after all the soup was gone. Is there some current issue regarding “natural” wine?

One thing though -

_“I don’t have to agree with you to like you or respect you.”_⁠⠀

I completely agree with that. But that doesn’t seem to be the case any more. It’s why I don’t go on the politics forum.

I feel his sentiment has been shared a billion times in the past few years.

  • There are “not natural” wine producers that are great and make well crafted wines from healthy plant material.

  • There are some “natural” wines that are flawed and unfit for consumption which are just as bad as over-manipulated wines

  • Some great “natural” wines are well made and thought provoking

Both sides have great wines that are championed by critics/itb who don’t agree with each other.

/yawn

That’s a nice sentiment about respecting other people. I guess then that he would never use an anonymous twitter account to ridicule and attack other people in the wine community.

Is this apophasis? Are you suggesting, then, he would and did? (Not on Twitter or Instagram either, don’t follow this stuff unless it ends up here, though I know, of course, of your podcast, which I often enjoy.)

I’m confused – does work for Flatiron and the Spectator?

yep - senior editor at WS covering half dozen regions and in his spare time, stocks shelves at flatiron.

i take back 87% of what i said about ITB on this board — xoxo, Levi.

Was at a restaurant recently that focuses on “natural” wines and discussing why and what they look for and why. Boiled down to balance, interesting complexity, freshness, pairing well with food, etc. My comment was that they were really looking for good wine, not necessarily natural wine.

As someone who consumes mostly ‘traditional’ wines but has increasingly consumed more ‘natural’ wines I think your comment makes perfect sense.

woah, thermonuclear hot take that I haven’t seen since literally every other gripe about natural wine for the last decade and a half.

+1 Good wine is good wine, and vice versa.

What I found dogmatic in James’ IG post was “Natural wine presupposes that its way is better than any other way of winemaking.” In talking to a number of producers at several Natural Wine events the past two years, the common theme was “this is how I want to make wine” rather than “this is the best way” or “this is the only way”. I’ve also spoken with several who do not promote their wines as Natural, although they participate in the events as well as those not specifically billed as Natural. My guess is that they are afraid of being pigeon-holed or tainted by broad comments such as “Many natural wines are also riddled with technical flaws.” James specifically mentions brettanomyces. In my personal experience, I have had significantly more “normal” French wine impacted by brett than natural wine of any country.

In the end, I prefer to taste with an open mind and buy what I like without worrying about the dogma on either side.

Cheers!

Steve

Give us the details Levi

Dogma is certainly a dangerous thing when it comes to most things in life, including wine. As many have pointed out, there are plenty of folks making ‘natural wine’, however you may want to define it, in a great, fresh way. And as many others have pointed out, there are plenty of faulty wines out there - both wines that are defined as natural and conventional.

I agree with Steve about JM’s ‘dogmatic’ stance, but I think it’s probably a reaction to what he sees and hears on a daily basis - and I think that gets reinforced if you read the comments on the actual IG thread.

And though the concepts that JM discusses are certainly ‘not new’, the ‘natural wine movement’ continues to pick up steam and is more ‘noticeable’ now than ever before in the wine press, with regards to new places opening up focusing on them, etc.

Really curious to see where the thread goes . . .

Cheers

Those 3 points should be all anyone needs to know when entering a discussion about Natural wine.
Because sooner or later, it devolves into a false dichotomy where it’s implied that there are only 2 ways to make wine; either by poisoning the earth with chemicals and adding buckets of acid and sulfur to ferments to make bulk wine, or by carefully farming on small scales and making artisanal wines with nothing added.

It really is an education thing. I think that the main perpetrators of this false dichotomy are the people in the hospitality arm of the industry, those in the business of selling the end product… who are about as distant from the production process as one can possibly be. It’s their responsibility to pass on accurate information to the end consumer. Yet they have to do it in the briefest of moments, while maintaining the utmost professionalism, so of course there’s a need to simplify and make broad sweeping generalisations. But this is a discussion which needs nuance.

Now, I do have to say something potentially controversial here:

Those in the business of selling wine would do well to educate themselves on the chemical properties of wine, and sensory science. Wine faults are called faults for a reason, and wines that exhibit those faults are defective by definition.
People are welcome to enjoy defective wine, and many do without realising (and many pay a privilege for that), but in a discussion about natural-ness in wine we need to have some consistency and honesty.
Because we have a weird double standard emerging here, where those in the natural camp have made a clear stand against heavy-handed oak usage, excessive whole-bunch, sulfur, acid etc… claiming that these wine additives promote homogeneity across wine styles, and obscure terroir/vintage characteristics.
What they may not realise is that the chemical properties of brettanomyces or DMS or H2S reduction are universal and similarly obscure fruit character in the same way. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard people blow off a little brett as being just a bit of “terroir”.
I’m sorry but that’s just plain wrong. A Syrah from France exhibiting strong 4-EP aromas will look the same as a Syrah from Chile with the same concentration of 4-EP, will have the same overwhelming manure aroma, will have the same fruit-stripping effect on the palate, and the same dryness on the palate (from the brett yeasts eating all the 5-carbon sugars that Saccharomyces can’t). This is why brett is deemed a “spoilage” yeast. It obscures fruit character, terroir character, etc…
All I’m saying is that you can’t have it both ways. A little knowledge about the chemistry of wine goes a long way to dispelling some of these harmful myths. But wine faults are pretty much glossed over in every WSET course / sommelier training I’ve been a part of.

Until that changes, we’re always going to have a bit of push and pull with this conversation popping up on the internet or around tables for years to come. Because those with the greatest responsibility for education in these matters are not addressing something I see as pretty fundamental to the conversation: wine chemistry.


All that said, I have had some excellent wines that fall under the “Natural” banner, so I remain cautiously curious about natural wines. No point being dogmatic about it.

Gareth,

Some great points there indeed. And I totally agree about ‘faults’. One of the biggest challenges with many of these wines, though, is how ‘fragile’ they may be - and therefore, bottle variation can be huge. When I am knocking on doors and I see reps pushing some ‘natural wines’, they always pour them chilled . . .

Cheers.

Gareth,

Re: your statement above… I think it would be better re-phrased as something like “Wine faults are called faults for a reason, and wines that exhibit those faults to excess are defective by definition.”
Many vignerons in Burgundy like to encourage a small amount of reduction in their wines. The same with folks in Jura vis-a-vis oxidative characters (even in wines that aren’t raised sous-voile). Many Italian wine growers working in a traditional idiom like to see a small amount of VA in their finished wines for the ‘lift’. And the late, great Dr. Vernon Singleton of UCD’s VitEnol program taught his classes that ANY character (besides corkiness/environmental taints?) could play a beneficial role in a wine by contributing to complexity as long as it was in balance with the other components in a wine.

Further, it’s important to acknowledge that the defintion of “wine faults” carries with it an air of arbitrariness.
The current laundry list of characters we call wine faults is by and large the result of cultural and historical happenstance.
One of the many things I enjoy about ‘natural wines’ is that their production and enjoyment may induce some folks to ponder (sometimes directly, more often coincidentally) the idea of quality and attendant issues.


Regards,


PS: Oh, and Brett… it is probably possible to call it a terroir effect with some scientific support. Doing so doesn’t make it something that can’t be overdone in a wine, or even something desirable at all.

Serious question - do people think natural wine isn’t much about age worthy, complex, “serious” wine?

It seems like people either dismiss natural wine, or stick up for it but essentially say it’s mostly about being fresh and charming, not really wine for complexity or too much serious consideration.

I think there’s more to it.