To me, a large part of the natural wine movement has become an aesthetic rather than anything about the wine itself, so people who drink natural wine gravitate to producers/importers/retailers who are part of a certain set. I had a discussion with an acquaintance and asked him how he would define natural wine, and his response that, to him, it was “minimal intervention, natural yeasts, organic (or mostly organic) vineyard work, no use of micro-oxygenation and similar criteria”. By that criteria, nearly all the wine I drink is natural wine, but he refused to believe me.
The other part of the aesthetic is a “punk rock” feel of drinking natural wine, which is why I think certain high end restaurants that have exclusively natural wine lists serve wine in poor quality glasses.
And, of course, cost is an issue. I think there are people who get into natural wine because even at the high end it’s still a lot cheaper than high end non-natural wine.
Not this:
I see don’t understand how your point on personal preference pertains to my question and comment about the technical nature of MLF.
And what to you mean by “sour”? Too high acidity? What is “sour wine”? Sour ales are a genre of their own, but I haven’t heard of sour wines.
Drink what you like. Sourdough bread is Lactobacillus. Sour beer is Lactobacillus. That strain adds the same flavor to wine.
I still don’t understand what this has to do with my question on MLF. I haven’t said a thing about my preference.
And are you talking about all Lactobacilli? Or which strain of a which Lactobacillus species?
I’ve read enough of your posts to know your preferences. It’s fine to be a hipster Otto. Look at the links I shared:
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/fsn3.1010
Can you please tone down your hostility, behave like a grown-up and not resort to ad hominems that have no relevance to my questions?
I asked a question about how big of an impact different species of lactobacillus have in MLF, since they are pretty omnipresent in grapes and I can imagine they must contribute quite a bit to natural MLFermentations. You did not respond to this, only posted a link to article showing what kind of metabolic byproducts lactobacilli can create.
You also commented something about “sour wines” which really doesn’t say anything to me. I asked what you mean by them, but you didn’t answer me, just commetned something cryptic about sour dough and sour ales and then started to be smart-ass.
Are my questions very difficult to answer, have I offended you somehow or why are you acting like this?
And I still don’t see how my preferences have anything to do with the subject and I even have no idea what my taste is from your perspective.
I’m not being hostile nor a smart-ass. Drink what you like. You are the largest non-interventionist fan on this forum. Different Lactobacillus creates different flavors. Malo come primarily from Oenococcus oeni. The Cal-Davis page is there if you want more details. I don’t consider hipster to be a pejorative.
I Dread Natty wine!
Okay then, maybe you’re just behaving in such way without being one.
Drink what you like.
Why are you repeating this all the time? What it has to do with anything?
You are the largest non-interventionist fan on this forum.
Glad to know. Somehow I never received memo.
Different Lactobacillus creates different flavors.
Yes that much I did know.
Malo come primarily from Oenococcus oeni.
My question - all this time - has been that is this the case with spontaneous MLF as well? I really well know that most if not all inoculated MLFs are done by oenococcus, but isn’t the case very different if you don’t inoculate but instead let whatever organisms there are in the must perform the MLF?
The Cal-Davis page is there if you want more details.
I will look into it since I don’t seem to be getting answers from here.
I don’t consider hipster to be a pejorative.
You certainly seemed to use the word in such fashion nonetheless. If you start calling people names, it’s not your job to think if these words are pejoratives or not.
Not sure, but would imagine it’s like a Petri dish full of agar growth medium. What is there grows. O. oeni is naturally in the musts. Not sure what Lactobacillus are in the must and what comes from unclean surfaces and the air.
You certainly seemed to use the word in such fashion nonetheless. If you start calling people names, it’s not your job to think if these words are pejoratives or not.
Definitions from Oxford Languages:
Hipster
hip·ster1
/ˈhipstər/
noun INFORMAL
a person who follows the latest trends and fashions, especially those regarded as being outside the cultural mainstream
If I can’t define the category, how can I hate them all?
Seriously, if there is no broadly accepted working definition of the term (and this thread shows pretty convincingly that there isn’t), an article declaring the category a con seems a little presumptuous. Certainly, there are precious brands seeking to trade on a category that seems to be trending, and I am all for dumping on makers surfing that trend, but as a wine category I can’t hate unless I can first define.
I think Sean has it right above. I am all for producers who focus on sustainability, best practices, and non-intervention in the cellar. That describes a most of the producers in my cellar, I suspect. And I don’t think a one of them would cop to be a “natural wine” producer.
This is a West Country phenomenon (which you would have experiences because you were in Bristol), so not really extensible to the rest of the UK! The US analogy might be saying e.g. all Americans relate to hot, spicy cuisines because in Louisiana they eat Creole food.
So, let me get this straight. You come and tell MLFs are always just O. oeni. When I question how’s the thing with spontaneous MLF or what is this “sour wine” you keep talking about, all I get is “drink what you like!” This is akin to somebody who I know liking ripe, heavily oaked wines asking how toast levels affect on certain compounds and me shouting “drink what you like!” and recommending to browse Cal Davis. You don’t see how that might come across as rather rude?
And when I really ask how is the thing, essentially all I get is “I don’t know”.
Definitions from Oxford Languages:
Hipster
hip·ster1
/ˈhipstər/
noun INFORMAL
a person who follows the latest trends and fashions, especially those regarded as being outside the cultural mainstream
And could you please next tell me how this pertains to me? Really?
Furthermore, I find it hard to come up with anything more smart-ass than responding to a claim by slamming a dictionary definition. As I said above, could you please behave more like a grown-up person?
I think that the only qualifier here is that these initiatives didn’t start with the natural wine movement at all. Organic farming in the Côte d’Or, for example, was pioneered by people who are not and would not be considered natural winemakers. Whereas some of the most prominent natural winemakers in Burgundy purchase chemically farmed fruit (e.g. Philippe Pacalet) or use herbicides in their vineyards (e.g., according to her own website, Claire Naudin).
Of course, there are many points of intersections between organic farming initiatives, the biodynamic movement, and the natural wine movement. But it would be a mistake to attribute the achievements of the first two to the third.
This thread is definitely tending in the direction that most debates about natural wine tend to take, which is a sort of circular and more or less acrimonious focus on definitions. I think that’s partly because, as Greg observes, natural wine is more of an “aesthetic” than anything else (I once described it as an aesthetic in search of a didactic), and thus inherently hard to pin down (“I know it when I see it” etc). It’s also because people sometimes resent the appropriation of the word “natural”, and its reduction to a question of sulfites, which does implicitly insinuate that other wines are “unnatural”—and yes, in a sense, inferior.
At the same time, the Vogue article gets it right when it attributes the popularity of natural wines to a pursuit of authenticity, whatever exactly that might mean. And here it’s interesting to reflect that we have artisanal bread, artisanal cheese, craft beer etc—but all the wine movement has is “natural wine”. Whereas with bread and cheese etc our conception of what an authentic product is makes plenty of space for craft and technique, in wine we have instead a movement that has come to be ideologically premised on the renunciation of technique (even though, in fact, its wines have come to be easily identifiable by two techniques: carbonic maceration and low sulfites).
I would love to see some sort of “artisanal wine” movement come into being, defined perhaps as wines made using techniques validated by a minimum of 150 years of experience. That would retain sulfites, inoculation, chaptalization within reason, and fining; but eliminate enzymes, centrifuges, filters, many oenological additives, and most obnoxious viticultural practices. Producers that would meet such a definition would include Foillard, Richard Leroy, Selosse, DRC, Thierry Allemand, etc etc; and the use of sulfites, instead of being definitional, would become just one aesthetic / technical choice. If the opposite of natural wine is some sort to of hypothetical “unnatural wine”, the opposite of artisanal wine would be industrial wine—which seems to me much more coherent. Some producers in France are talking in this sense, such as the Union des Gens de Métier, but the notion hasn’t really percolated into Anglophone wine discourse yet. Hopefully that will happen soon.
I’m so with you on this one.
(And probably a huge majority of the board members as well.)
I was just pointing out the difference between O. oeni and L. plantarum when you said nearly all wine goes through MLF. L. plantarum gives me a tell tale sour taste that I often find in natty wines; akin to sour beer, sourdough, and sauerkraut. I also often get a barnyard flavor. To me, those are both faults. Acetic acid is also a fault. You have over 100 tasting notes on orange wines and nearly all your TN seem highlight that they are no SO2, non-interventionist, and naturalist wines. I’m really not trying to be mean but if you don’t see how it pertains, I’m sorry…
Let’s see what people think… maybe I will write some kind of “manifesto” setting out the position.
Lactobacillus doesn’t give you barnyard flavor. Brettanomyces does. I don’t know about sour taste, because sour beers taste “sour” because they ARE sour: they have lactic acid in them. The same stuff as in all wines that have gone through MLF. The same applies to sourdough and sauerkraut. Bread or cabbage does not taste sour because they have no acidity in them (well, cabbage has a little bit). Once you introduce acid to them, of course they taste sour, because they are noticeably more sour than their non-sour counterparts!
To me, those are both faults.
I can understand a bretty barnyard character can be a fault to some; for me, it isn’t. But are you saying that lactic acid is a fault? The more you explain these things to me, the more it seems to me you don’t know yourself what you are talking about.
Acetic acid is also a fault.
Agreed pretty much. All wines have acetic acid, though, so it isn’t really a fault - only elevated levels of acetic acid are. The threshold for it being a fault varies from person to person. I’d say I’m a medium - I can tolerate a little bit of acetic acid, as long as it doesn’t go beyond subtly balsamic, but if it gets full-blown vinegar, it’s a horrible fault, no matter how wonderful the wine is otherwise.
You have over 100 tasting notes on orange wines
And at +10,000 tasting notes that’s less than 1% what I taste. Furthermore, not nearly all of these orange wines are natural wines; I’ve had lots of commercial orange wines that have nothing to do with natural wines.
nearly all your TN seem highlight that they are no SO2, non-interventionist, and naturalist wines.
All? Really, all? Out of my +10,000 TNs only a small handful are on non-interventionist wines. I’ve been to two (EDIT: three - I forgot the Heinrich one) naturalist tastings this year and based on that, ALL my TNs are on non-interventionist wines now? Or what? Care to elaborate?
I’m really not trying to be mean but if you don’t see how it pertains, I’m sorry…
I still don’t see it. How my TNs relate to anything we’ve discussed above? Could you PLEASE point it to me, exactly, what are you trying to get at?