That anti-knowledge as a virtue was pushed by some of the loudmouthed natural wine evangelists. I saw one of my friends insulting praised for his ignorance, when that’s very much not the case. He makes stable, age-worthy wines with no adds but a little SO2. Authors pushing that false narrative weren’t very helpful.
Some natural wines can be magical. When they’re good, they unlock this parallel world somehow. I wouldn’t even have ventured into the natural world had I not had Tony Coturri’s Albarello at a hipster restaurant years ago. I didn’t know wine could taste like that. I would however say that my natural wine drinking has been 50/50 split between very good efforts and very flawed ones. Certainly a much higher ratio of flaw there, which does get frustrating after a while.
A thing to remember is that most natural wine producers are very small. With that often comes bad cash flow. And when you combine bad cash flow with no SO2, you have to get stuff out fast. That’s part of the appeal of some of these wines - that young, fresh taste with no elevage. But you don’t have to make wines like that - Ridge, Turley, Ojai and numerous others don’t.
But personally, I would want more natural wine producers to go down the road of more age-worthy wines. Don’t be afraid of a little SO2 (it’s not the enemy), a little oak and to raise them right and to take your time. Likewise, I would want more traditional wine producers embrace some of the good things happening in the natural world, less oak, less manipulation, less acidification etc and from more sustainable farms.
It’s all good. There’s room for all. Somewhere in-between is the happy medium, I think.
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It was alluded to somewhere above (great discussion, BTW), but I’ll ask it here. I wonder what the answer would be if you asked a decidedly-natural winemaker who, let’s say, just a “natural” Chardonnay, “Do you hope that your natural wine tastes like top white Burgundy?” If his/her answer is, “Yes,” then I agree, we shouldn’t evaluate them differently. That said, I would guess that most in the “natural” wine camp would reply with an emphatic, “No.” Do they want and expect funkiness like oxidation, brett, VA, etc. as an outcome, and to make wine specifically with those characteristics? If yes, it seems to me, we should evaluate them differently with those in mind.
I guess the real question here, though, is whether most natural winemakers would find wines that you found flawed flawed as well - or whether, to them, ‘the means justify the ends’, so to speak.
To me, that gets down to the heart of things - what is the ‘intention’ of anyone making wine? Is it to ‘base’ the wine on something they admire? Is it to try ones best to reflect the site, variety, vintage etc through their eyes? Is it just to have a rote set of directions to go from grape to wine? So many questions and not enough answers . . .
But to me, the answer to the original question is no, there should not be a separate way to evaluate these - just as there is not a ‘separate’ way to evaluate all sour beers taking into account site, etc . . .
Interesting discussion - I hope it continues forth.
Cheers
A lot of people view the whole category of sour beers flawed.
For people who like sour beers, there’s still a question of degree. Some are much more broadly appealing and others more extreme, with a narrow fan base. Some “natural” wines show a degree of flaw, while some are not flawed. A lot of people have a sort of “I know them when I taste them” take, which isn’t particularly accurate. (The other side of that coin is the winemaker joke. “Oops! I made a natural wine.”)
My argument is to be open minded enough to realize the world of wine is a lot broader than we first think. Put natural wines aside for a moment. There are styles that went away, for the most part, at least. There are thousands of grape varieties, not just the few we are comfortable with. A Birbet can be the perfect wine for a certain context, but it shouldn’t be evaluated under the same parameters as a First Growth any more than a Fino Sherry should be.
So, in a way, all wines should be judged for what they are, where styles range greatly. How good is it for what it is, in its context? There’s also a pass/fail aspect. You may not like something inherent to a particular grape, so no matter how good it is “objectively” for what it is, you still don’t like it.
Definitions of natural wine that allow a little SO2 have a big crossover with “minimal intervention”. There’s the tasting Ken Zinns has written about, where instead of just inviting “natural wine makers”, they invite winemakers to bring wines that were made with less than a certain amount of SO2 (and no other adds). So, that includes winemakers who are striving to make the best wines they can, and are pragmatic about it.
But, once again, there are stable wines with no SO2. Some conventionally styles, some intended to show off varietal character that’s usually long gone by the time a wine gets to a consumer. There are completely stable low SO2 wines that meet some peoples’ definitions of natural wines and are world class wines, by anyone’s definition.
There are also natural wines where there’s some wild stuff going on, contributing to complexity and not prominent enough to easily identify what they all are. Like there’s a healthy ecosystem where all the microbes are keeping each others’ populations n check.
The ideals of low SO2 use should be recognized by people interested in this topic. But, many who take the dogmatic approach don’t get there often enough, or ever. Being a pragmatist in that direction can result in some amazing wines. Having people out there pushing the limits isn’t a bad thing.
Some merchants, wine bars, hipster somms who handle this sort of wine are too tolerant of flaws, others are not. I’ve experienced the bad side, there, where a merchant was so immersed in the flawed natural wines he loved, he wasn’t capable of answering my questions. Others are very attuned and able to accurately describe the wines, and effectively interact with customers to help them find wines they’ll like, knowing many don’t want any flaws. Shops like the former often have a lot of great selections, but you best find them on your own.
^ great post above mine!
I’ve had more natural wines that I’ve liked (>0) than zinfandels I’ve liked (0), so I can say with some authority that natural wine is at least better than zinfandel. Someone can add that data point to their thesis if they’d like. ![[cheers.gif]](/uploads/db3686/original/2X/0/0ff9bfcdb0964982cd3240b6159868fbdf215b1a.gif "cheers"){kind=small}
I love that post.
If I had to further distill down my own path, it would be to ask: Am I drinking a process, or a wine?
If they want and expect those things, then I expect to think their wines aren’t very good. I’m not going to change my own standards of evaluation or, especially, personal preference because they have goals that I consider extremely misguided.
I wasn’t aware that Cappellano or Rinaldi were “natural” beyond the hearsay that many craft producers are as natural as natural winemakers.
__Wow, what a fun discussion! I am on the same page with so many of you, that you can’t handicap the natural wine, and that includes evaluating wines within a variety of categories – a light quaffer is still pleasurable while an aged “serious” red can have beautiful depth and complexity. Both give pleasure without needing to “forgive” an off-putting character. It doesn’t matter if it’s natural Chardonnay or classic Chablis or Birbet, it should give you pleasure when you consume it, no special categories apply.
But then there are the personal transactions one makes with oneself: “I know this is a good wine, it just needs more air for that funky smell to blow off.” I find this approach totally legitimate. As a wine producer I prefer you not have to make that deal with yourself when drinking my wine, but then I also know and advise that "pop and pour” probably won’t allow our wine to show its greatest depth and complexity (at least, not the first sip). Still, waiting for a funky aroma to subside and waiting for a wine to open up and show its full potential might not be considered the same thing. I’ll leave that to you.
But more interesting is the evolving tolerances for certain flavors. Even regionally we can make some preference distinctions among consumers: I have encountered certain Brits with very low thresholds of enjoyment or even tolerance of garlic in cooking, and of course certain Italians with a great appreciation for all that garlic can bring to a recipe. With wine, we have long known that a little outside flavor is like spice in cooking. Piney resin of Retsina, herbal characters or Vermouth, all the way to dabbling with a little bit of Brett, these are non-grape in origin. One winemaker who makes no claims to being natural has been carefully working with his Brett regime to end up with just the right amount of that character. Of course, he must filter the wines: I imagine him reusing infected barrels with certain lots, then blending and filtering or filtering and blending to remove the organism so that no further Brett flavors are contributed. I am not going to name names but you would know the wine and may not realize that there is a little bit of Brett in there.
Evolutionarily, we use our noses to stay alive long enough to reproduce. That is natural selection; avoid the spoiled food that will cause you to get sick and die. No one needs to tell a child that feces smells bad. Avoid anything that smells that bad and you will likely live long enough to pass on your genetic material. At least that was what was required of humans of yore.
Okay, so there’s nature, but what of nurture? Can’t we modern humans “get used to” certain smells (knowing that they will not kill us)? How does that person pumping out the septic tanks do their job every day? Is it that they can’t smell those septic smells, or they’ve just gotten used to them? Maybe the buy in to certain natural wines involves “getting used to” aromas we are likely hard wired to dislike?
And for completeness, I need to add that a budding wine connoisseur can learn to identify each off aroma and then risk allowing the recognition of the presence of the aroma spoiling their ability to appreciate the overall wine even when the off aroma appears in very low amounts, levels that others might think lend complexity (see my Brett wine example above).
Re-reading what I’ve written it sounds like I favor funky wines. I do not. I am interested in provoking a discussion about how others do.
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A great post Wes. You are, IMO, an excellent advocate for judging natural wines without prejudice, and with an understanding that wine production should be open to all forms of interpetation and choices, not unlike freedom of speech.
That said, over the past 10 years, it’s been the producers and enthusiasts that rankle me the most. Too many superlative and gushing STORIES, too many backhanded comments about non-natural wines, and too many wines for whom there really isn’t an alternative style being employed(not always the case by any stretch.)
The best thing about your comment, all of the other comments on this thread, and the OP itself, is that there is a “feet on the ground” feel to the whole thread. Natural wines as part of the general wine conversation.
IF that were the way things evolved to, then to some extent I actually do think that some leeway should be made for the process.
I love a light bodied red, ready to drink, vibrantly fresh, with the clarity of youthful fruit unvarnished(by either sulfur or lactobacillus et al). Heck, I barrel taste wines like that all the time. They’re just not better than wines made with soul by vignerons dedicated to making a preserved wine, that represents place, culture, climate, geology, history, and care. And needs a decade in bottle in order to evolve into one of the most magical experiences in life.
Imagine, though, the following scenario. Two Chardonnays are tasted side-by-side. One is a, let’s say, well-respected Oregon Chardonnay made in a “traditional” style: SO2, filtration, etc. (in other words, processes and additives that would negate its classification as a “natural” wine). The other is a Chardonnay made is what is widely-regarded as a “natural” wine. When tasted, how can one not evaluate them differently? One might even like both wines but, if tasting both blind and are told they’re both “traditionally-made” Chardonnay, the taster would most likely cite the second wine as flawed. However, if told that one is traditional and one natural, that changes the perceptions and expectations of the taster. Knowing that, one might even like the second wine within the confines of what a “natural” wine often smells and tastes like. Take TomHill’s recent four TNs on some natural wines for example. He liked a couple of them, but was clear in noting that they were funky and very different from “standard” wines. To me, he was evaluating the lot with very different sets of standards. I don’t think that’s a bad thing.
Thanks for chiming in here, Nick. Some very interesting thoughts you have here.
Birbet…now there’s a name you don’t often see around here. I love that wine. Totally frivolous/not serious…but damn it tastes good.
When I taste “natural” wines, I come to expect them to have something “different” that I don’t find in many conventional wines, some of which are also made as “natural” wines. But it forces me to think about it, it forces you
to stretch your mind…which isn’t a bad thing. Then I have to think if I like this character in the wine or not. As NealRosenthal says: “Great wine paves the path to memories” Oftentimes, these “natural” smells brings
up childhood memories. Why does the smell of “rose petals” trigger such a positive response? Because most of us remember our Moms inhaling the aroma of a rose and having such a pleasurable look on her face. But if your
Mom regularly whipped you with a rose branch, I expect the smell of “rose petal” does not trigger a positive memory.
This morning I used the term “toe jam” to describe a wine I’d tasted last night. Positive or negative?? It was a pretty funky smell but I actually kinda (only kinda) liked that smell. Others may not. I’d probably like the wine
more w/o “toe jam”. But it wasn’t utterly repulsive.
So…yeah…I think some (not all) tasters can wrap your mind around some of those funky smells & tastes.
Tom
I agree that Nick makes some great points. And the argument about nature vs nurture is certainly an interesting on. Everything in context is an important thing to think about - I dug how he talked about garlic and the Brits vs the Italians.
That said, natural wine does NOT need to be mousy; it does NOT have to have high levels of VA or EA; as far as Brett goes, I’ll leave that alone for now since that is not a ‘natural’ thing.
There are things that are ‘controllable’ even if you are a ‘natural’ winemaker - and my guess is that the majority of the winemakers that label themselves as such do not ‘want’ these elements in their wines.
Cheers
Is there anyone who would answer the question in the OP “yes?” Is this really a question?
Well Neal, possibly SOMEONE. Anyway, the OP has chimed in again:
Brandon, with your two hypothetical Chardonnays, I answer you emphatically that you really ought to use the same metric to evaluate them, do they both give you pleasure. Chardonnay is a particularly apt example because it is made in so many styles. However it is made, is it something you like? If the “flaw” makes it less tasty, is something that you react hedonically to in a negative way, I’d say there’s no point in thinking your way around the fact that it just doesn’t taste as good.
Maybe you are one of those people who have trained themselves to recognize flaws at the minutest level, and when encountering just a tiny bit in the natural wine you dismiss it out of hand. That, too, I would argue is overthinking it. On the whole if the flaw doesn’t detract from or maybe even improves the wine, then the fact that you can recognize the flaw is immaterial. People swoon over Roulot’s reduction. I find it sometimes excessive. I do like a little reduction in my Chardonnay. I know it’s there, it’s not from the grape, the winemaker could have prevented it from being there, but I like the wine on the whole. Natural has absolutely nothing to do with it.
Thanks for the reply, Nick. First off, I’m playing devil’s advocate a bit. I’m quite the contrary to what you point out: I accept a very wide variety of wines and frequently don’t notice flaws that others do. I’m not very sensitive in that respect. I agree that noting the tiniest flaw and, as a results, totally dismissing a wine can be overthinking it sometimes. I don’t have an answer to my OP. Part of what got me asking is that we often diss natural wines for their flaws. But what if we’re missing the point? I just don’t know.
I guess what I’m saying is that I would guess that winemakers that are purposefully making natural wine don’t want their wines to taste like (or be compared to) wines produced in a traditional manner. And to that, I think you’re saying, “Tough luck. I’m going to evaluate them the same way and, if I like them, good. However, I’m not going to give your potentially faulty wine a free pass because it’s ‘natural.’” Is that about right? I can see that logic for sure.
Since when is filtration traditional? Once through malo, the Chardonnay is stable. It needs time to settle clear, and then, traditionally, it can be bottled without filtration.
You’ve expressed my biggest beef with the “natural” movement in a nutshell. The over abundance of storytelling by “natural” proponents that has skewed the concepts of what non-natural actually is. The “naturals” lump everything not them into one shoebox and then imply that everyone not natural must have an RO in the backroom.
Let’s say you have a traditionally made Chardonnay. One made in a traditional style: hand harvested grapes, farmed conscientiously, pressed, settled(maybe with a sulfur add or maybe not) fermented with or without inoculation, allowed to go through malolactic spontaneously, sulfured post malo, left on the lees 18-20 months, and racked once or possibly twice before bottling.
The other Chardonnay made in what is widely regarded as a natural method.
When tasted-why not first visit the binary scale suggested above. Do you like it or do you not? Should the natural wine be given a different calibration? Maybe. But I am probably only buying the wine(s) I really like.
After that, I think you have to look at the brilliant point Mr. Peay made about personal transactions.
I love terroir, place. I’m over 50 so there was LOTS of funky stuff when I started drinking wine. Plenty of it was fun funky, but some was terrible. At $15, no harm no foul. But also no terroir.
In a world of tank fermented cleanly made grocery store wines, I can see both Chardonnays being good. I can see being intrigued by the natural wine if the quirks(flaws is a terrible word) are in balance, and possibly really loving the wine if it’s done well. But your own description of it’s natural likelihood is expressing the quirks first. And if it’s Willamette Valley Chardonnay that reminds me of Basque cider, then I am probably out. If the traditional Chardonnay is a mediocre site, or handled without the same kind of care and talent that is required for the best traditional wines, then it wouldn’t be translating terroir in a way that matters to me, and I would also probably be less enthused. But if either contains a personality driven by the vineyard(hard to know in a single tasting) then I would most likely enthusiastically forgive many other quirks.
To each their own though.
When first getting into wine, my wife and I found that we loved wines that had a strong “earthy” character. We were going to a lot of tastings, and a certain husband and wife team was importing a bunch of wines that had this interesting and somewhat enigmatic trait. Those people told us about how they represented wines that had been made with very little done to them, and that “earthy” character was a wine expressing where it was from more than how it was made. That sounded very cool to us as young novices. This was long before I had ever heard the word “natural” used to categorize wine.
The more we tasted and learned, the more we started to realize that we found that same character in wines from all different places, and that it actually obscured sense of place rather than being an expression of it. This was around the time that we also started to find a sameness in so many Argentine Malbecs, California Cabernets, and other very fruit-forward, oaky reds, which also seemed to obscure distinctiveness. Really, both types of sameness made wines a lot less interesting to us.
Sometimes the story is just a story, and we should really trust ourselves to figure out what is worthwhile and what is not. Good wines should not be difficult to enjoy, or only enjoyable once we know some story about them.
The old natural wine threads were always created or resurrected in reaction to some obnoxious provocative proclamation by some natural wine proponent. Eventually, years down the line, the views of the winemakers they lauded started getting posted. Funny thing. The loudmouths who laid out these rigid rules with certainty, which curiously varied by region in relation to what one could and couldn’t get away with, were not reflecting the views of the winemakers. Those winemakers came across as thoughtful, pragmatic, open-minded and curious, and not the least bit judgmental. I don’t recall ever seeing anything jerky from any of the actual winemakers. Some of the young newbies might be naive and idealistic, but that’s fine.
I love a light bodied red, ready to drink, vibrantly fresh, with the clarity of youthful fruit unvarnished(by either sulfur or lactobacillus et al). Heck, I barrel taste wines like that all the time. They’re just not better than wines made with soul by vignerons dedicated to making a preserved wine, that represents place, culture, climate, geology, history, and care. And needs a decade in bottle in order to evolve into one of the most magical experiences in life.
Exactly. Light reds can be more complex and interesting than a rose. They have a place at the table. They can be a great btg option, for example. I’d rather have something that’s ready to drink with dinner than suffer through some ungiving brute of a wine that needs 10 years of age or more to be enjoyable. And yes, there’s nothing like a great mature wine.