Eric, so in summary you think that “natural” wine is essentially just a clever marketing tactic employed by cheap winemakers to make millenial hipsters buy incorrectly/flawed wine produced from obscure varietals? And that isn’t supposed to offend anyone on this board or in the business because it’s just your 2 cents and you prefaced the insult with “no offense”? Incredible.
That isn’t the only way to drink Beaujolais , in fact, it isn’t the way that people who really like and know about Beaujolais treat it.
Your yeast point is well taken, especially when it’s known ITB that most “wild” yeasts, are merely commercial strains hanging about, and now that I think about it perhaps that “meme” (i.e. Wild Yeasts are natural/better) is how we got to this “natural” wine sub-genre…
From what I understand, that is not true. In ambient yeast fermentation different populations of yeasts rise and fall at different points during the process and one (or a few) will become dominant as they are the ones that can (hopefully) finish fermentation. This is congruent with how many natural systems work. Some of those yeast strains are fleeting and ephemeral. It is true that if you have a closed environment where you have used inoculated yeast you will find only those strains. It wouldn’t surprise me if those strains were also dominant in vineyards with multiple wineries using the fruit and/or contiguous to the vineyard.
On a personal note, I’ve had my own issues with “natural” wine over the years. Thrilling bottles followed by bad ones, sometimes from the same person. I think it is really tricky to do well and really isn’t a great business model for most growers. That being said, it definitely is a very real thing even if it doesn’t have a definition that Bettane and Parker can glom on to. It shouldn’t be a way to disguise bad wine, but dismissing it out of hand is to really closed minded and reactionary. As someone who makes pinot noir, you ought to try a Pacalet Burgundy sometime.
Also, hipsters wear the opposite of baggy jeans from what I can tell. Ouch.
Incredible that I think that is a big part of the “movement”, or Incredible that I said it out loud, or incredible that I think by apologizing in advance people won’t be offended, or something else?
Perhaps I’m offended by being branded an “interventionist” ?
I do imagine there are a lot of people that actually believe in making “natural” wine, no matter the quality or drink-ability of the end result, but I also think there is a lot lazy hipster fashion winemaking and marketing going on too.
I’ve been trying more natural wines over the past few years, and as I’ve noted before, I’ve seen an overall improvement in quality. Of course there some seriously flawed (in my view) natural wines and unfortunately there are some proponents (but far from all of them, as the article seems to imply) who choose to ignore those flaws and promote some of those wines. But I feel like an increasing number of proponents - and from what I’ve found, particularly producers - of natural wines are not giving these flawed wines such an easy pass, which I think is partly why natural wines in general are improving. The flip side is that there are more people trying their hand at making these wines without really understanding what they need to do to make them well. It’s not easy, so it’s no surprise that it’s taking time for some people to figure it out - but then that’s true of anyone who’s relatively new to making wine. And I’m encouraged by the number of newer producers of natural wines who are getting it right from the start.
There are plenty of people who make wine that’s flawed and consumers who enjoy drinking wine that’s flawed and/or just plain crappy and which does not fall within the natural wine category. But I suppose it’s not as much fun to criticize them.
I think this is a 100 point comment!
You know you must be a geezer when you view some of these experimental wines in the same way i view pre-shredded jeans with stylish holes in them. If you wear the jeans long enough and they develop holes and tears as a result of hard work, that is authentic. They are comfortable and broken in, but not perfect. If you put them there just to look like you have done the same, it is an affectation.
Butt Rip Jeans
No offense . . .
Eric, I’m not sure why you would have any cause to feel as if you’re being unjustly labeled as an “interventionist”. From what I’ve seen, you’ve gone out of your way to attach labels and attack wine making styles and demographics that differ from what you feel comfortable with or understand. It’s sad really.
Guilty. Eric sells $70 Cali Pinot that he describes with terms that make this natural wine lover shudder–e.g. “cherry cola,” “lush,” creamy," and “silky smooth.” No offense, Eric . . .
On that, the article points out how much work Lapierre and his cohorts put into figuring out how to make consistently good natural wines. Certain writers and other proponents pushed the myth that ignorance is a virtue - while putting up on a pedestal as some sort of proof of this idea winemakers who put a huge amount of effort into making consistently great “natural wines”. It’s an insult, grotesque, dishonest, and a massive disservice to the world of wine.
And yet again, wine geeks get offended by that with which they do not agree.
Predictable.
It seems to me that the term “natural” in this context is most certainly a marketing decision, akin to the common use of “organic.” But that’s not to say that some/many of the wines aren’t worth seeking out and trying.
To some extent I think that’s true, and if you’re making wines in that manner it can make sense to align yourself with the “natural” tag to help differentiate your wines from others. Every wine producer needs to market their wines, why not use that to their advantage if they can? Then again, not everyone who makes wines this way chooses to be considered a producer of natural wines, for various reasons. And, taking advantage of the vagueness of the term, there are others who have called themselves natural winemakers but are most certainly not.
Maybe, but let’s add some nuance to the concept of marketing here… for the one-man-show slightly hippy young vigneron in the Loire, it maybe marketing in the sense of the image that he or she projects of how they approach their craft, but other than a simple website and choice of salon there isn’t much else… maybe a FB site…? It’s only really marketing vs. the old-school guy who slathers his vines in chemicals, does strictly no communication and just leverages AOC for his stand at the salon dés vignerons indépendants… but it ain’t marketing like the classed growth Bordeaux with full colour glossy ad in Revue de Vin de France or the Napa estate with deluxe tasting room etc…
For me, this is therefore less ´marketing’ and à bit more ’just who I am’…
From the article:
"There are easy explanations for this. The high costs of buying land and doing business in California. The preponderance of Napa Valley’s opulent wine style. A Bay Area culture that privileges technology. As Josh Eubank, owner of the importer Percy Selections and a co-organizer of Brumaire, puts it: Young winemakers here “are under immense pressure to bring a ‘consistent’ product to market, not so much because this is what they want to drink, but rather because their alternative is bankruptcy. That’s certainly not a recipe for experimental winemaking.”
One of the issues here is the extent to which a wine should be “consistent” (allegedly boring) compared to “exciting” (a euphemism for unpredictable/inconsistent).
In any event, as I’ve said before many times, I find the phrase “natural wine” to be incredibly vague and rather dishonest. Wine is NOT a purely natural product–the vines don’t plant or prune themselves, the grapes don’t voluntarily commit suicide by jumping off the vine nor do they decide how they are going to be handled in the winery, etc., etc., etc. One can debate which techniques make for better (or worse) wine depending on the circumstances, but the concept of “natural wine” is a tremendous amount of marketing hooey from my perspective.
Bruce
I’ve never liked the term either, for much the same reasons as you point out, but at this point it’s the recognized term for this type of wine. Unless enough proponents and producers come up with an alternate term that sticks (some have tried, but nothing has caught on), “natural” wine is how it will continue to be categorized. And I don’t sense much pressure from either inside or outside the natural wine community to change the term, though it’s clear that not everyone is comfortable with it.
Joe Dressner tried to re-label as Real Wine but that got about as much traction as you’d expect.
There was also one bottling that he described as supernatural wine. I don’t recall which it was?
Not to sound like a ‘broken record’ here, but I think one of the challenges here is that there are plenty of ‘shades of gray’ here that make it difficult to make ‘absolute’ statements.
I understand where Eric is coming from - if you are a ‘minimalist’ but do not adhere to ‘strict’ natural leanings (perhaps you filter, for instance) because you don’t want to ‘deal with’ the possibility of bacterial or yeast blooms in bottle), what do you ‘call’ yourself? And regardless of what it is, you usually get ‘lumped in’ with 'commercial wineries that use chemicals and ‘tricks’ to make wine ‘more consistent’. I don’t think that’s true at all - hence the ‘shades of gray’ comment above.
There are many paths to making wine - and to me, the key is being pragmatic, not dogmatic. If you’ve tried and dig these ‘natural’ wines, that’s great for you. If you don’t mind how ‘variable’ they can be, that’s great as well. Let’s just say that we can agree to disagree and move on.
Cheers.
For better or for worse, Natural has become a useful shorthand for low-sulfur, low-intervention wines. If you tell a general consumer “We add x sulfur at y times, rack z times, correct/don’t correct acid/tannin/color, fine/don’t fine with bentonite, isinglass, 
chemicals, filter…” they probably stop paying attention pretty quickly.
We put a general description of our processes on our labels, and put more details in our release notes, including everything that was added to the wine and every step of the process it went through. Ridge has been doing something similar forever. I say just make the information available in whatever way you want, and consumers who want to educate themselves before purchasing can do so easily. If you have nothing to hide, then there’s no issue.
#honestwine