Natural Wine – Wild and Wise?

It is hard to believe that we are moving through a second decade of mainstream natural wine in California. Though some of the original visionaries go back even further, as does the spiritual birth in Beaujolais, it continues to be a divisive and necessary force in the wine world. Go ahead and try to find a wine bar that doesn’t call itself natural in Rome or San Francisco. Despite representing only a fraction of the larger wine market, it is ubiquitous in cosmopolitan cities, and clearly the idea has staying power. The loyal adherents are unique in the wine world, and love them or hate them, they are a valuable counterpoint to bland commodity nihilism of the grocery store shelf or the tyranny of subjective taste. Only Champagne inspires such romantic devotion as a wine of technique front and center.

Natural wine was a necessary reaction to chemical farming and bigger-bolder wine, first in France, and eventually here, rippling across the world as a younger and more online generation has taken the reins. Some natural wine tenets are clear wins, like challenging pesticide use, championing alternative grapes, living soil, and dialing back oak abuse and spoofulated wines of concoction. The growing pains, warts and hiccups are there too, from denigration marketing, cult-like ideology, or occasional blatant dishonesty around health and wine history just to sell bottles. To be clear, fancy wine also suffers from similar ailments. Like all cultural movements, the followers must be separated from the original visionaries and theories, Jesus, Marx, and many more, and we should remember that marketing ruins everything. Good punk only lasted a few years before it jumped the shark, only to be repackaged in watered-down form for mass consumption. The story repeats, over and over; nothing sellable is immune.

Given the current crises of not only wine, but also climate change, corporate hegemony, unfettered plutocracy, disappearing middles, post-modern fragmentation (and so much more) - what if the natural wine movement is evolving and entering a more mature and possibly boring and reflective adulthood? Not a dumbing-down, but a wising-up and instead of just breaking things, it is becoming a little more self-conscious and rigorous, with the gains and losses that entails?   

Many of us connect very strongly with natural wine philosophically but sometimes find the ideology problematic and the results disappointing. If we value the purity of wine that communicates place and intent transparently, how do we make wines that reverberate with those qualities? For a while it felt like natural wine was on the cusp of becoming Cult Cab for the techy 2% who wanted raw, unbridled nature safely consumed in tumblers while Instagramming as the trend blew up. Then it became Pabst for conformists. While there will always be extremists who want wine to taste like kombucha (or raisins and oak for that matter) it seems that some of the dilettante passion for the extreme is behind us now as we move toward something wider and wiser in the midst of larger and more concerning cultural upheaval.

It was with these thoughts swirling that I attended Donkey & Goat’s “Unfiltered” wine event in Berkeley, Ca. this summer. The event pulled together a wide but thoughtful collection of about 30 small producers with a very wide array of styles, from clean disgorged pet-nats to sludgy orange wine and everything in between. A few of the wines poured were not really natural, but reflected the event’s intent  in that the person behind the wine is worth considering and supporting too. Though that idea could be argued either way, it seemed better to embrace it and the general small-producer good will it promoted. One thing I will say is that after years of selling Donkey & Goat wines at retail to young Berkeleyites, they have really cleaned up over the last few years. We will sidestep the Frank Cornelissen debate over natural wine gone too clean for now, but the surprisingly focused and downright tasty D&G wines felt portentous in the best way.

And indeed, it was a great collection of winemakers in different states of their personal winemaking journeys doing their thing. The range was really exciting to experience from the visitor’s side of the table. Some producers were clearly quite new, and there was a strong group in that challenging 4^th to 8^th-year stage where the quick gains slow and deeper crossroads loom. In my own 5th year I was fortunate to make wine from 23 different cultivars, and while it felt like a huge moment, it was ultimately a hollow experience, to no one’s surprise. The old rule that it takes 10 years to really understand a vineyard or a grape is very real. You could see a direction taking shape with some of the wines and a clear point of view that was crystallizing. I look forward to checking in again with some of them as they progress, and it really can be exciting to see that journey unfold.

One fantastic aspect was seeing non-mainstream grapes given equal play with Ruche, Tibouren and Mourvedre, all sharing the spotlight. Those actually working in vineyards had a clear advantage as well. California wine economics are a real challenge for those truly into vines, but there is so much to be gained in understanding the vines, and the timing is right economically for those looking to deepen their game. Growers will take any contract they can get right now, and I would hope that the more serious are considering deep ties to vineyards, which is actually what natural wine is truly about anyway – not just a name on a bottle.

Honestly though, before I started enjoying the tasting I had thought I was only there for the three discussion sessions. All three offered a topic that was timely and could have lasted a second hour easily. The first one focused on resilience and adaptation in a changing environment, and a couple speakers were from outside of the wine sphere, which was a smart move. From carbon sequestration in agriculture, to the ongoing till-versus-no-till discussion, it was valuable to have viticulture presented within a broader context even if it meant not getting to sulfur-resistant mildew issues or other grape-growing climate-related crises. Realizing just how terrifying the global climate challenges are was a powerful reality check.

Discussion two centered on terroir, which is always a fun topic, and the panel was quite open and showed a good deal of experience. Terroir can be sliced and diced in many ways, from simple climate, to what goes on below ground rather than above, or diurnal shifts. Some of the winemakers admitted that we may only taste terroir when it is beating us over the head – Chablis, Etna, Chalone – or that we only find it when we taste something familiar. It is worth noting that unlike the endless straw man and red herring arguments taking place on LinkedIn over the falsely problematic word “minerality” no one here was bothered by the term, rightly so. We mostly agree that there is something that speaks inevitably, and while it may contribute something it could be too subtle to taste clearly, but we can definitely screw it up. The panel was divided over whether soil can speak loudly, and it is completely possible that we do not have the science yet to show that when we say terroir we actually mean microbial biome. There was a little discussion wondering if carbonic technique overrides terroir, and orange wine may be similar in speaking too loudly. Basically this is the old discussion of style taking over for place or grape. This one is certain to be continued.

Discussion three was set to be contentious and uncomfortably entertaining. Does natural wine celebrate faults? The panel was good, but the two extreme representatives were plants. The voices of reason came from those who either knew their profile biases like “I love high VA” or had an experienced view of the wine industry, trying to find agreement between their taste preferences and what the market wanted. On the panel was a very famous gadfly winemaker who utilizes the evil heavy manipulations like micro-ox, oak chips, cultured yeast and more, but also makes sulfur-free wine. He wanted natural wine to drop the anti-manipulation farce, and there isn’t much to disagree with on the surface. His point was strong, and his wine, sadly, was undrinkable, hot fingernail polish and eye-watering summer roof shingles. Hilarious moments did occur, like when one moderate panelist wisely urged the generic, AI-like virtue-speak of natural wine to move to something more thoughtful and authentic, only to have another slip into that exact language trying to justify a populist point. There seemed to be a general sense that those who want the nattiest wine may not be looking for wine at all, much like the oakiest Cab is more of a beverage than a place, and that the “energy” often alluded to by adherents “ooh acidity” may be experienced by others as a smothered microbial flatness and a marked lack of life, which may be perceptually hardwired. This is a personal barrier as VA and several compounds (uncontrolled PPO or lactobacillus) make natural wine for some of us completely dead and lifeless, even with sky-high acidity. This is a very deep topic, ranging from neural plasticity and subjectivity to objective numbers and everything in between. But the old council to find an importer whose palate aligns with yours and buy their wines is still great advice.

If no revelations were reached, it was good to see that wine continues to be frustrating, beautiful, and confounding. The passion is still there, and that it ties brains, palates and peptides to photosynthesis, diphenolic cascades, primal memories, history and perceptual space is a wonderful thing, and many of us are happy that we haven’t figured it all out, and that we can continue the discussion. Tying wine to the producer’s identity remains an open question, and a little peculiar for a packaged product, but it deserves more consideration and might actually be a consumer’s responsibility, like doing diligence on some of the fake-natural wine brands advertising today. This industry downturn, which has crushed some of us in more fragile wholesale brackets, is also a deep moment of reflection and soul-searching that we have needed for a while, and if the dark days pass it might be a blessing in disguise. Donkey & Goat really made good use of this moment and hosted a really enjoyable and educational event with a deeper edge for those looking for it. While I am not really a fan of endless calls for “community” – as an introvert I like my wine quiet - I can honestly say I am excited for another installment.

Brands of note:

North American Press: Working with hybrid vines here in California. Very precise wines with that hybrid wtf-is-this character to scramble our California palates. I feel like anyone committed to critical tasting and winemaking should visit hybrids regularly to open horizons and push boundaries. If nothing else they make you a better taster, fumble for descriptors, and check your expectations. These were very good.

Old World Winery: On paper these are too natty for me, but the wines are prime examples of intentionality and narrative (frustrating meta-qualities I know but manifest here) speaking clearly within a hardcore natural framework, which is not easy to execute. Both are clearly thinking deeply about things.

Oh, and do try some BXT sparkling as well!