An Argument for Natural Wine: Part 3

We have now followed the progression that has led to the current state where wines have largely lost their individuality and their ability to express their unique sense of place.  The problem, we have determined is more fundamental that just a shift in tastes, but begins with industrialized processes that have stripped soils of their ability to grow healthy, happy vines and thus healthy grapes.  The deficiency in quality of the fruit must then be made up for in the wine-making process by employing all sorts of mechanical and chemical dressing-up.  So, what's wrong with that you may ask, as long as we are getting a consistent product?  Well, I for one am not willing to give up the wonderful living, characterful qualities of wine that come from living soil for consistency.  And yes, I am willing to accept the occasional funky or downright nasty bottle in the process.  Consider my opening paragraph in part one of this article.  If wine is created through hundreds of chemical reactions of over a thousand compounds, just think what kind of havoc every bit of human intervention can wreak in that process.  Just think about how much of a wine's natural character is lost.  There is no way a grape's natural depth and complexity can shine when we start with fruit that has been robbed of it's natural chemical integrity through sterile, artificially nurtured soils, and then treated with mechanical and chemical processes in the winery that further upset the natural progression towards what wine should be.  

But, you may ask, is it realistic to expect wine makers to turn back the clock and forgo the benefits of modern technology and risk loss of profits?  Maybe not.  At least not in the short-term.  But I do think that the clock has begun to turn back in subtle ways as consumers have begun to discover the beauty and depth of naturally produced wines.  One thing I am definitely not in favor of are the superficial marketing ploys of some large producers who claim to be "organic," "Biodynamic," or "green," but do not fully buy in to these principles in practice.  Some of these producers may even have good intentions, going part or all the way towards keeping vineyards free of chemicals, but still feel the need to manipulate their wines in the cellar in order to please today's wine palate.  Some make the argument that large-scale producers cannot afford to take the risk or the higher production costs of going all in on natural wine production.  This may be true for large-scale producers who are interested only in creating marginal wines for the masses, and I suppose there is a place for that.  But in the end I am not interested in those wines and my goal is to prove to the world that there is no reason to drink such mass-produced plonk.  I have tasted plenty of truly exciting wines in the value price range that are naturally produced and I want to get others to experience them.  That is the main mission of this blog.  My experience and my intuition tells me that when people taste naturally produced wines, nine out of ten will have no problem breaking their allegiance to today's boring fruit and oak bombs. 

So, I think the answer to the acceptance and return to naturally produced, terroir-driven wines lies in what has already begun to happen in the wine world.  Over the past few years small producers have begun to realize that the way to break into and compete against the globalized big-wine industry is not by mimicking and amplifying the accepted international wine styles, but with a return to authenticity.  At some point, I suspect, big producers will have no choice but to accept the reality of new, refined consumer palates and will make the shift towards more costly, labor-intensive practices.  This process may take it's sweet time, but my guess is that it will happen.  In the meantime, there is the wonderfully exciting prospect of an ever-growing number of small producers all over the world working in concert with nature to grow healthy grapes and allowing them to do their thing with minimal intervention in the cellar to create superbly unique and truly wonderful wines.  Here on the Grapes of Rand we will continue to seek out these wines and to profile their producers.  We will continue to follow the natural wine renaissance in its seminal hotbeds such as the Loire Valley, Alsace, Burgundy and Austria, as well as places such as Oregon, Southern France,  South America, and New Zealand, where exciting natural wine producers are popping up like cover crop.  I hope you will continue to join us on our journey and spread the word to those still swimming the seas of industrial wine.

An Argument for Natural Wine: Part 2

In my last post on this subject I raised the question whether the quality wines of today are by and large better than those of past times, before modern technology allowed us to control every facet of grape growing and wine making.  Sure, consistency, cleanness, and uniformity of style are the natural results of modern scientific wine production.  I can be reasonably sure that if I pick up a bottle of whatever the major international wine producers have inundated the shelves of retail outlets with, it won't be undrinkable.  But I also know that all of them will taste pretty much the same.  Very few of them will excite me or make me think, 'Now that's what I love, that's what wine should be all about!'  But am I alone in my indifference to today's vast sea of industrial wine?  My previously recorded experiences with casual wine drinkers has proven the opposite.  Invariably wine novices who taste an authentic, naturally produced wine for the first time are stunned by how interesting and good wine can be after their previous experience with the standardized, homogenized fruit and oak bombs.  I suppose I was lucky to have an innate sense of curiosity and adventure as I delved into the world of wine, that prodded me to explore wines made from every possible grape and from as many geographical locations as possible.  In this process I quickly learned that what I loved was variety, complexity, subtlety and charm.  I also learned with time that the stuff I really fell in love with came largely from small producers in lesser-known regions who grew their grapes labor-intensively and without the use of chemicals, and who gently guided rather than forced their wines into submission in the winery.

So then, if I and many others have had such eye-opening experiences when we first tasted truly authentic wine, how have we arrived at this place where the vast majority of us have accepted wine for what it is (or isn't) today?  That we have accepted this status quo is no surprise.  There is just too little of truly interesting wine out there in relation to the vast sea of industrial stuff.  People simply drink what is available and therefore begin to accept what they are familiar and comfortable with.  But what has actually gotten us to this place where we are drinkers of wine more than lovers of wine?  Is it that a sinister wine critic has malevolently tricked our palates into accepting homogeneous mediocrity?  Have multi-million dollar wine conglomerates found it impossible to produce wine on a mega scale without the use of modern wine-making technology that sucks the life and individuality out of wine?  Has the world just become too quality conscious to accept the occasional fault in its wines?  I believe that we have to look a little deeper to find the answer to this question.  Granted, wine critics can and have undoubtedly influenced wine styles, but initially they can only rate wines that are already being produced.  The chain of change had to start somewhere other than on the critic's palate.  Modern technology and science have certainly made it easier to produce wine economically and reliably on a large scale, but what caused technological manipulation in the winery to be accepted as necessary in the first place?  I suppose it is true that over the past few decades food and drink quality standards have vastly improved.  We do expect everything we ingest to be consistent and wholesome, and I will grant that due to this our tastes have become somewhat dumbed down.  But we do keep wanting to go back to what is true and authentic and original, and when we find it we want more of it.  As we re-discover pure, natural, authentically produced foods we are beginning to  reject the notion that quality has to mean homogeneity.  So are we really willing to sacrifice authenticity in our wines for the sake of perfection?  I don't believe that is human nature and I don't believe that is the answer to my question.

What was it then that started the chain of events that has led to the state of wine as we know it in our lifetime?  The brilliant and somewhat iconoclastic Loire winemaker Nicolas Joly, one of the early champions of today's natural wine movement, lays the case out quite concisely, and I believe accurately.  According to Joly's thinking, and this is ironically considered old-school thinking by much of the modern wine industry, great wine must start with great grapes, which must in turn come from healthy soil.  At one point in history grapevines had all they needed to thrive and produce great grapes in their native soils, but the work required in the vineyard to maintain their health was time and energy consuming.  In the early part of the last century agricultural advances allowed farmers to increase production significantly while saving time and energy.

• As part of this trend, in the 1950's herbicides began to be used in vineyards in order to save time and eliminate the need to intensively work the soil.  
• One unintended consequence of herbicide use was the destruction of beneficial microbes and bacteria in the soil.  In the absence of these microorganisms the roots could not feed themselves, and so within five years vine growth had drastically decreased.  
• The solution was application of massive doses of chemical fertilizers
• These chemical fertilizers consisted largely of salts, forcing vines to need more water to compensate for the greater salinity
• This additional intake of water in creased the vines' vulnerability to disease and negatively affected the taste of the grapes.
• The solution was the invention of disease fighting "systemics," products that pass directly into the vine's sap, further altering flavor and introducing new and greater chemical residues in wines.
• To deal with the loss of and the new unusual tastes in the chemically altered grapes, technologies were invented that turned wine cellars into factories.
• More and more wines had to be dressed up with cosmetics such as hundreds of aromatic yeasts, added enzymes, tannins, etc.  

To be continued . . .

An Argument for Natural Wine: Part 1

Wine.  It seems like such a simple thing.  Pick some wonderfully ripe grapes, crush them, press them, sit back, and watch magic happen.  After all, you need only sugar, yeast, and some flavor and color compounds suspended in water.  These basic elements are all found in grapes when they come out of the vineyard.  The yeasts will feast on the sugars, turn them to alcohol, and voila, you have wine.

Ah, if it were only that simple.  Consider this.  Over 1000 phenolic compounds alone, which contribute to the wine's color, flavor, and mouthfeel have been detected in wine.  Besides these there are the other naturally occurring building blocks of grapes such as amino acids, organic acids, sulfites, vitamins, minerals, and pectins.  Then new aroma compounds such as esters are created by hundreds of chemical reactions during fermentation, ageing, and maturation.  When all goes well, as it has for millennia under the right conditions and guidance, the result can be and astonishingly heavenly beverage.  Yes, all this has occurred through natural processes for thousands of years with minimal human intervention, without reverse osmosis, microoxygenation, or various additions such powdered tannins, acids, or oak chips.  Has anything ever gone wrong in this natural process?  Oh yeah.  Wine can gone wrong at any point in it's complex creation, starting with bad weather, pests, and disease in the vineyard.    Then, bacterial spoilage, uncooperative yeasts, the wrong cellar conditions, and the list goes on.

This, of course, raises the question:  Why not use all the modern technology available to help these natural processes along so nothing goes wrong, and if it does, fix it?  After all, the bulk of wine made today relies on technological intervention and does so quite successfully.   But does it?  What exactly is the measure of success when it comes to wine?  Are today's wines really better than those of, say, 60 or 70 years ago?  I suppose that will always be a point of argument and an open question.  I for one, and many other like-minded wine lovers can only answer it in context of the wines that are available to us today.  What I do know is that I am not a fan of about 70 to 80 percent of the quality wines (excluding the stuff that comes in a box, bag, or unnaturally voluminous bottle with a handle) that are available today.  I generally find them boring.  No variation.  Too much one-dimensional fruit and little else.  When there is something else, invariably it is oak.  Lots of oak, as if infusing wine with oak gave it power and complexity.  This is, sadly what people know of wine today.  No wonder when I ask the average casual wine drinker out there what they like in a wine they invariably bring up only two terms: dry, meaning oak, and sweet, meaning fruit.  When I then introduce these same people to the naturally produced, terroir driven wines I like, they almost always respond with utter astonishment.  'I didn't know wine could taste like flowers.'  'What do they do to get that nice herbal flavor in there?'  'I never liked red wine, but now I do, because this actually tastes exciting.'  'This isn't sweet, but I really like it.  I'm going right down to the wine store to buy more.'  'This is dancing in my mouth.'

So, I come back around to my question.  Is most of the quality wine made today better than it was before the days of wholesale intervention in the vineyard and manipulation in the wine-making process?  After all, I rarely hear  casual wine drinkers tell me that they can't stand the wines they drink.  And, quite frankly, before I discovered the delights of naturally produced wine I was quite happy drinking whatever uninspiring reds or whites where put in front of me.  I simply liked wine and accepted that it pretty much fell into those two color categories and beyond that it was all pretty much the same.  At the time, I have to admit, I really didn't see this as a problem.  I even marveled how amazingly consistent most wines were not only in style but in quality.  I found it interesting how rare it was to find among the vast sea of mass-produced wine a major fault that would render a bottle seriously off-putting, as I understood this to be a much more frequent occurrence with the wines of days gone by.  But was I inspired by the wines I was drinking?  Did they excite me?  Did they transport me to another realm (and I'm not talking about the effects of alcohol)?  For the most part I have to say no.  The point came however, in my personal oenophilic evolution, when I tasted wines that blew me away.  I remember the first time I opened a perfectly delicate, floral, slatey, alive bottle of, what I now know to have been a Biodynamically produced Alsace Riesling, and thought to myself: "Yes! This is different.  Now I know what wine can be!"  Not too long afterwards I drank my first truly transcendental red, which happened to be a wonderfully complex, naturally produced Sierra Foothills Syrah.  Unfortunately I didn't know at the time what it was that made me like these wines more than the vast majority I was drinking.  I had to find these transcending experiences by trial and error until, many years later, I made a fortuitous discovery.  I started to read the producer websites of the wines I particularly loved, and soon found that most of these producers shared a back to nature approach in their vineyards, and a minimal intervention philosophy in the cellar.

To be continued...