Delicious Wine, Naturally

Mention the word natural in an article about wine and wait for sparks to fly. Rarely has one word caused such heated discussion (ok, Trump wins again). I do remember that not long ago the word organic caused similar angst. Biodynamic still receives mostly blank expressions. Sustainable? Also okay as a word, but garnering equally fuzzy reactions.

If you are a winegrower, you can have (at significant expense of time and money) your operation certified organic, biodynamic or sustainable - not by a governmental agency or one particular organization, but by several different groups, all of which hold their members to a specific standard of operation. Natural on the other hand, well, no such luck. For better or worse, at this time no such organization exists to set standards and monitor natural winegrowing. In fact, it is difficult to get folks to agree on a definition of the term Natural Wine. Most will agree on at least four basic points:

1. No chemicals - in the vineyard, or the winery
2. Harvest by hand
3. Wild (indigenous, ambient, not cultured) yeast fermentation
4. No (or little) fining or filtration

According to some true believers - if you wanted to call them fundamentalists or extremists I wouldn't argue - the fifth point would be no added sulfur, in the vineyard or winery. The French call it sans soufre. I call it risky. I've had terrific, and perfectly stable, wine made with zero added sulfur. I've also had terrible wines made that way. Of course, I've also had terrific and/or terrible wine made in every other known method of winegrowing or production. 

It is important to note that while the term natural wine is currently in vogue, it is not new. According to Sue Dyson and Roger McShane (Living Wines, 03/09/2019) it was first used in the late 17th century, in pretty much exactly the way it is used today - to note the difference between wine made with additives and wine made without additives. That the word natural has been abused by, most notably, the food industry, should not disqualify its use in the world of wine, but it is difficult to ignore current usage. 

Back to my previous point, opinions about natural wine will - or should be - shaped by one's personal experience with natural wine. My personal experience has been positive enough that I look forward to tasting more examples. I am disposed to favor wine made without chemicals because in my experience, they taste better than "manufactured" wine. 

The hitch with the word natural, however, is that it implies a lack of human intervention, which couldn't be further from the reality. Wine grapes, like any other cultivar, are farmed. Farming is an absolutely human endeavor. Farming without using chemicals, without irrigation, is as natural as it can get, but it is still uniquely human. Check out Google dictionary's definition of the word natural: 

adjective

1. 1.

   existing in or caused by nature; not made or caused by humankind.

Winegrowers often downplay their role in the process, but great wine is made by people who happen to have, among other gifts, great taste. Literally, they're great tasters, and that ability informs all of their decisions, in the vineyard, the winery and through release of their wine to the rest of us. The best of these farmers are fully committed to their method, but they're never satisfied, which means they're constantly tinkering, searching for ways to make their wine better, vintage after vintage. 

Most good wine shops, whether they promote or pooh-pooh natural wine, stock wines that might not identify (no hip, arty label, no obvious haze) as "natural," but adhere to at least the first four points of the accepted definition of the term. The Perrin family may or may not be thrilled with being used as an example, but their Chateau de Beaucastel Chateauneuf du Pape is one. They've been farming this vineyard biodynamically since 1954.

In Champagne, the famous house of Louis Roederer is in the process of converting all of its vineyards to biodynamic viticulture. I promise you this isn't happening because of pressure from fans of natural wine. It is happening because the folks at Roederer believe it'll help them make better wine, with less damage to nature. They realized, as have many other larger wine producers, that the use of chemical fertilizers and herbicides had stripped their vineyards of life, and the grapes harvested from those vineyards, of taste.

Despite the problematic terminology, "natural wine" is here to stay. In fact, it's been around since wine was first made some 6,000 years ago. "Chemical wine" is the blip (I hope), the exception to traditional, accepted practices of winegrowing. Instead of focusing ire on overzealous natural wine lovers, we should be channeling that energy to making the use of chemicals in winegrowing a brief, regrettable period in the history of wine.

When sparks stop flying and the dust settles, all of us wine lovers should be beneficiaries of this controversy. We will have discovered more delicious wines made by previously unheard of winegrowers. We might even agree that the best wines are made without chemicals.