A brief polemic about natural wine

There is a lot to be said about “natural wine”. Some of it makes sense, and some of it is nothing more than biased rhetoric. The latter is the work of folks who tred a different path wanting to make us think that they are the keepers of truth, justice and the American way.

In the last couple of days, two of the more thoughtful voices in the wine blogosphere, Tom Wark over on his blog, FERMENTATION, http://fermentation.typepad.com/fermentation/2012/01/natural-wine-ugly-underbelly.html, and Hardy Wallace on his entitled DIRTY SOUTH WINE, http://www.dirtysouthwine.com/my_weblog/2012/01/naturalwinepurrty.html, have discussed the rising phenomenon of “my way is better than your way” rhetoric that has become so very common in wine discussions.

Mr. Wark decries the phenomenon. Mr. Wallace, whose column is derivative of the Wark comments, sides with the naturalists.

The Wallace rationale that he does not drink fruit juice made from concentrate so why drink wine that has been made with more than minimal intervention from man is pretty solid—but only for Mr. Wallace and for those who prefer process to taste in choosing their wines.

It is hard for me, as a person who has been tasting wine professionally for three decades plus, to accept that process is the message. Process is process. As long as process does no harm to me, to consumers, to the environment, then it is acceptable. All wine is “made”. We have a name for those who control the process. It is “winemaker”. And, while some winemakers are less interventionalist than others, they all intervene. Otherwise, all grapes would be raisins and all wine would be vinegar.

So, when I hear the sloganeers for biodynamic or organic or sustainably grown wines denigrating those who do not subscribe to their specific subsets of process, I simply roll my eyes in wonderment and ask them if their wines taste better or not.

Of course, I have an answer for them after all these years—some do and some do not, but there is no body of proof that the processes of minimalism produce superior wines to those that are made from the same grapes with more but careful and thoughtful intervention.