Natural Wine

WHAT IS A NATURAL WINE?

by Lauren McPhate

Wine is made from grapes, harvested from vines grown in the ground. What could be so unnatural about that!? Yet wine itself does not grow on trees. Wine requires human intervention to tame and balance the vine, pluck the grapes & put them into a fermentation vessel, finesse & extract to draw the tannins and color from the skins, plus potential further adjustments to balance the juice, all before bottling it into its final resting place. With human intervention, comes an opportunity to showcase place of origin (terroir) through pure and balanced fruit, or more opportunities to manipulate to achieve a desired style. 

Wine starts in the vineyard. With the advent of agrochemicals during wartime, post WWII Europe found them increasingly in their vineyards. They spread around the world offering quick relief from bugs, mildew, rot, and other pests. Glyphosate, made popular by Monsanto’s Roundup, infiltrated farming around the world. Today there is legislation in Europe to prevent the use of Monsanto, but there are still plenty of herbicides and chemicals used. The U.S. lags well behind Europe in this regard.

In the 80s, as Robert Parker grew into influence, an entire generation of winemakers looked to achieve a particular style. At the same time, we had the beginning of the democratization of wine (Yellow Tail, we’re looking at you), which resulted in wine products masquerading as wine. Wine became big business, and many companies were looking for shortcuts or homogenization of a product which is dependent on the whims of mother nature. We saw the introduction of products like megapurple, enzymes for clarity, wood chips for the perception of wood aging without the cost, and reverse osmosis to remove alcohol or flaws.  

As a direct result, a movement started to get away from these industrial products, and back to making wine in the tradition of generations past. “Natural wine” as we know it today was born.

Conventional Wine: Typically made with chemically treated grapes (i.e. pesticides and herbicides like glyphosate) and may involve various additives and processing aids during winemaking (enzymes, tannin, reverse osmosis, ect). 

Natural Wine: Emphasizes organic or biodynamic farming, minimal intervention in the winery, avoiding all additives including yeast, showcasing the raw expression of grapes and terroir.

Natural wine sounds nice in theory, but there are many factors to consider.

-Style and price of the wine

Organic and biodynamic farming is expensive. Certification is quite costly as well. If you’re making a $10 wine, it is untenable to afford the labor involved, especially at scale.

-Wine does not grow on trees

Some natural wines take the “hands off” approach too far and allow the wines to develop flaws like volatile acidity (nail varnish smell), Brettanomyces (yeast spoilage that imparts barnyard flavors), mousiness (experience this once and you’ll know it!), or other off flavors. Human intervention is required to make great wine, so don’t let dogma get in the way of good quality. 

“Natural Wine” is still a rather ambiguous term for “hands off” winemaking. The INAO (National Institute for Origins and Quality) of France defined natural wine in 2020 as wine coming from vineyards which are hand harvested, made from indigenous yeast and inputs, without “brutal” physical techniques like reverse osmosis, filtration, and flash pasteurization. Sulfites are limited to addition only at bottling, and limited well under legal limits. 

Natural wine, to me, denotes a stylistic choice. The wines tend to be vibrantly colored, although sometimes cloudy, with lightly volatile aromas, often of olives. The flavors are generally simple and primarily fruit driven, with crunchy acidities. They tend not to be very serious wines, but instead fun and flamboyant. This is personal, but for me, a great natural wine is best enjoyed with a bit of chill (red & white) and with simple food like cheese, crackers or pizza, and preferably al fresco. 

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