Guardians of the Wine Galaxy

A Bit About Natural Wine

“Son, we live in a world that has walls and those walls have to be guarded… You want me on that wall! You need me on that wall!”

Col. Jessup gives this passionate defense of his actions while on the stand in A Few Good Men. It didn’t work out great for Jack Nicholson’s character in court, but he was right about being vigilant. Lately, good wine has come under attack by all sorts of forces, but the most misunderstood and confusing would be the frontal assault from that dreaded enemy - Natural Wine.

Just kidding, I don’t see natural wines as the enemy, just another marketing term trying to separate you from your hard-earned cash. By creating the false dichotomy of Natural vs. Conventional wine, the most outspoken proponents of natural wine over-simplify things a lot. Zealots abound, guaranteeing purity and implying healthfulness. But who wants to drink a glass of wine with a zealot?

After World War II the petrochemical industry was humming and needed a new outlet since munitions were no longer needed in such quantities. Enter synthetic fertilizers, powerful fungicides, pesticides, etc. Pastoral vineyards were now being nuked with cheap, plentiful chemicals that destroyed soil biology and left the vines dependent on bags of fertilizer. In response to this drastic change from pre-war farming, many younger viticulturists/winemakers started to reject this whole cycle of dependence, looking to farm the way people did for thousands of years – slowly, with animals and insects integral.

The Loire valley and Beaujolais became hotbeds for this rejection of the “conventional” (though just a few decades old.) In the spirit of the Back to the Land movement here in the US, many French winemakers started to peel back the layers of Progress and evaluate their winemaking techniques. Most eschewed cultured yeasts, fining with synthetic products, filtration and heavy sulfur use (as an anti-microbial.) Some of these wines seemed electric and vibrant compared to the standard plonk of the time, and these producers gained a strong following. Good work.

Fast forward to the last decade or two, and American wine has started to take stock of its own questionable choices. Luckily, we have seen the folly of our errors in chasing fame and fortune with 99-point Robert Parker scores, and the pendulum has swung back to a healthy spectrum of styles. Into this fray waded the promoters of natural wine.

Here’s the deal: Wine is kind of a natural product, but not fully. It takes a lot of human input to get that wine to your lips, of course. While I stay out of the way as much as possible – organic grapes, native yeast fermentations, no fining and minimal sulfur – my choices make the final product. Wine is just a stop along the way from grapes to vinegar.

I’ve had horrible natural wines, and some great ones. However, to a certain extent, I feel like slapping the term natural on your wine can be an excuse for sloppy winemaking, allowing the wine to be a microbial soup of unwanted nasties, pushing a delicious wine closer to its vinegary end. A flawed wine is a flawed wine, regardless of its trendy designation.

My professional duty is to make sure that if it says Weatherborne on the bottle, you know it’s a quality wine; that it doesn’t smell like kombucha or a horse blanket. I’m not here wasting my time or your money. I am the guardian on that wall. You want me on that wall. You need me on that wall, ha!