On Natural Wines

My column is about the seemingly emotional, threatening issue of natural wines. I use the term natural wines throughout the column, but it’s a measure of how nebulous the issue is to say that many people disagree on the use of that phrase. Some prefer other terms, like real wine, or natural winemaking.

What is meant by whichever term you prefer? Even trying to define the parameters is difficult and contentious.

In general, it means striving to farm without using chemical pesticides, fungicides or herbicides. It means plowing fields, and harvesting by hand rather than with machinery.

In the cellar, natural winemakers allow the juice to ferment with indigenous yeasts rather than by adding yeast formulated in laboratories. In the cellar they generally do not add sugar to prolong fermentation or increase the alcohol content, nor do they add enzymes, acid, tannins, water or coloring to make up for what is lacking. They do not add sulfur dioxide to the grapes they harvest, which would kill the natural yeasts, and if they do add sulfur later on as a preservative it is in very low doses. They do not use reverse osmosis, microoxygenation, concentrators or any other technology that allows producers to mold the wine into their preferred final shape.

Yet, even among natural winemakers themselves the debate is endless. Some might say that controlling the temperature of the fermenting wine with refrigeration equipment has no place in the process, while others are not bothered by such details. Some would object to using any machinery other than human feet to press the grapes. Others find nothing wrong in lightly filtering the wine, a practice that many mainstream winemakers abhor.

Here’s how I would simplify it. In the vineyard, don’t use poisons, and try to limit the use of copper sulfate and sulfur, chemicals that are permitted even under organic viticulture for combating mildew. In the cellar, don’t add anything to the juice or wine, and don’t take anything out. I have no problem with a little sulfur dioxide as a stabilizer because, after all, who wants a wine that’s spoiled by the time you open it? And yet, in rare cases like the wines of Radikon, unsulfured wines can be amazingly stable.

Paul Draper, the chief executive and winemaker of Ridge Vineyards, once described wine as the perfect beverage because the grapes contain all that is necessary to have wine. Beer needs the addition of water to grain and hops. Spirits require distilling. But grapes really require no more than time to become wine. Of course, to turn wine into a commercial product necessitates some degree of human intervention. The question is, how much?

The excellent British wine writer Andrew Jefford, in a recent column in Decanter, described his feeling of excitement on returning to Europe after a year-long stay in Australia. “Australian wines excite thanks to intensely flavored grapes, generous acid additions and evident oak,’’ he wrote, while discussing the inexpensive regional wines of Europe that he missed during his residence.

Adding acid, to me, is more intervention than I would prefer. No doubt, I’ve enjoyed wines in which the acid level has been adjusted. But all things being equal, I would prefer to drink wines in which such adjustments were not considered necessary. Even when a producer decides a wine requires some sort of acid adjustment, it seems to me that more creative approaches are available than simply dumping a bag of tartaric acid into the blend.

I heard recently of one producer who made a point of harvesting some grapes early, to be turned into highly acidic verjus, should it be necessary to adjust the acidity of the wine. Again, it would be better not to need adjustments, but adding verjus, made from the same grapes that went into the wine, seems to be a more benign adjustment than adding a product completely divorced from the wine.

Arguments about what constitutes natural wine can indeed seem endless. They can stretch from how the soil is treated, to whether irrigation is used, to the actual packaging of the wine. Often they get heated and personal, but I saw a useful discussion recently at Wine Berserkers.

And my blogging colleague Cory Cartwright is just beginning a month of posts on natural wines that will no doubt be provocative and interesting.

While I love natural wines, the line between what is and what’s not is not always clear. There is no orthodoxy, and I’m not doctrinaire about it. Simply being natural is no different than being red or white. It’s no guarantee of quality or style. And even among wines that are considered natural, some seem in the glass to be entirely conventional, while others, you can tell right away, are different in style and flavor.

It would be impossible to give a complete list of natural wines. But if you want to taste for yourselves, look for wines imported by Louis/Dressner Selections, Jenny & Francois or Savio Soares Selections, just to name a few importers dealing with these sorts of wines. For domestic versions, look for Lioco, Donkey and Goat or La Clarine. I apologize for not being more specific, but feel free to offer your suggestions.