A panel of winemakers comes to a kumbaya moment, sort of, over natural wine dogmas.
Dogmatism is out, tolerance is in. After years of ongoing, fierce debates over what a natural wine is, a more mature middle ground is emerging over what it is and isn’t a natural wine. If anyone is still listening…
My old friend Monty Waldin used to say about natural winemakers, “Don’t tell me what you don’t do. Tell me what you do do.”
A panel of five wine experts, including four natural winemakers spanning from 20 something to seasoned veterans, examined the definitions, the divides, the controversies and the intersections–as well as perhaps the irrelevance of drawing lines.
Back in 2009, host and moderator Jared Brandt, co-founder of Donkey and Goat (then married to co-founder Tracey Brandt), published a manifesto.
Issued in the spirit of transparency, it proclaimed the winery’s do’s and don’ts in buying grapes and in winemaking, but also capped it off with a warning.
“When it comes to dogma, the road to hell is paved with good intentions.”
Seventeen years later, Jared Brandt was in the room with fellow winemakers attempting to find common ground defining natural wine or just hearing what everyone else had to say, since the days of dogmatic disagreements appear to be wearing thin among both makers and their fans and the scales seem to be tipping toward kumbaya.
The illustrious panel began with a statement of purpose that reflects the thoughtful distance the community has come over those 17 years.
“What this panel is really collected to talk about is breaking down and unpacking some of these divisions that create little tribes when they're actually a really powerful community that's striving after the same thing,” a speaker began.
A lot of the discussion was about minimal intervention. For example:
• Did oak barrels count as “doing nothing”?
• What about temperature controlled tanks?
• And the eternal debate: are sulfites ok or not? Even a little bit?
Brandt said he was agnostic about much of natural wines’ tenets, but just happened to learn from a natural winemaker in France.
“I moved to France to learn winemaking. I did not come into winemaking to learn how to make natural wine. I came to learn from Eric Texier because I love his wine,” he said.
Nicole Walsh, the long time winemaker at Bonny Doon (for 20+ years), as well as producer of her own artisanal SER Wine, has made both “conventional” and natural wines, early on converting a biodynamic vineyard in New Zealand.
Nicole Walsh
“This whole panel is really interesting for me,” she said, “because all along in my career, I've had a lot of passion projects. My interest is more on the viticulture side–vineyard managing, converting wine or vineyards to biodynamic farming, or organic farming. Really, I feel it starts there.
“And so, obviously, my belief and my passion is natural wines that reflect that farming. It's really, really important to me….wines that have a life force in them.”
They should also be wines of stability, she added.
Arcadian's Joe Davis, made the distinction that natural wine “is about harvesting at higher acid, lower pHs. There's less bacterial activity. Wines tend to be clear and bright.”
Winemaker Brent Mayeaux of Stagiaire, championing the purist line, opted for a simple definition.
“My idea of natural wine, which over there in France seems like pretty well understood and agreed upon,” he said, “…I don’t understand the confusion in the United States so much, but natural wine is considered organic grapes that you crush and ferment, and you bottle without fining, filtering, or adding anything to the wine.”
I might point out that there’s no mention in his definition of growing the grapes yourself–and he like, most of the producers at Unfiltered, does not grow all of his grapes, in contrast to leading French natural wine producers.
Beyond the Moralizing
“I almost wish it wasn’t called natural wine because we tend to moralize it–to not make natural wine isn’t immoral,” Mayeaux said.
“How you make your wine is very inconsequential in the grand scheme of the world, but to me, natural wine is organic grapes that you don’t do anything to.”
Brandt pointed out that overall, winemakers are prone more and more to making acid adjustments [due to climate change]. He said chaptalization and adding sulfites were once typical in Germany and France.
“I struggle with the definition [of natural wine],” he said. “I think ‘natural’ is a very bogus word, but I struggle with where you do draw the line, because it goes back [the fact that] barrels do import impart flavors. Concrete and terracotta have a big influence in the wine. Stainless has an influence in the wine.”
How many sulfites is still another much debated topic.
Said Davis, “I think if you're going to try to make wine as naturally as possible, then you've got to have a really good lab. You've got to be able to look under the microscope and see what's there.
The wine he poured at the panel clocked in at 35 ppm sulfites he told attendees.
“To not use some amount of sulfur seems to me to be insanity,” he added.
Walsh looks at the bigger picture. At Bonny Doon (now part of WarRoom Cellars), she led the team that formerly made as much as 450,000 cases of wine a year and later launched her own personal, artisanal brand Ser Wines. Maker Wine produces her own wines in cans.
“You're striving for this persistence, this life force in the wine,” said Walsh.
Wine can’t be perfect all the time, she said, and then what.
“In my opinion, some of the flaws from not intervening in some way, even being as thoughtful as we can, and being as prepared as we can come harvest…Making those decisions when you were talking about acid is a priority, but maybe you can’t make those picking decisions perfectly.
“I feel like you do have to intervene, and because, for me, it's trying to make this reflection of the vineyard in the resulting wine, without distracting flaws.”
Holding up the purist end of the spectrum, Mayeaux disagreed. “That's the point. It's not supposed to be easy,” he said.
Countered Walsh, “I would argue that you shouldn't win a prize for doing nothing.”
Mayeux makes about 2,000 cases and said at the panel that he lives very frugally, including getting food stamps. Walsh makes a lot more wine.
For the section on Native Yeasts | Not So Pure After All?
Please visit this link to read about Opus One’s transition to using native yeasts. (This panel article was getting too long for Substack’s email length limits so I made the Opus yeast discussion a separate article.)
Broken Berries | A Big Risk
Mayeaux said he was he was “trying to prioritize the healthy yeast and keep the less desirable yeast and bacteria at bay.
Brent Mayeux
“Any broken berry in the vineyard is a breeding ground for the yeast and bacteria that you don't want fermenting. Every single broken berry that comes in from the vineyard into the cellar is this petri dish–this inoculation of the things that you don't want dominating or fermentation. So we are doing everything we can to keep those out of the cellar or in the vineyard.” That means “sorting really well," he said.
Mayeux paid homage to Opus One for getting him into wine.
“Honestly, I wouldn't be here if it wasn't for Opus One. It was a couple bottles of Opus One that sent me down the wine path. And I still, honestly, drink probably more classic-leaning wine because a lot of natural wines are kind of disgusting.”
[Of course, Opus One costs $400 a bottle and does not claim to be a natural wine, but it has switched to using native yeast].]
Transparency Is a Common Denominator–Or Is It?
Some label ingredients. Most don’t.
Walsh said Bonny Doon was “one of the first wineries to do ingredient labeling [in 2008], and at that time it was because we really felt we wanted to show ‘here's a wine that's out in the marketplace, and we're really minimalist with our additions.’
“We were hoping it would cause other wineries to show what they actually put in their wines, or to bring awareness to a consumer of what goes into wine.”
While transparency was a lauded goal, audience member and wine expert Clark Smith said it’s [sadly] unrealistic to expect truth from mainstream [or natural winemakers.
[Clark Smith is the inventor of reverse osmosis and micro-oxygenation–interventions that are anathema to the natural wine community.]
“I spent my whole life for over 50 years in the industry developing new tools,” said Smith, “and I’ve been experimenting with honesty, and I have to tell you that the reason you don’t have transparency in winemaking–look in the mirror.
“Because the natural wine movement has been firing live ammo over the heads of winemakers for a long time, and they’re going to lie.”
In the end, one thing matters, he said.
“What you should be asking for is great wine, whether it's agricultural, conventional, natural, 00. It's really about finding delicious wines to drink.”
A Post Panel Artistic Moment } The Watercolorist
A creative audience member, Julie Weber, a watercolorist of many years, was having a good time painting panelists and taking notes of this and other sessions. Here is her delightfully artistic record of the panel.
Watercolorist Julia Weber (jukelia_sf on instagram) painted during a number of sessions, exciting many participants and attracting many admirers.
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