The hornet's nest: Natural vs. Un-Natural vs. Authentic Wine

[Roy Hersh]

This has been discussed on every wine forum I've read in the past few years. This is a pretty unbiased look at the topic by Eric Asimov who keeps a very level head: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/25/dinin ... .html?_r=1

What do you think of this "movement" ... the Natural Wine movement that is?

[Eric Menchen]

Silly. What is natural? In the photo is a motorized vehicle with plastic bins of grapes. Not natural! For that matter, all those vines in Europe using American rootstock, unnatural! Or adding yeast, using any sort of mechanized wine press ...

[Eric Menchen]

O.k., now I'm going to call b.s. From http://www.morethanorganic.com/definiti ... tural-wine

So we need to be clear exactly what we mean by natural wine.

A natural wine is a wine made,

in small quantities,
by an independent producer,
on low-yielding vineyards,
from handpicked, organically grown grapes,
without added sugars or foreign yeasts,
without adjustments for acidity,
without micro-oxygenation or reverse-osmosis.

Most natural wines are neither filtered nor fined. The few that are will either be filtered extremely lightly or fined with organic egg-white.

A natural wine contains no more than,

10 mg/l total sulphur if red,
25 mg/l total sulphur if white.

If sulphur dioxide is added, it will be only at bottling and only in the tinest quantities. Many natural wines are made without the addition of sulphur dioxide at any point.

So a company can't make natural wine? But you can add sulphur dioxide? What is a small quantity, or low-yield?

[Brian C.]

I can't say I have a well studied opinion in this debate, but I sure did enjoy drinking Movia Lunar.

[Glenn E.]

I'm with Eric. If it's grafted it's not natural. Period.

Now you might still want to create some other marketable term for your product that you can use to trick people into thinking that your manufactured product is somehow better than someone else's manufactured product, but let's be very clear here. "Natural" implies that something occurs... naturally. It comes from nature. If you're growing your grapes on grafted vines, by definition they are not natural and so neither is your wine.

[Roy Hersh]

I've hung out with quite a few from Europe (especially Italy) last May in Santarem, Portugal and the "natural wine movement" topic was blazing hot at that moment and place. There were several exporters of "natural wine" in attendance from several countries, as well as journos. A book by an acquaintence, Jamie Goode who some of you may know from the UK who is scientist first, wine geek second ... co-wrote a book refuting the claims of "natural wine" and exclaiming that these wines should be called, "authentic" and not using the term, "natural" but I haven't seen the grafting of vines at the center of the argument against the term "natural" until now.

[Glenn E.]

"Authentic" is a much more reasonable term than "natural" to use, as it implies something more along the lines of "old school" instead of, well, natural. Or maybe they should just call them "retro" wines - wines made the way they used to be made before all the modern techniques of mass production were introduced.

[Eric Ifune]

Both Organic and Biodynamic viticulture allows for the use of Bordeaux mixture on the vines. Heavy metal application to the enviornment is natural?
How do you fine white wines if only organic egg whites are allowed? Egg whites are not usually used to fine whites. Bentonite or isenglass is most commonly used.
What's the definition of "small producers?" How "low" must yields be?
To me, "Natural" smacks more of marketing than any improved quality.