A clarification

On the use and abuse of terminology.

There has been some very ill tempered commentating going on in the last week relating to the use of the term ‘natural’ to describe wines.

While I agree with those who feel that it unfairly stigmatized those wines deemed not ‘natural’ I feel that it’s almost certainly too late to do anything about it. Like it or not the horse has bolted, there’s no use shutting the stable door now.

However, I also feel that we’re doing the consumer a slight disservice and underestimating their ability to deal with things. Most general consumers are unlikely to come into contact with minimal intervention wines unless they happen to be in a wine bar or specialist shop that deals with them. The likelihood is that there will therefor be someone who can explain the distinctions to them.

Moreover, I think that people who attack the category miss the essential broadening of the category that has taken place. The natural church seems to me a very broad one. Where the essential feature is a belief in offering as honest a representation of the growers terroir as possible. It is in this sense that winemaking additions and manipulations are frowned upon as it is viewed as altering or touching up the picture.

I personally have no problem with wines that are made in this way, there is a goal to the winemaking process, and that is to produce a high quality product that will please consumers, it may be to make something that will age wonderfully, and it is here that I should mention that most of my stand out greatest wine drinking experiences have been from wines that were made from non organic vineyards, and probably quite heavily sulphured too. Age ameliorates many things.

So with this in mind what then is the importance of natural, why does it seem to have such a siren call to people? Why has it been so enthusiastically embraced in some of the less well-known corners of the wine world?

Personally I think it’s because it has come as an important corrective movement. For a grower faced with his plot of vines, none of which are proscribed noble varieties, he or she in maybe in a marginal climate and as such isn’t going to be able to make rich luscious, expensively oaked wines. What to do? Accept ones place in the lower order and carry on making unprofitable bulk wine for a dying domestic market? Or celebrate the intricacy of their particular patch of terroir? Homogeneity is never interesting, embracement of diversity only makes the world more interesting.

Yes there are extremists, yes there are wines that are cidery, cloudy, slightly faulty, but to me using these to tar everything under the natural umbrella is akin to knocking everything out of Bordeaux on the strength of a couple of 200% new oak St Emilion garagistes.

The pendulum of fashion is swinging, and the thing I find most exciting about the natural movement is how it will change the middle ground, as that is where most of us actually live and drink.

Ca c'est bon

It was while trying to get some sleep in the deathly dry air-conditioned nightmare that was my Angers hotel room that I had a realisation.

I'd been trying to get a handle on how to explain the brinksmanship that that many of the more out there natural wines seem to pull of in their aromatics. Being simultaneously wrong and slightly unpleasant but also very moreish and right.

I'd recently been drinking Donati Camillo 2010 Lambrusco frizzante and had been at a loss as to what to write as a tasting note, other than that it'd been thrillingly interesting and very enlivening as a pre dinner drink.

I was reminded of an aromatic compound called Indole, at very low concentrations it smells floral, at higher concentrations it smells fecal. From shit to roses in only an extra 10 times dilution. It occurred to me that it may well just be lots of very low levels of problematic compounds. That the background tang of slightly pissy vinegariness that seemed to stalk the edge of my flavour perception, may well have been just that. There was certainly a not unsubstantial level of volatile acids. But yet, I really enjoyed the wine. Had my perception threshold of various volatile acids been so pummelled into submission that I just didn't notice/care any longer.

Anyway I was reminded of this yesterday evening as I was enjoying a glass go Laurent Lebled's Touraine Gamay 2011 Ca c'est bon. It had that lovely background tang of refreshing vinegariness that I know I'm not supposed to like, but dammit I'm quite happy with a decent robust vinaigrette on my salad, and the Roman empire pretty much thrived on Posca (a vinegar/water drink). So maybe it's not that odd that I find this extra tang, along with the decent acidity, crunchy tannins and verging on stalky herbaceous red fruit an appealing sort of drink.