7 replies to this topic

[Don Giovanni]

Do you believe in the myth of a "Natural Wine" ?

as I become more educated on this subject I find it very hard to believe in ... losing faith with each book I read and with each conversation I learn from...as a proponent of using the most natural methods of making wine you might think that I would be the biggest preacher of the "Natural Wine Movement" personally I see it as a hoax only developed as a way of marketing wine...

as a tool for selling it's great, because it sounds so , well "natural" ... as I see each turn and twist in the winemaking process it has become self evident that the whole movement is built on rules that are ok, so long as you are dismissing the unnatural intervention along the way...


is the natural wine more natural because the weeds have been pulled ?

is the vine natural if you prune the vine and reduce fruit ?

did the vine climb a tree or did you train it on a trellis ?

is the wine natural if you control fermentation temperatures ?

is the wine natural if you add DAP to increase the YAN so you don't get stuck fermentation ?

is the wine natural if you used a bird netting to protect the grapes ?

is the wine natural if you pulled leaves ?

is the wine natural if you drove a carbon fuel vehicle to do work in the vineyard ?

did you spray the vineyard with anything ?

did you irrigate ?

did you tie the vines ?

would any oak be a natural thing to do to a wine ?

is the use of SO2 natural ? if so how much before it's not...

type of closure, glass, plastic, composite, bark cork, screwcap ?

ferment in animal belly , stainless, concrete , oak vats, amphora, anything natural about them ?

Süssreserve or sugar no matter how approved it is

add back Jesus juice units aka water ?

add tartaric acid or any kind of acid ?

add tannin , mega purple-red ?

micro-oxygenate how so ... did you use sparger or different diffuser ?

use spinning cones, reverse osmosis machines ?

did you use a bottle, flask, skin, glass, plastic or membrane to house the final product

did you add a culture to help the ML fermentation ?

did you let the wine sit on the lees?

did you use any frost equipment to prevent frost?

did you use SO2 at the crusher, during the fermentation or pre-bottling ?

Argon, Nitrogen , CO2 for bottling ?

did you use a lab to give you the bio on the grapes, must or wine ?

spontaneous yeast or cultured ?

filter , rack , clarify,Delestage, bâtonnage, Sur lie?

Did you use a rubber hose to transport wine along the way ?

you get my point and I am sure I missed many other things used in "Natural Wine"


..."natural" bah humbug !!!

like I said great marketing ...

[gfweb]

What is the premise of natural wine? How's it differ from "organic"

[olicollett]

Nonsense it is, not sure if it's as big a nonsense as biodynamic wine though.

[Don Giovanni]

What is the premise of natural wine? How's it differ from "organic"

ok natural wine is made with no added yeast just spontaneous fermentation ... organic grapes or bio-dynamic no added sulfur ...no filtering the wine at all ... oxygenated bottling no inert gas ... very close to organic but with the aforementioned methods...

anything you use to make a better wine is called non natural...if you read the original post this is where the movement shoots itself in the foot...

[Don Giovanni]

Nonsense it is, not sure if it's as big a nonsense as biodynamic wine though.

bio-dynamic winemaking ...you can use sulfur in the vineyard along with coper and fish oil... you use lunar cycles to plant harvest rack etc... you can use cultured yeast ... filter rack etc... you can use sulfur to preserve the wine ...

at least with bio-dynamic wine-making yes you don't spray in the vineyard pesticides ...but you intervene using tea sprays ... using a cows horn with silica ground up in it with manure this is used as a spray on the vineyard after it's dug up for a period of time...

it's the limited intervention that is acknowledged in a very green way... some people don't believe in it ... I do due to experience...

one case in point the trees to make log homes were cut down during a new moon for homes ... these logs lasted over 200 years and counting ... the trees that were cut down during the full moon rotted in 40 years...


another case is racking under a new moon or within 8 days of one the lees are more compressed etc...


strange as it may be we have some proof working the crops and wine during lunar cycles is not lunacy...

[gfweb]

I know nothing about growing grapes or log homes, but I do know a lot about science. When you have multiple variables in an experiment, but study only one, then you have an experiment guaranteed to give uninterpretable results.

There may be something to the lunar stuff, but whether trout feeding periods or log homes, I've never seen a truly well designed study of a lunar influence on anything but tides. So who knows what's actually true?

Natural wine sounds like it would have a philosophical appeal to some, but turning back to clock to less well-controlled conditions almost guarantees a less reproducible product. If unreliable and often inferior results are worth the philosophical advantage then it might be a viable product. But I doubt it.

[emmanuelle]

Yes "Natural Wine" is most of the time a good marketing shot.
Nevertheless, there is some organic wine making its way into the market with biodynamic systems!
A lot of French Wineyards such as domaine Mortiès use such a system and them really produce natural and organic wine, which gives a more salty taste to it!

[Jane Randahl]

This is all very interesting, and I'm not quite sure what to make of it. I like the comment above about multiple variables being introduced which, yes, is sure to cause unpredictable results. If the process is scientifically proven in the future, the results could be outstanding, but I'm not sure there is enough raw evidence to support it for better or worse.

It could be something truly great in the making, but the whole paradigm shift to healthier more organic consumption is inevitably producing copycats or people too eager to jump on the wagon. That said I know nothing about the lunar cycle, but from what I'm hearing they may be jumping the gun a bit on the benefits of natural wine.