How to Be Non-Binary About Wine

Dwight Furrow

Jun 1

The problems with defining natural wine are well-documented. There is an inherent paradox in any attempt to be precise about what counts as "natural."

As Roger Morris writes in World of Fine Wine referring to recently imposed regulations in France:

Indeed, if this approach to codifying natural wines spreads to other countries, one can predict it will simply be a replaying of scenarios followed by other wine movements that have tried to separate their vineyard work and cellar practices from the norm only to establish their own norms. Procedures or movements that were once revolutionary, or perhaps counterrevolutionary, such as "organic," "biodynamic," "sustainable," or "garagiste," have succumbed to becoming standardized and forced to create their own ruling bureaucracies.

Some will object to the regulations and go rogue and the cycle will repeat. Morris has some thoughtful suggestions about how to get off that merry-go-round:

We have been trying to force natural wines into a binary concept—it is natural, or it isn't natural—when actually they fit better into the concept of fuzzy logic, which recognizes degrees of reality or truth.

He suggests we borrow from the world of fine arts and think of natural winemaking, not as a category but as a school—"a group of artists under a common influence," in the case of natural wine that common influence being a commitment to minimal interventions in the vineyard and cellar.

Picasso didn't try to dictate a set of rules for any painter wanting to be known as a Cubist. Renoir and Degas didn't worry over whether their varied styles fit within the confines of Impressionism. To my knowledge, Francis Bacon didn't declare that he was a figurative and not an abstract painter. Artists do not define the school; the school defines them.

Just as artists create works that don't fit a category and evolve over the course of their careers, winemakers should have the same freedom. Of course, that won't stop the wine press from debating where they fit but winemakers needn't feel constrained by these debates.

Morris then suggests too many in the wine world are not ready to cast off the labels:

"…few in the wine world want to venture from the serenity of the pasture to plunge into the helter-skelter of the forest—not the regional appellations that treasure the monetary value of their reputations and want to perpetuate them without controversy; not winemakers who enjoy the stability and comfort of working as craftsmen or -women within a niche; not the wine trade or writers or educators who like categories whose rules they can easily memorize and regurgitate on command. Instead, everyone is content with being told, often by the complacent winemaker, that she "makes wines that speak of a place, that are authentic and are crafted in a sustainable manner"—a definition that seems to embrace 90 percent of winemakers regardless of their influences.

True that. Winemakers have become more platitudinous than athletes commenting on their latest victory. The trope of winemaker as custodian of the grapes making themselves into wine is beyond tiresome.

Considering natural winemaking as a school opens up the opportunity for us to view winemakers—and hopefully for winemakers to view themselves—as more than lockstep manifestations of geography, prescribed grape varieties, and cellar regulations….A winemaker can have a broad philosophy of non-interventionism without feeling that every box has to be checked, particularly if she doesn't see the logic that box represents. A wine writer doesn't have to mentally disqualify a producer as not being "natural" if a small amount of sulfur is used before bottling. A sommelier can tell a restaurant's guests when he presents the bottle that even if there is nothing "natural" designated on the label, "Jean Paul's winemaking is of the natural school. Let me explain why."

Instead of rigid designations we writers can talk about winemakers at the center or toward the periphery of a school, as being more or less influenced by an idea or more or less committed to a process. Given the uncertainties of winemaking and the fickleness of tastes, we should expect infinite shades of grey rather then lines of demarcation in the wine world. What we have to do is develop a way of talking about wine without the lazy adherence to categories that fail to capture the dynamism of wine.

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