Decanter World Wine AwardsNatural or not? Wine professionals state their cases in Decanter
- Monday 18 July 2011
Isabelle Legeron MW, founder of the Natural Wine Fair in the UK, is an evangelist for the style: as she says, ‘I am a total convert and drink nothing else’.
In the opposite corner is Liberty Wines chief David Gleave, a self-confessed sceptic, who has told the wine trade on his company’s website, ‘You won’t find any so-called natural wines on our list’.
In the guest column in the September issue of Decanter, Gleave argues that judicious use of sulphur dioxide cleans and stabilises a wine and helps prevent oxidation. He never argues for gum arabic or powdered tannins or other additives that natural winemakers eschew.
But he is outraged that natural winemakers have appropriated the term ‘natural’: ‘Great winemakers consider they make natural wines.’
For her part, Legeron points out how ‘bizarre’ it is that we are hyper-aware of the food we eat, and question its natural credentials, but are happy to drink wine that is effectively processed.
‘We celebrate unpasteurised, stinky Epoisses for its uniqueness, and fresh apple juice for its cloudiness, yet we insist on wine that is sterile and consistent.’
As Andrew Jefford did in the previous issue of Decanter, Gleave insists his mission is simply to find wines that express terroir, and the faults that develop in unfiltered, unfined and unstabilised wines mask that taste of the land in the wine.
‘I believe that the right kind of intervention…is necessary to ensure a wine expresses its origins.’
Not so, says Legeron. ‘Fine natural wines are vibrant and alive, and show excitingly diverse personalities…’
David Gleave’s guest column, and Isabelle Legeron’s feature on natural wine will be published in the September issue of Decanter, out now.
Have your say!
Joel Watson
December 27 21:19
This is an honest discussion in many ways. But until the argument is made to the general public who drink wine as all levels take an interest in the arguments being made and think about them, the point is rather mute in my view.
I drank wine in the 50’s and 60’s when it was considered not a good bottle nor aged long enough for reds if there was no sediment at the bottom of the bottle or crème de tartar in white bottles. I prefer the old ways in many cases but there are a lot of doctored wines that taste good as well and because I can usually tell the difference and see the difference I judge the wine for what it is.
Consumers should know what they are drinking and what the wine makers is trying to achieve with his blending, filtering, fining and other techniques to produce the wine flavor he desires. But I would venture a guess that 90% of American have not an ioda of an idea of what wine making is about or what they are even drinking. That is because this category of wine drinkers has a glass or three of wine a year and that is the extent of their wine drinking.