Baudains: ‘Natural wines don’t stink’

It is legitimate to hesitate before writing natural wine without inverted commas, given the difficulty in defining what might actually constitute natural wine. Despite the grey areas, and leaving aside the semantics of ‘natural’, there’s a general understanding that a natural wine will be made from organic grapes, with few or no additives or manipulation, probably with spontaneous fermentation and without fining or filtering.

This approach to vinification can take wines outside many peoples’ comfort zones, with the risk of excess volatile acidity, brettanomyces, and oxidation – but also a whole raft of other unfamiliar and frankly unpleasant aromas which incur the wrath and indignation of journalists who, in no uncertain terms, have largely branded natural wine as undrinkable in the past.

Scroll down to see notes and scores for 10 (non-stinky) Italian natural wines

Badge of honour

Producers tend to take two positions towards this criticism. The hard line is to trenchantly defend what would generally be considered winemaking faults as a testimony to a wine’s ‘naturalness’, and wear them as a badge of honour. The response I have often heard is that sommeliers, oenologists, journalists and the world at large don’t understand natural wine (and you may wonder what is there to understand… surely a wine is either enjoyable or not). I can’t help thinking there is a touch of victimism in this stance.

The softer line, adopted by many supporters of natural wine goes something like, ‘look beyond the unfamiliar at what lies behind, and learn to appreciate the vitality and spontaneity.’

This assumes that one needs to be inducted into natural wine, and probably change one’s tasting parameters, which actually works for many people who, after initial perplexity, become hooked on natural wines.

With some reservations, as a taster with an Italian wine guide that receives a lot of samples from natural winemakers, I would include myself in this category, although I also have to taste a lot of wines which I really wouldn’t want to drink.

A third way

A third position is also starting to emerge. I first heard it stated explicitly three years ago, during a cellar visit to a biodynamic producer in Puglia who declared, (verbatim), ‘Natural wines don’t stink!’

And in fact, his didn’t – they had pure, vibrant fruit, with depth and complexity. They were altogether very satisfying wines. This idea that natural wine shouldn’t be difficult to appreciate is being echoed increasingly at shows and tastings. Are we seeing the rehabilitation of natural wine? Are producers overcoming the problems that beset them in the past?

To try to find out, I went to the annual show of the VinNatur group at Gambellara in the Veneto to taste the wines and talk to the president of the association, wine producer Angiolino Maule. The VinNatur group was founded in 2006 with an initial 50 members from Italy and France, and has grown to its current 300 members in 12 countries.

Many of the wineries are young, small-scale and would probably not be familiar to anyone outside natural wine circles, but there are also a number of larger, well known and widely regarded members.

Associates have to adhere to a code of conduct which goes a long way beyond the much less stringent EU regulations for organic wine. It allows for a little flexibility in some areas, but is rigorous on the fundamentals of organic viticulture and the exclusion of additives in the cellar.

Every year, 40% of the member wineries are inspected by an external agency, and all the producers’ wines are sent to an independent laboratory to check for pesticide residue and the presence of sulphites above the limits specified in the code of conduct (50mg/l for whites; 30mg/l for reds).

The vast majority get the thumbs up. Any producer who does not conform can request a second chance, but after that the association is unforgiving.

A proactive approach

This approach, however, is not punitive but aims to be supportive and proactive. The association recognises that, in the words of Angiolino Maule, ‘it is 10 times more difficult to make a natural wine,’ and that ‘there is much to learn.’

This is one of the areas in which VinNatur is most active, funding research, for example, into procedures to avoid oxidation in wines without recourse to SO2, and into ways to reduce and hopefully eliminate the use of copper-based products in the vineyard.

There is a common perception that natural wine somehow makes itself, but in fact it involves an awful lot of science.

During tasting, I found some wines with slightly precarious balance, but on the whole I came away from the event with the impression that producers are increasingly showing us the positives of low intervention winemaking and fewer of the problematic aspects.

It confirmed my conviction that natural wine should not, and need not, be approached as a separate category which dictates criteria of judgement different to those of any other wine.

10 Italian natural wines that don’t stink:

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