when Hugh Johnson talks about natural wine

When the wine writer emeritus Hugh Johnson told Washington Post wine writer David McIntyre that "orange" wines were a sideshow and a waste of time fur raised on Facebook and Twitter. He went on to say, "Making good wine is hardly modern technology, it’s just experience and common sense. And hygiene!"

He's right about the part on making good wine, of course. But the sharp that stuck in the throats of wine drinkers who have come to love skin-contact wines (full disclosure, I did write a love poem to Georgian wine, home to skin-contact) was that this wonderful writer, (thoughtful enough to write me a fan letter after The Battle for Wine and Love came out. I was completely honored.) the very same one who wrote The History of Wine, failed to realize that orange wine was nothing new but a revival of all things old, and made by common sense and without a doubt, hygiene.

Yes, Mr. Johnson, today, we do know how to make a really good wine and many times--though not always--the ancients had something to teach us way more than the modern laboratory does. Cleanliness of course is key. All agreed.

Back in something like 2006 the first skin contacts started to arrive on our shores. Many weren't successful. Some had dried, starched fruit and aggressive tannins. But over the past decade as the skins were more understood as a way to make wine without addition, when the use of clay for fermentation spread (grape juice takes to clay as butter takes to toast), and winemakers learned to do less, great "orange" wines have proliferated. Not because they were a style, but because they had a purpose. They have developed a juiciness that combine the refreshment of white with the satisfaction of red. Many are in this category. Some are raised in wood like Radikon, La Stoppa and La Garagista, but others raised in clay like Vodopevic, Pheasants Tears and Iago.  

The disappointment here was not that Mr. Johnson didn't like orange wines. He gets to. But from this scholar and historian, we all expected a more thoughtful and researched statement and opinion.

Now we have another piece from him, in Decanter, where he seemed to suggest that natural wines were the wine equivalent of the Paleo Diet. In it he posed the question; 'Is "natural" a self-justifying word to cover any sort of accident?'

I think it's time for Mr. Johnson to take a break from garden writing for a minute to reconsider his words. Give us the courtesy of a more well-researched response instead of falling down the tweet drain --the second son of the blog--where unsupported feelings have become the norm. There are plenty of wines that are made like a military bed, tightened so extremely that an accident surely has happened. And yet it finds its way into a bottle. This statement is a little aggressive.

Then he dances with a lovely line that could have had some truth to it. "Wines like unmade beds are the In Thing." 

But what exactly does he mean?  What is his unmade bed and how tight does he like his sheets? Hospital corners? A little rumpled just enough to remember the night of passion?  Give us a little there, there. 

I kind of liked his unmade bed analogy.  Today, there are indeed too many wines, "like unmade beds." These to me are unfinished, quick to the bottle before the flavors and aromas have evolved to stability. Many are being supported mostly by newcomers to wine who find these wines fresh. This is a state of infatuation that can stay with the drinker for I'd say, up to ten years. And to some sommeliers who are following trends it could be an 'In Thing.' And my sympathies are with him if he has fallen victim to such a wine director. But there is life beyond the bottled wine still in progress, and surely he's had these --because they are some of today's most celebrated wines, but failed to identify them.

However, when he suggests the word natural is a coverup tactic, is he actually suggesting that  Burgundy, Bordeaux, Brunello, Barolo, made according to the spec sheet, still with ridiculous amounts of very bad and sour wood taint, too much acrid So2 addition, tannin addition and sloppy acidification, not to say anything about chemical agriculture, are superior? Do those get pass? Or is it that Mr. Johnson knows how to avoid those wines yet does not yet know how to navigate the world of natural?  In that case he should subscribe to my newsletter. 

The most stupefying sentiment, however, was tucked into his penultimate graf. 

The sales pitch for natural wine usually tells you that conventional wines contain a lot of non-grape juice gunk. Fish guts: horror. Egg whites: poison. Sulphites: allergens. Colouring: dishonest. Sugar: cheating.

There seems to be a high ground – is it moral, ethical, fashionable, hygienic? – shared by ‘naturalists’ and vegans. Then again, if you read the list of preservatives and allergens on any supermarket packet, you may want to give up eating altogether.

Mr. Johnson fails to acknowledge the 72+ which sail beyond chaptalization and fining... and coloring? Really Mr. J, do you want your claret colored? And by the way, who is giving this so-called sales pitch?  He also ---and surely he knows better--understands that most of todays wines are not made by commonsense and vintage, but by marketer and machine. And I don't know about you, but I don't eat processed food with anything artificial in it.

Look: Most of us have come to natural wine because the other seems dead. Lifeless. Natural wine, made with grape alone from healthy soil---the good ones, and there are many--make us happy.

Many of us choose our food the way we choose our wine and choose our wine the way we choose our food. Meaning any list of ingredients that I don't want to ingest, whether in cookies or in wine, I don't. Real food alone. Yes. Grape alone. A little So2 perhaps. Minimum intervention. Yes.

These wines mesh with our philosophy AND excite our senses. This is not the 'in thing,' this is not a fad. This is the future.

However, buried in the ill-edited piece is the nut of the piece: change natural wine to alternative wine.

Hmm...would that be like alternative fact?

Nope. That won't work. To those of us who only drink natural and natural enough, there's nothing alternative about it. Those wines? They're the real thing.

 

 

Comments

[Tom Wark]

Alice....

You wrote: "most of today's wines are not made by common sense, but by marketer and machine"

Im not sure what you mean by "Marketer and Machine" but I do know that "most" means at least 51%.

How can you say with any confidence that 51% of the wines produced tody are made by "marketer and machine"? You don't know this.

No one defends "Natural" better than you. You are my go to resource. But, to suggest that 51% of all wines produced today are somehow unauthentic strikes me as the same kind of hyperbole that the worst of the Natural champions have too long gotten away with.

[Alicefeiring]

Tom,

If we just looked at supermarket wines we'd have the #s covered, wouldn't we?

To suggest otherwise is a bit naive, no?

How much wine does Gallo/Bronco produce? And that is just in North America without going to mass market brands in Chile or the rest of the world.

I have no problem with my eyeballing the worlds wine and saying more than 1/2 of the wines are made this way.

Thanks as always for reading, and commenting.

[Tom Wark]

Alice,

So, you meant "most of the wine drunk today", not "most of the wines", the latter implying that 51% of all the wines produced today are made by "marketer and machine".

But I think you should have a problem "eyeballing the world's wines and making this determination. The U.S. alone has over 9,000 wineries. You can't possibly know the conditions of production or marketing for all the wines these 9,000 wineries produce, let alone the 1,000s of other wineries in the world.

Again, you are my go-to for Natural wine. But suggesting that half of all the wines made in the world are nothing more than products of marketing and machine is the same problematic thinking that has plagued other promoters of Natural wine who regularly suggest that anything other than "natural" wine is either bad for your or made in an an underground factory where rash-producing chemicals are use rather than grapes.

[Alicefeiring]

9,000 wineries at what kind of production? When you have many little wineries that have about 5acres or less, or even 10 acres or less, many who make under 2,000 cases. But then you have this.. (from the New Yorker in 2009)

Franzia’s objective is to sell as much wine as possible—he sells twenty million cases a year now, which makes Bronco the fourth-largest winery in the United States, and would like to reach a hundred million—

Oh, let's not forget about Gallo's or LVMH champagne brands... or Conchy y Toro or... (keep on going). They squelch the many little wineries that add up to 9,000.

Tom: These kinds of brands that ranked in the Drinks Business story are what I am talking about.

https://www.thedrinksbusiness.com/2016/07/top-10-wine-brands-2016/

Recipe wines.

I'm willing to be open about this and say that I am wrong, but can you show me some numbers here? Help me understand? If I compiled supermarket wine sales, I could end this conversation here. But you have more access than I do, so please, give it a go, and support your point so I can see the light.

[RemyCharest]

I'm not sure I'd have framed it as "made by marketer and machine", but there is no doubt in my mind that "recipe wines" dominate the market - i.e., wines made to fulfill a certain profile, with mechanical and/or chemical interventions aimed at reaching certain targets of flavour, color, pH, etc. Uniformity is what the biggest brands aim for, and that's at the complete opposite end of the spectrum from what natural winemakers are doing - or any winemaker seeking to express the specificity of grape, terroir and vintage. Tasting cabernet sauvignon at wine competitions yields a great majority of highly similar wines that taste of enology, more than of region or vineyard specifics. In volume, the majority of wine drunk on the planet is made in the winery, with a great range of interventions.

Without going into any kind of value judgment about quality, innocuousness or taste, the fact that modern enology goes well beyond tweaking or correcting, but deeply sculpts the great majority of high-volume wines (and therefore the great majority of wine) is a fact that is very hard to deny.

[Tom Wark]

Alice,

If when you wrote "most of today's wines are not made by common sense, but by marketer and machine" you meant those wines most likely to show up on shelves of supermarkets in Pierre, South Dakota, then what you should have written is that "Most of today's most commonly consumed wines are made by marketer and machine. But you didn't write that.

You made the same kind of statement that too many really pernicious Natural wine defenders make: you suggested that most wines produced today are manufactured.

But the fact of the matter is, while most of the wine drunk today costs under $10 a bottle and is purchased by folks who simply want something wet, alcoholic and fruity, and that are made predominantly by the brands on the Drinks Business list, the VAST MAJORITY of the wineS produced today are made my small wineries located across the country and produce relatively small amounts of wine. And you've indicted most of them with the way you wrote your statement. Those wineries don't deserve it.

Here's the bottom line: If you think the majority of the 9,000 wineries in the United States and the majority of the wineries across the globe are simply manufacturing wine according to marketers with absolutely no reference to anything else, then say so. However, if you are only referring to the 10 or 20 largest suppliers in the world, then say that. If you don't make this distinction then you literally tar 50% of all winemakers in the world with the "manfacturing and marketing" brush.

Cheers...and with respect,

Tom....

[Alicefeiring]

Tom.

What are you arguing about.

I honestly don't have a clue. Marketing and machine?

I was playing with alliteration. I'm talking recipe.

I'm a writer, I was writing. But I meant it. Marketing? We think the consumer wants this kind of wine so we're going to make it this way. Okay?

Your last graph; Please don't put words into my piece. I wasn't talking about the United States or the 9,000 wineries. That's your issue. Not mine.

Best, Alice

[Tom Wark]

Alice,
I"m not trying to put words in your mouth.

I'm saying that this is about as far from the truth as you can get:

"most of todays wines are not made by commonsense and vintage, but by marketer and machine"

In fact, I'd wager the exact opposite is true.

[Erika Toni]

Natural wine is surely not a passing fad, although the opinions are divided. It is in fact the ‘in thing’ right now, but I believe natural wine lovers have a good reason behind the strong attachment that they share with it. It is no infatuation and certainly not something that would fade out soon. Natural wines have been there since time immemorial. Moreover, the natural wine movement stemmed from a combined consciousness that arose in the wake of rapid industrialization of viticulture and wine making. I completely agree with the statement, “many times--though not always--the ancients had something to teach us way more than the modern laboratory does. Cleanliness of course is key”. Here is another great article on wines https://tango.tours/everything-need-know-wine/ for beginners.