Why natural wine makes me cranky

Last night I was enjoying our last bottle of 2007 Morgon. Produced by Marcel Lapierre, this stunning gamay is made with minimal intervention. It has huge personality and I was singing its praises, which prompted my twitter friend Stuart Knox, from Fix St James to question; “What? You are not drinking a natural wine are you?”

I had a giggle because many of you, on twitter, would have seen my rants and debates about natural wine. It is very difficult to explain my stance on this via 140 characters, so I thought I should explain myself further.

What is natural wine? It really doesn’t have a true definition but if it is about winemakers using minimal intervention and sustainable vineyard practices to produce interesting wines then I am all for it. Bravo! The Morgon, by the way, does have sulphur in it – I know this because I could smell it and the importer has it clearly marked on the label. Sulphur – a natural element; being sucked up from New Zealand’s volcanic soils by thousands of thirsty sauvignon blanc vines.

What I get cranky about is that people writing the praises of this natural stuff seem to classify wine into natural or industrial - like there is nothing in between. For starters, I refuse to call it a “wine industry’. Unless you work in one of those wineries visible from space, then I don't think making wine has anything to do with industry or being industrial. Terry Durack's recent article in the Sydney Morning Herald suggested that there was natural wine and everything else was industrial. That's pretty insulting to those of us who are trying to use sustainable vineyard and winemaking practices to make interesting wines. Science versus nature? It shouldn’t be that way. It should be about a common goal for best practices when it comes to looking after your vines and wines.

Are we biodynamic, organic or natural? No, because I can’t pigeon hole us into any of those groups. We use practices from all disciplines. Using branded tags, against wineries like us, (as per Durack’s article) really annoys me. I am not suggesting that people are making natural, organic or biodynamic wine just for marketing (although I bet some do).

For the past seven years we have grown our own food in our restaurant kitchen gardens. We have a wonderful garden recycling system. Our chooks dispose of restaurant scraps and in return they provide natural fertiliser. Are we certified organic? No. The restaurant does have green table certification and that's as generic as I'm prepared to express our practices. I care about our land and what I am feeding and teaching our children.

It is disappointing that some suggest that natural, organic or biodynamic wine production is better than what the rest of us are doing. Where does science sit in all this? Steiner was a spiritual scientist of old, who had some amazing ideas and theories about farming. We have moved on and science has now proven many of his theories wrong but many are still very valid. Feeding the soil and creating a balanced ecosystem for a monoculture planting makes lots of sense. Are we biodynamic? No, but we feed our soils with organic materials, we compost and mulch because we are cognizant of the need for a healthy soil biota web chain.

Our garden uses soil based reed bed systems to treat and recycle waste water. Ironically, environmental scientists engineered these reed beds. This amazing green technology uses nature to save us 395,000 litres of water per year. We can recycle it to our ornamental gardens and through the restaurant loos. This is an example of science working hand in hand with nature.

People are often hypocritical when it comes to spruiking their particular sustainable cause. Like the vegetarian, who refuses to eat meat due to animal cruelty, who wears leather shoes. There are those that complain about water usage in rice farming, when the ratio of water used, to produce a certain amount of protein, to feed vast numbers of people is actually an efficient form of agriculture. On the other hand, water used to irrigate pasture for dairy cows to produce milk is very inefficient. Think about that next time you are sucking on your chai latte! There are also the carbon crusaders – tucking into their T-bone from a 100% certified organic Angus, as if that beast hadn’t burped any carbon into the atmosphere and don’t mention the truck which transported it.

So why is science so bad if it can help with sustainability? Why does the debate have to be natural versus science? Why does one discipline have to be better than another? At the end of the day it's about environmental responsibility and sustainability. If we can achieve that using science, natural, biodynamic, organic or a combination of all, or some of these, then we should be united on the cause.

Link to Terry Durack's article

This article has 6 comments.

Subscribe:

• Subscribe to the RSS Feed »
• Follow us on Twitter »
• Join us on Facebook »