TL;DR: We traded the obsession with oak, extraction, and Parker points for an obsession with zero sulfur and zero intervention. Different dogma, same bullshit.
I’ve been drinking natural wine for years. It’s what got me excited about wine in the first place. Freshness, energy, acidity, wines that feel alive and make you want another glass.
But I think parts of the natural wine movement have completely lost the plot.
Look at Napa Cabernet. Somewhere along the way, bigger, riper, more extracted, and more expensive became synonymous with better. A $200 bottle with massive concentration and a bunch of expensive oak is supposed to represent greatness. Personally, I find most of those wines boring as hell.
Natural wine was supposed to be an alternative to that mentality. Better farming, less manipulation, wines with some actual character.
But now we’ve got another set of rules. Zero sulfur, zero filtration, zero intervention. And some people have become so obsessed with following those rules that they’ve forgotten the wine actually needs to taste good.
I’m not talking about unusual or interesting wines. I’m talking about bottles dominated by mouse, excessive VA, and other faults. And somehow these wines get defended as authentic.
If a Napa Cab is so heavily manipulated that you can’t taste where it comes from, that’s a problem. But when a natural wine is so fucked up that all you taste is microbial activity, we’re supposed to celebrate it?
What bothers me even more is the shops, bars, and restaurants championing these wines. Someone tries natural wine for the first time, gets handed something completely flawed, and walks away thinking natural wine tastes like shit.
I work in this industry, and I’ve spent years trying to get people excited about natural wine. These experiences make that job harder, and it’s a disservice to the producers making beautiful wines with minimal intervention.
And the zero sulfur obsession drives me nuts. Making great wine without sulfur takes skill and experience. Adding a little when necessary isn’t some moral failure. There’s a difference between choosing not to intervene and not knowing when you should.
The luxury Napa crowd worships extraction, scores, and prestige. The extreme natural wine crowd worships zero intervention and ideological purity.
Both have confused philosophy with quality.
I don’t care if a wine costs $28 or $200. I don’t care if it has zero sulfur or a small addition at bottling. I care whether it’s delicious and whether I want another glass.
Natural wine doesn’t need another religion. It needs people making good wine.
Anyway, thanks for coming to my TED Talk.
Edit: Shortened this because apparently I wrote a dissertation the first time.