(#19): with wine
Getting nerdy about natural wine and the pure pleasure of sharing it
I don’t like snobbery. I feel a little bad saying that because some of my preferences could be interpreted as those of a snob. Like the fact that I’m completely uninterested in eating mediocre food or drinking bad wine and cocktails, particularly when I’m paying for it. I have expensive tastes, which annoys me most considering I can’t afford the majority of things I fall in love with. Still, I like to tell myself there’s a line between my partiality and the average snob, and I think it’s in the fact that I want to share the things I enjoy with everyone. Snobs are snobs mostly by the fact that they delight in gate-keeping.
A quintessential snob archetype is the wine-person. You know the one. For me, it’s a rich, boring, arrogant person who does things, buys things, and consumes things for the sake of being seen. They say, “you simply have to go to wine country” like you’ve never heard of it, that they don’t drink wines with screw-caps, they love their wine cellar full of bottles they’ll never drink, and quoting directly from Wine Spectator. They always order for the table, without consulting anyone else, and they have a list of grape varietals they think are always bad. They’re Miles in Sideways, a movie that gave me instant melancholy when I watched it in theaters with my family at age 11.
When I started drinking, I wasn’t interested in wine, the beverage of parents everywhere. Instead, I started classy with a skunked Amstel Light and some bad liquor I can’t remember the name of but might be known for getting lit on fire? Shortly after, I moved onto Smirnoff Ice, which I am pretty sure I’m allergic to (Maybe we all are? Maybe we should be?) Then I found comfort in ultra-sweet Twisted Tea. I spent a couple of unfortunate years drinking Burnett’s and Bud Light, until I came to my senses and discovered good beer.
After I graduated college, my dad became really interested in wine, and I grew curious. I considered the whole points system a challenge, since I found it pretentious and off-putting. I figured I would just start trying stuff and find out what I like on my own. I started with Cabernet Sauvignon, which unbeknownst to me at the time, is an affordable grape beloved by suburbanites across America. I thought I was a red-wine-only girl, and that I just didn’t like white wine. One of my best friends, Cheylsea, simultaneously started getting into wine and asked if I’d ever heard of natural ones. She explained that the restaurant she worked at was serving them, that they were becoming kind of trendy.
The snob-adjacent person in me loves trying things before they’re super-popular. I think that’s the reason I jumped into the world of natural wine. Also, Cheylsea has impeccable taste, and I was excited to bond over something new. Initially, it seemed like the cooler, more laid back, hippy-dippy sibling of the uptight conventional wine industry. I gobbled whatever I could find or listen to about natural wines, wanting to figure out what made them different. I sought out the wine shops and bars near me that sold them, trying everything I could, which I still think is the best way to learn.
At the elementary level, natural wines appeared the “moral choice”. They were billed as better for the environment and the consumer and less likely to cause a hangover. (Later I’d discover that none of those statements are true in every case, especially the last one: drinking too much of any alcohol will result in a hangover). I learned that “natural wine” is an umbrella term that can perhaps be more specifically defined as “low-intervention.” There’s not a unified governing body deciding what natural wine actually is, but there’s broad agreement that it’s just fermented grape juice, with “nothing added, nothing taken away.” Additives are usually what create uniform, shelf-stable wines that always taste the same, so not adding anything creates a less predictable final product, which involves great risk, but greater rewards. Natural wines are typically fermented with natural yeasts (which live on the grape skins). That means every finished product is living and breathing, and each bottle of the same vintage (the year when the wine’s grapes were harvested) can taste different.
Disclaimer: everything I’m about to say is just what I’ve learned, and I’ve barely even scratched the surface. I’m definitely not an authority on natural wine, but I don’t think we can have any real discussion about it without a light overview. So if you're not already bored out of your mind, keep reading.
A big part of what sets natural wine apart from conventional wines is the way the grapes are farmed. At the very least, natural wines are farmed organically, but at the very best, they’re farmed biodynamically, on farms that celebrate a diverse ecosystem of inter-mingling bugs, plant varieties, and animals that contribute to a lively terroir (the land and soil where the grapes are farmed). The grapes are not sprayed with chemicals and are typically harvested by hand, which guarantees only the best and healthiest of the bunch make it into the final product.
In contrast, conventional wines, which are those owned by massive companies that you can pick up in any liquor store, are flavored with synthetic yeast, which creates a predictable product that will taste the same every time you open a bottle. However, that means you’re not tasting crushed grapes, but instead, what the vintner added to manipulate the flavor. There are more than 60 additives that winemakers are allowed to introduce into the juice in the U.S. which includes things like yeasts used to flavor the wine, tannins (which are naturally occurring in grapes) in the form of oak chips or powder, sugar, and animal products like isinglass (a gelatin that comes from fish bladders), used to help clarify the wine.
The grapes used in conventional wines are also commercially farmed, usually on giant vineyards by mechanical means, versus by hand. The massive machines used to harvest those grapes scrape everything up along the way, including rotten fruit and even small animals living amongst the vines.
I didn’t learn all of this overnight. I learned it a little at a time, and I still have a long way to go. First, I read about wine recommendations and started listening to podcasts. One episode (that I can’t find anymore) featured Marissa Ross, Bon Appetit’s former wine editor, talking about skin contact wines. Skin contact wines (also referred to as “orange wines”) involve white grapes spending more time on the skins than they usually would for white wine, which often creates a deeper colored wine ranging from yellow to dark orange. Ross described the range in hues and said that some skin contact vino resembles bong water. I laughed, surprised that she used a dirty descriptor for something that so many people associate with fanciness. I appreciated her candor and irreverent humor. Soon after, I read her book, Wine. All the Time, which delivers “a casual guide to confident drinking.” In it, Ross provided a several-page table of grapes and descriptions that I still reference years later. I’ve also read Isabelle Legeron’s Natural Wine, which gets more into farming practices, and inspired me to make my own wine at home during the pandemic. All of highly-respected wine-writer Alice Feiring’s books are still on my list , starting with Natural Wine for the People.
The work the sold me the most on natural wine was Our Blood is Wine, a 2018 documentary by filmmaker Emily Railsbeck and sommelier Jeremy Quinn about the maintenance and revitalization of 8,000 year-old winemaking traditions in Georgia, nearly lost during Soviet rule. Before industrialization and global capitalism, natural winemaking was the tradition. Until wines became a global commodity, there was no need to homogenize the product, making it consistently appealing to as many people as possible. Natural winemaking methods are an art form, about creating the best representation of a varietal and the land it comes from. I watched Our Blood is Wine at the beginning of lockdown, on a sunny weekend morning, and was incredibly moved by the passion of the Georgian vintners. They sang while they made the wine and while they drank it, and toasted to love. The farming, winemaking, and drinking tied them to their sense of home.
Over the past few years, natural wine has completely exploded in popularity. In New York, you don’t even need to seek it out, it’s on almost every menu. With that popularity comes more scrutiny. In 2020, Valentina Passalacqua, natural wine producer behind the popular label “Calcarious” was implicated in a labor scandal conducted by her father in Puglia, Italy, where he’s a marble and agriculture magnate. Settimio Passalacqua was accused of systematic and illegal exploitation of migrant workers, and his daughter’s vineyard was partially planted on his farmland, as well as on 80-hectares overall (substantially larger than most natural wine vineyards). It’s hard to believe she wasn’t at least benefitting from her father’s exploitative labor practices, and the scandal divided the wine world while also igniting a debate about farming transparency and questionable labor practices across the industry. Can you really argue that natural wines are better for the environment if the labor working those vines are mistreated and exploited?
Also in 2020, Bon Appetit faced a reckoning, along with several other media properties, about its lack of diversity and compensation discrepancies, which coincided with the illumination of offensive and racist social media posts by leaders at BA and Condé Nast. Almost all of BA’s well-known editors and personalities fled the publication, including Marissa Ross, who was already writing for them less and less.
In 2021, ZAFA Wines, one of the buzziest natural wine producers at the time, popularized in part by Marissa Ross’s writing at BA, faced a sexual misconduct scandal as Krista Scruggs, the winemaker behind the brand, was accused by former colleagues of harassment and assault. The controversy came right after ZAFA was granted licensure in Vermont, and the accusations were tied to La Garagista, another local natural wine producer, so the matter remains unresolved and somewhat forgotten. Notably, Jenny & Francois Selections, one of the most well-known and respected natural wine importers and distributors, didn’t move forward with a potential deal to distribute ZAFA Wines after the accusations came to light.
After all those stories broke, natty wine lost some of its luster for me. It wasn’t actually morally superior. Where profits motivate people, there will always be those cutting corners, exploiting or mistreating workers, or taking advantage of those less powerful. Last week, I read a story in Business Insider about Marissa Ross, who’s left the wine business altogether, partially because of some of the stories I included above, and also because of how she was treated, and treated others, within the food and beverage category. For the past couple of years, I kept following her on Instagram even while it devolved into her only talking about the LA Clippers, divorcée content, and occasionally ranting about how the wine business chewed her up and spit her out.
Ross found her way to wine like consumers do – drinking cheap shitty bottles until you can afford better ones. In the BI article, she finally talked about why she severed ties with the wine world. One of the most interesting quotes in the article was from an anonymous peer who said:
‘I didn't feel like she was pursuing anything beyond Instagram fame,’… ‘I don't think anyone took her that seriously. I think that has to do with the fact that she was a young woman, but also her personality and the way that she approached wine, and I don't think she ever meant it to be serious.’
Then they reconsidered. ‘But maybe she did. It seems now, retrospectively, that she thought it was serious.’
It’s hard to swallow the misogyny that says because Ross isn’t reverent enough or a man, her voice doesn’t merit a serious audience. Ross isn’t perfect, and there have been many times in the past year especially that I’ve wondered, “Is this woman okay?” But ultimately, the thing that endears me to her opinions is exactly that: they’re imperfect and unpolished and accessible – all qualities that oppose the common assumptions about wine.
Because the full article resides behind a paywall, most people will never read it, so let me summarize by saying it reeks of the same kind of snobbery that I think discourages people from learning or talking about wine. There’s some criticism about Ross being another white woman taking up bylines that should be offered to people of color, which I think is better aimed at digital publishers who make the decisions about whose perspectives they’re willing to pay for and publish. Mostly, it sounds like Wine rejected a young woman for not following the designated and approved pathway into its inner circle, for daring to try something different instead of subscribing to tired, pretentious stereotypes and expensive certification programs. And now that natural wines are everywhere, that snobbery keeps coming, most recently in a condescending article about whether they’re losing their ‘cool factor’ (as though that’s the only reason anyone drinks them).
Marissa Ross wasn’t the only non-snob in wine. There are a lot of professionals excited to share their love of natural wines in particular. Last fall, Jason and I attended a “Natural Wine Bootcamp,” at NYC wine bar, Compagnie Des Vins Surnaturels (a name I am perpetually learning how to pronounce), taught by sommelier Penny Nichols. Penny was so much fun, filled with a contagious enthusiasm, and really honest about why she prefers low-intervention wines. By the end of class, everyone in the room was speaking up about tasting notes and asking questions. I’ve also found that the staff in most wine shops are eager to talk about what they stock. I always appreciate a wine more when I know a little about how its made, who makes it, or what flavor profiles to expect.
Last week, I read Frenchtown Field Notes, by the growers and winemakers behind Frenchtown Farms, a vineyard in California. It was a welcome letter, exploring questions about whether better farming practices actually result in better wines. I believe they do. I believe that grapes grown with careful attention, in soil and fields teeming with healthy plant-life and animals, produce a more accurate expression of that land than wines fiddled with and forced to taste like something specific. I can’t imagine a more beautiful representation of the life cycle than something grown in its natural habitat, nurtured to ripeness, and shepherded through its final transformation, all without unnecessary intervention. I love that natural wines celebrate the land and grapes for exactly what they are.
I’ve sat around tables and over wine glasses with so many friends while they’ve admitted self-consciousness about simply talking about what they taste. Partly because they think I know more about it, and fear judgement. I encourage them to say anything! Drinking wine is about pleasure – it’s a deeply sensory and subjective encounter and just like anything else that happens in your body, the person who knows your experience best is you. If you think a wine tastes like cinnamon or pool toys or brown butter or sweat, it’s true. Actually relishing in the pleasure of a bottle requires trusting yourself, your instincts and tastebuds. I rarely feel closer to people than when I’m sharing a meal or wine with them, hearing their unique perspective. The world is a beautiful and gloomy place, and we all deserve a little more connection and pleasure.
Hot
Patricia Lockwood – this essay was one of the funniest and best things I’ve read maybe ever, and I wish I could write even a shred like Patricia.
Shoppy Shops – I haven’t stopped thinking about this GrubStreet story for weeks and as much as I want to say “down with Shoppy Shops,” they make me feel fuzzy inside.
Swick Wines - 2021 Mallsoft – couldn’t write about natty wine without recommending one! 38% Chardonnay, 31% Gewürztraminer, 31% Counoise; purchased at Provisions in Northampton, MA, one of my very favorite wine shops. <3
Bothered
If Books Could Kill: “The End of History” - I will listen to any podcast hosted by Michael Hobbes, and his latest is really good. This episode, and the one after, are infuriating reminders that almost none of us learn real US history, like the fact that the US government has funded and facilitated military coups to overthrow several democratically-elected leaders in Latin America to suit their own financial interests 🙃
The Ohio Train Disaster - this episode of Chapo Trap House. We need to care that other US citizens are effectively being murdered by corporations, and that politicians on both sides of the aisle are incentivized to let them so they can count on solid campaign contributions in the next election cycle.
Gray weather - the sun came out for a few hours yesterday and then the sky went gray again. It’s getting to me. This Etta James “I Got You Babe,” cover (featured in the latest The Last of Us epi) helps: