A return of sorts.
It has been some time since my last post. Work and so on is just an excuse. I really just lost interest. Messing about with photo’s and checking on Social Media, lost all of its appeal if it ever had any.
Last Sunday Shell and I met up with some local wine enthusiasts for a look at some 2014 Italian wines. The vintage was poor and there is an ongoing joke in which I champion the vintage. I really should be writing those wines up here.
Serious wine man Marvin supplied a 2014 Azienda Agricola Il Carpino Vigna Runc Malvasia, from Collio in the North of the Veneto wine region (tasting notes below). This was the first orange wine I had tried. It was intriguing and started me asking, is the Natural Wine movement worth all the hype?
I hate trends, so I have never paid much mind to Natural Wines. Trends come and go. I never grew a beard and wore glasses when Hipsters were cool, and I won’t chase after ‘Amber Wine’ because the cool crowd says it is…. cool.
If the trend crowd is not enough to put you off, the fact that no one really is able to define what is or isn’t ‘Natural Wine’ probably will. I worked through two books on the subject over the last few days to get my head around it. It is basically a pyramid of intervention. Simplified, it looks like this.
At the bottom, modern winemaking at its worst. This represents the majority of wine in the world. Planted for commercial purposes, machine pruned, machine harvested, sprayed with pesticides, and a massive intervention in the winery to produce oceans of generic rubbish.
On the next layer, we have organic. This is a process in the vineyard where only certain approved chemicals are used, and minimally. It does not speak much about the winemaking process, but it is fair to argue that anyone that cares for a vineyard, cares for wine.
The next layer is biodynamic. It gets a little strange here, moon cycles and the like. Let’s say for simplicity’s sake it is even closer to natural vineyard interventions. Less of everything. Again, nothing to say about winemaking but it is fair to say that someone taking this much care in the vineyard is reducing their intervention and influence in the making process.
At the top of the pyramid is the Natural Wine crew. They are always organic, often biodynamic, and have almost zero intervention in the winery. Natural yeasts, no additives including sulfur. The wine makes itself.
This sounds awesome in a book. The vineyard speaks, the wines are truly an expression of terrior, and so on. The reality is a little different. With no intervention, these wines are hit and miss. Like all wine, there is good and bad, Natural Wines are no exception.
Natural Wines vary from good to interesting to bizarre to terrible. Where winemakers play little part, things often go off-script. Indigenous yeasts are unpredictable. I believe this unpredictability, a little bit of anarchy, is part of the Natural Wine romance.
Amber wine comes about with skin contact. This is required in Natural Wine because native yeasts live on the skins. The traditional winemaking method of removing white wine from skins is not possible. The must sit with the skins for weeks or even months, as wild yeasts are unpredictable in the fermenting process. The end result is an orange wine.
I can go on forever, this stuff is complicated but interesting none the less. Read some books if you are interested.
2014 Azienda Agricola Il Carpino Vigna Runc Malvasia, Collio Italy.
Marvin’s wine. I have next to no experience with Italian white wine varieties. I was thrown by the colour, thinking it much older than 2014. Add to that the nose jumped between apricots, apricot marmalade, beeswax and hints of kerosene not unlike aged Riesling. Throw in an edge of minerality… I had no idea. I was thinking Viognier but there was an aged Chenin Blanc feel similar to a Vouvray. Turns out it was one of these ‘natural wine’ the young trendy types favour. Skin contact, wild yeasts and the like. I am sold, this was intriguing.
It turns out Kuala Lumpur has its very own Natural Wine Bar, Puro.
Trendy wines need trendy bars, and this had that feel.
First flight, biodynamic whites. If it were not for introduced yeast, these wines would be Natural. Zero added sulfates and biodynamic vineyard process, a good place to start.
