I used to be a natural wine zealot
A rancid aroma assaulted my nostrils, as I navigated my car into the parking lot of the vineyard. I paused, nervously scanning what lay before me.
I had arrived at the winery I’d been working at to assist with bottling the latest releases – the promise of free wine in exchange for a few days’ labour - an enticing offer for a tasting room employee.
I was a recently divorced, 33 year old woman, living at home with my parents again for the first time in a decade. Moving back to my childhood town – a famous wine producing region - offered the long-awaited opportunity of working in wine production.
It was a pipe dream that provided a necessary distraction from the traumatic unravelling of my marriage. Idealistic fantasies of frolicking through vineyards with a handsome winemaker husband and our beautiful golden retriever became an obsession - ruminations only a grief riddled divorcee could envision as realistic.
I surveyed the winery. It sat atop the vineyard with gloomy, oppressive energy only a dilapidated, crumbling structure could omit. Sold as a “cellar” – otherwise known as an over the hill warehouse slated to be torn down in a few years.
A pungent stench permeated the facility – the distinctive aroma of rot inescapable. Not even the vista of rolling hills, coquettishly hugging the glittering body of water snaking through hundreds of miles of desert valley, could distract from the smell of death quietly creeping about the property. The vines were wilted and flaccid.
I had worked at the winery for 6 months, a new spot recently opened, bucking the norms of the industry: Pete Rock playing just-too-loud, staff donning lingerie as attire, and profane storytelling that captivated patrons, no matter the demographic.
The Eurocentric protocol common for the industry – uniforms, a stiff demeanor and a script – was nonexistent. Encountering an establishment that embodied such an irreverent ethos felt like a breath of fresh air, and I was thrilled to be hired.
Training was brief. A blasé conversation with management was the extent. New staff were emboldened to “make stuff up if you can’t find information on the wines.” What resulted were over-the-top, ridiculous tales, that seemed to get more whimsical by the day, flooding the tasting room with patrons in droves, as word got out about how “unconventional”, “fun” and “edgy” we were.
Sexy marketing masked bad wine, loud music provided a bar-like atmosphere, and hot staff giving patrons come-fuck-me eyes completed the trifecta of sales mastery.
The wine - which began to increasingly resemble aquarium water the more I drank it – provided me with a strong hunch my time at the winery would be brief. Visiting the cellar was the event I’d needed to affirm the nagging feeling that something was “off”.
Yet it was the staff, a rugged cohort of mavericks who eventually started to feel like family, who kept me coming back day after day. Lounging on the tasting room bar after impossibly busy days where we’d been run off our feet parroting the same lines to eager and excited patrons provided the reprieve and connection we needed after 8 hours of robotic interactions.
Wine flowed freely, the music turned up another notch, laughter and dancing bonding us as the region’s local renegades. It was a magical time, and we collectively clung to it, knowing this fleeting era was slipping through our fingers with each passing day.
After awhile, I began having dreams of being fired that reoccurred a few times a week. The flight and fancy-free vibe of the tasting room was suddenly gone – I had found the switch to the ugly lights.
My last day unfolded in a comedy of errors. I managed to get myself into a car accident on the way in, and a shattered rear windshield was the unfortunate casualty - a bad omen indicating something was afoot.
Management arrived announced - they were letting me go. A list of paltry, superficial reasons provided - a pitiful masquerade to avoid acknowledging the elephant in the room: I had sniffed out their charade.
The experience crippled me with disgust and shame. Extreme measures were due. I never wanted to be affiliated with such imposters ever again.
An aggressive foray down the rabbit hole of natural wine was my knee jerk reaction. I’d allowed the pendulum to swing so far over to the conventional that I realized much of my knowledge was superficial.
I began my conversion therapy by interviewing winemakers, launching a You Tube series filming my conversations with a selfie stick and an iPhone. Over time, I exclusively met with natural winemakers, discovering I felt a more authentic connection with organic and biodynamic farmers - a total departure from where I had come from. Their transparency and fearlessness to share failures became an intoxicating elixir for me, and an insatiable thirst to meet more of these likeminded people became my only goal.
I embarked on wine retreats to Northern Italy and Slovenia to meet some of the greats of the movement: Marko Fon, Saša Radikon, Janko Štekar – my newfound passion for natural wine affirmed by these incredibly enlightened individuals.
I returned home to Canada as a full-fledged zealot – eschewing any wines that had so much a drop of S02 added.
I’d sip wine with friends, turning my nose at the conventional bottles they brought, oblivious to the eye rolls my judgement elicited. I convinced myself it was “them” - they just weren’t educated enough to understand the heights of wine enlightenment I’d reached.
No matter the situation, I’d find myself perusing friends or families’ wine collections – looking down my nose at their subpar selections. Wines that might result in excitement from most sommeliers or wine professionals, I decreed lesser than – all because of some sanctimonious factor– inoculated wine, for example, was sacrilege.
The romanticism was the ultimate drug. Many experiences unfolded much the same way: barrel sampling with a sexy winemaker, some “it” person on the scene. Myriad bottles would be opened, making it feel more like a party than a wine tasting – joints passed around haphazardly, a kitchen dance party transpiring late into the night – it was that same feeling of clout I’d experienced years earlier.
Inevitably, a few years later, the cracks began to expose themselves.
That trendy new natural winery? They used conventionally farmed fruit. That really fun pet nat that wasn’t cold settled or disgorged? It’ll probably explode all over your ceiling. A pinot noir rife with off the charts levels of Brettanomyces and volatile acidity? It’s a root day – just wait - it might correct itself. Mousiness? At least it tastes better than cork taint!
It was especially clear my beliefs were due for a recalibration when I started to get into constant debate on social media over the real definition of natural wine. I discovered how acceptable dogma had become within the community, something I’d been willfully ignorant of.
Fault apologists – those who excused high levels of brett, VA, mouse and oxidization – were simply hiding behind convictions. I suddenly became aware of my own proselytizing of the religion of my own making.
Evangelists of the movement espoused their patron saint Rudolf Steiner, with starry-eyed regaling of the renaissance man who singlehandedly popularized the movement of biodynamic farming. They’d likely forget, though, to mention he was also a Nazi.
It was as though the flood gates of truth had suddenly burst open – all the promises of clean farming and zero/zero winemaking were meaningless once I’d uncovered the series of white lies permitted, all to uphold the guise of purity enmeshed with a laissez-fair attitude.
I came to realize a lot of what I thought to be true of natural wine was masterful marketing, much like the winery I’d ran away from so long ago.
Images of the horseshoe theory flickered in my mind like a broken movie reel on repeat. In my attempt to escape an echo chamber, I found myself in another one, full of ideological contradictions, eerily similar to what I thought I had been escaping.
Though natural wine will always be a style I love, I’ve navigated my way back to center. I look for winemaking which values nuance, pragmatism, and transparency. I herald winemakers who have no qualms sharing if, or why, certain corrections were needed. I applaud the iconic leaders of the movement who’ve never had to wave the flag of natural as social currency.
Charlatans abound, no matter the category.
