A bit of natural wine, from the organic vine
More than good, it’s fine – it’s out of the box
Drink till you’re dotty, till you’re knocked onto your botty
But not until you’re grotty – just rocked out of your socks

Reasons to be cheerful part 3

- with apologies to Ian Dury

natural winemaker Fredi ‘Fresquito’ Torres with David Shaw at the Real Wine Fair

A good fair encapsulates the best of all possible wine worlds. Exuding positive energy it creates an aura of fun and friendliness. No-one would deny that this wine may flaunt its imperfections or that wine may not accord to a certain taste, but when growers radiate such bonhomie and when the wines themselves radiafe individuality, then healthy creativity collides with receptive aesthetic and visceral appreciation, and the resultant sparks further galvanise the event, making it an oh-so refreshing alternative to the usual humdrum tasting forums devoted to narrow commercialism. A good fair lives up to being both good and fair!

Sans corporate bigwiggery, sans wheeler-dealing, sans profit,  sans suits and suitors, natural wine fairs are designed (in as far as they are designed) to foster the spirits of enquiry, camaraderie and copinage. They advertise without fanfare the virtues of organic and biodynamic farming and the positive way that low intervention winemaking can extract and interpret the nuances of terroir and the originality of the vintage. The Real Wine Fair itself is big enough to present a healthy cross-section of what is going on in the, ahem, alternative wine world, and to demonstrate the sheer variety within it, yet not so unwieldy as to be too big for its drinking boots. The buzz this year was palpable, the growers visited by many curious customers, but not so many that they became little more than animated pouring machines!

We received dozens, if not hundreds, of tweets and mails In the aftermath of the fair, alluding to people’s positive experiences and their enjoyment of the wines. We may flatter ourselves that all is for the best etc, nevertheless it is still a world apart, for, over the same period as we were running the Real Wine Month in cahoots with some of the UK’s finest restaurants and independent retailers, were you to delve into the trade magazines and professional blogs you would have only read a succession of stories highlighting (not in a critical way) unsavoury practice, greed, hype and cynical slavishishness to the market. This is Wine OK! The parallel self-reflexive universe of style over substance, where the demi-mondovino revolves around money (“Liv-ex Lafite’s indices are showing growth”, yippee!) and celebrity, and breathless gossip, like rumour painted full of tongues, sucks up the column inches (“Tang hits out at fake wine allegation”), and where the panjandrums of prosperity and the potentates of points become the caliphs of mutual calumny fighting their battles in public. It may be to settle the precedence between a loaded louse and a flush flea, but when you dip into the Wine Advocate vs Galloni argle-bargle or the Koch/Greenberg legal spat, the former protagonist described “like Ahab in his pursuit of those he claimed had done him wrong” (all of which surely puts the **** into Moby Dick) you have to ask yourself: “Who cares?”

This is the world of fees, fies and foes… (and ho-hums)

Iwo Jacimowicz of Si Vintners, Craig Hawkins of Testalonga, and Tom Lubbe of Matassa at The Real Wine Fair

And this is evidently the only news that’s fit to print for a number of trade magazines, a condensed version of reality amounting to little more than sound-bites and tittle-tattle. The real wine world went offline some time ago realising that the only way of engaging with people was to respect them as individuals and treat them as more than passive susceptible-to-hype consumers and allowing them to taste the wines on their terms and respond accordingly. For all that is written about natural or real wine the terms of reference have been declassified in order that we may focus on what is truly valuable – the growers and their artisan products, the drinkers and their opinions. When natural wine first emerged as a countercultural phenomenon it generated the right kind of publicity (an awareness that terrific wines could be made without chemical additions) and the wrong kind as well (the pedantic linguistic debate, a series of contumelious generalisations about an amorphous range of wines, growers and drinkers that didn’t withstand critical scrutiny but produced plenty of heat). While all this pointless verbal jousting took place, however, more natural-style wines were being made every year, more natural wine bars springing up in the major citiies in the world and more wine merchants and retailers were putting the wines on their shelves without fuss. The more solid the phenomenon the deeper its roots and this one, like old old vines, is profoundly entrenched.

“Leroy bet me I couldn’t find a pot of gold at the end, and I told him that was a stupid bet because the rainbow was enough”. –Rita Mae Brown

Relevance in the wine world is too often gauged by whether something is perceived as trendy or whether it conforms to an overarching commercial imperative or hierarchical notion of what is right or wrong, good or bad. The idea that wine growers might make wines primarily to please themselves and their friends seems extroardinary to some, yet this is in keeping with centuries of tradition, when wine was formerly a humble drink and not a commodity.

Of course cities and commerce were, and will continue to be, essential factors in the development of civilization, but the critical questions that regard humanity, the qualitative leap of “consciousness” that we must undergo to allow the earth to sustain us will be achieved only though a “radical new look” at our relationship with the environment.
In this manner, the « autonomous » farmers are critical players (to whom we should allow free speech rather than to so-called experts) of tomorrow’s world.

“The fascination that people have with the wine world is a result of being in touch with “essential things”, those things that put us in relation with the earth that we walk upon and the cosmos from where life has emanated.” –Thierry Valette, Clos Puy Arnaud

I’ve witnessed these past weeks how money is not necessarily the root of all wine and that the customary terms of critical reference need to be shelved on occasion. Georgian wine culture is undergoing a revival, partly due to government encouragement, and mostly because of the collective efforts of a few dynamic growers (and friends). It would be easy for this country to become another outpost of international varieties and churn out the same old, same old on demand; the nature of Georgian wine, however, is inextricably linked to tradition through a strong shared folk culture. Georgia is not only a different place, but also seems to be a different time and the growers revel in that bubble. Indigenous grape varieites are prized, while the natural ways of making the wine have never been abandoned and are now not only fiercely cherished, but exalted. A powerful sense of national identity is expressed through wine in Georgia, not just the interesting end result of wine qua wine, but the historic cultural processes that bring it to the bottle and predispose the way that wine is served. Hospitality is written into the Georgian DNA – food, wine and friendship are linked – and so the wine is the people’s blood, sweat and happy tears.

The vine and the wine have a poignant symbolism, for when you live according to the rhythms of the growing seasons, when you give thanks to the providence of nature, to God, to your efforts as a humble grower and those who assist you in the enterprise, everything is felt at a deeper level. Wine, moreover, symbolises love, earthly love and spiritual love (God’s love), similar to that expressed in texts such as The Rubiyat of Omar Khayyam and The Book of the Winebringer. There is a beauty-in-simplicity in this “emotion” that resonates with growers from other countries who have always believed that winemaking should be natural and view the Georgian experience as the purest example of the craft, and one which gives a philosophical and poetic framework to their own activities.

These wines exist not to flatter the so-called modern palate; they are intended to capture the blood of the soil, the song of the earth; and represent the natural cycle of taking out and putting back. The qvevri is a clay vessel moulded from the clay into which the vine plunges its roots;  when the wine is put in the qvevri it is being “put back on its feet”. Georgians call leaving the wine on the skins ‘leaving it with the mother’, and particularly, when the grapes are organically and biodynamically grown, she does an amazing job. She gives nutrients, protects, adds textural richness and layers of complexity simply not achievable without such close synergy between liquid and solid. The qvevri not only holds the wine, but animates it.

The language of religion permeates the notion of winemaking and our response to these wines.  Birth and rebirth, gift and sacrifice, love and peace, thankfulness and prayer – without this underpinning the context of Georgian wines cannot be fully appreciated.

In producing honest and personal wine, (that is to say that could not be produced elsewhere) not only the Georgians, but those who work in an equally beautiful and valid individual idiom, serve to protect cultures that prize singularity and humanity against a global movement that favours homogenisation and commercial aptitude. Salvaging and promoting diversity is a laudable objective; this is not to say that there isn’t room for commercial wines and the marketing of them. Of course there is. The natural wine fairs, however, show that there is a whole other world of wine out there.

The dust has settled, the broken glass swept up, the spittoons dismantled for another year, the lights switched off and aching limbs and slightly sore heads placed in cold storage. Time to take stock of another Real Wine Fair and recollect the emotion of the occasion in a state of comparative tranquillity.

A time to thank the growers for their huge contribution in coming and showing their wines, for their enthusiasm and spirit and for generating that special friendly atmosphere that big tastings thrive on.

And to thank those who made their way through the claggy rain to Tobacco Dock and have subsequently given us the most positive feedback. And thanks also for your suggestions to make it an even better fair next year.

It was a pleasure to be part of this event.  A couple of people asked me what financial benefit we derive from our investment in the fair. There is rather more (or less) to it than that. The rewards are not commercial; their real value is far more profound:

*The pleasure in seeing old friends

*The pleasure in making new ones

*Bringing likeminded people together

*Conveying that wine is not all about profit and for narrow purpose but has an identity, a history and cultural distinctiveness and personal foundation.

The Real Wine Fair strikes no didactic agenda despite what some commentators might write. The fair exists to bring the growers to the people and allow the public and the trade to experience wines that they might not normally taste or even know about. A fair is sometimes just that, a festival or celebration of the good things in life, a whirl of human interactions rather than a succession of cold financial transactions.  If everyone feels positive then we’ve done our job and that is reward enough.

Photo by Roberson Wine

The Real Wine Fair ~ More than a wine tasting

The dates – Sunday 17th March – Monday 18th March

The weather – cold, murky, mizzly

Marie Thun calendar – two root days!

Summary

Two days in Wapping

1,500 visitors

110 wine growers

500 + organic, biodynamic and naturally made wines

Street food snacks

Artisan food and drink

Pop up wine shop

Pop up wine bar and restaurant

Real Wine posters

Seminars

The Real Wine Month

Promotions and events throughout the UK in March

photo by Michael Voelker

The Venue – Tobacco Dock, Wapping, E1

Tobacco Dock, a Grade One listed warehouse, was smokin’ hot, a superb venue. The Great Gallery was the perfect exhibition space, light (despite the gloomy weather), airy, with sufficient room comfortably to accommodate over 100 growers and many hundreds of visitors at a time. There was a separate room for the food, a big restaurant which doubled as a wine bar and rooms dedicated to seminars.

The Partners

Real Wine 2013 was the collective enterprise of Les Caves de Pyrène, Indigo Wine, Passione Vino, Roberson, Ethical Edibles, Tutto Wines and Modern Portuguese and their many growers and we were also honoured to host a terrific contingent of Georgian winemakers.

The Growers

It is invidious to single out growers, so a few extra honourable mentions. It was good to see the South West growers back en bloc – Luc, Pascal, Ludo & Jean-Bernard lent their usual cheery demeanours to the occasion. Spain was particularly well represented with great growers from lesser-known regions such as Alicante, Manchuela and Tenerife. The Georgians brought a variety of superb, exciting and unusual wines from their homeland. Artisans from Italy were exceptionally well-represented – they came from Piedmont, Lombardy, Friuli, Veneto, Emilia-Romagna and Sicily – amongst others – bearing a bewildering array of indigenous grapes and styles. This was, to coin a phrase, the real Italy, a far cry from milquetoast Pinot Grigio and over-sulphured Trebbiano. We had a fine sprinkling from Australia, South Africa, Chile and New Zealand – wine made from wild vines, in old tinajas or concrete eggs, with skin contact and sans soufre. The old new world or the new new world? Only time will tell. The Real Wine Fair may be viewed as putting a girdle around the world; this is the new small-scale globalism, connecting the dots, those dots being small growers working in a unique idiom, not necessarily recognised or honoured by their own local critics or peers, but working in an intelligent and prescient fashion to become the most eloquent advocates for the terroir of their own vineyards.

The Food (& Drink)

Photo by Jim Budd

The food hall has become one of the features of the fair.  Top London restaurants, artisan food and drink producers and suppliers come together in one room to offer fair growers a smorgasbord of delightful bites and thirst slakers. This year Zucca, Duck Soup, Donostia, Handmade Food, E5 Bakehouse, Wright Brothers and Androuet fed the wine-soaked masses. You could spend a whole day browsing, munching and sluicing. With hearty dishes such as cassoulet, duck confit and three day cooked lamb and street food snacks such as gnocchi friti with ham, broad beans in flatbread, wholesome sausage rolls, savoury crab sliders, platters of cheese and sinfully delicious ice cream on the menu, all tastes were catered for and palates pleased.

Caravan Coffee Roasters kept caffeine addicts happy and fair organisers awake; Camden Town Brewery provided cooling amber sustenance at the end of the day, whilst Sacred Distillery and Sipsmith provided medicinal shots of gin and vodka.

Chocolate and Wine

Original Beans, purveyors of chocolate from sustainable sources, exhibited their excellent bars and offered a chocolate and wine matching challenge that attracted dozens of interested tasters to their table. Moscato d’Asti with Esmeralda Milk – we think it works!

The Pop-Up Shop by Roberson…

…was a conspicuous success. Offering 15% off rrps for all wines sold on the day the pop-up shop was a magnet for those who wanted buy after they tried. Wines from the fair are still for sale – www.robersonwine.com

Real Wine Posters from Louise Sheeran

Louise’s witty faux-agitprop wine posters adorned the inside and outside of the main hall and brilliantly captured the fun and camaraderie of The Real Wine Fair.

The Unfiltered Dog

A pop up restaurant run by Ed Wilson and the hard-working front of house crews of Terroirs, Brawn, Soif and Green Man supervised by the indefatigable Cecile. The punchy menu included platters of oysters and cheese, scallops with xo, crispy pork belly with kim chee, smoked mackerel with horseradish and watercress, quail with burnt leeks and romesco and banana bread with salted caramel. A 50 bin list of wines selected from the fair offered great value with all the wines sold at a tiny cash mark-up. The Dog played host to a raucous party of 300 growers and fair attendees on Sunday, whilst Monday was a more sedate affair.

The Seminars

John Wurdeman of Pheasant’s Tears spoke eloquently of his adoptive Georgia. This country, with its ancient traditions of vine growing and winemaking, is making waves. Wine is more than wine to Georgians, it is sacramental; it embodies the folk identity, it is linked with family, with ritual celebration, with music and with hospitality. He drew fascinating parallels between the wine and polyphonic music and explained the symbolic significance of the Qvevri. John outlined the historical and current political context of Georgian wine and explained about the revival of Georgian cultural identity and how the Qvevri, having captured the imagination of a new generation of growers and winemakers, is also crossing frontiers.

Mike Weersing of Pyramid Valley, gave a witty, relaxed and erudite talk about skin contact wines. His thesis was that the grower has one crack at making a wine every year. The grape is the aggregate of all the unique terroir factors and approximately 90% of the essence of the wine is concentrated in the skins. This is the DNA, the stuff of grape’s existence. Winemakers, worried about phenolic pick-up, discard the skin. Skin contact, however, allows the winemaker to use less (and even zero sulphur); it gives the shape and texture. Mike also spoke pertinently about terroir and how his grapes could be transformed into wine with yeasts cultured in a laboratory anywhere in the world and still bear the appellation of the region, which was absurd when the wine’s very original identity resided in the yeasts. He also spoke about sulphur and that he would use it if its addition (in small quantities) lifted the flavour of the wine, but if it didn’t, he wouldn’t.

Mark Andrew and Doug Wregg explored the notion that natural wine and events such as The Real Wine Fair provided a healthy countercultural balance to the prevailing commercialism and mediocrity. Their talk ranged across (the crassness of) points scoring, the invidious concept of the fine wine market, the impoverished state of wine writing, the editorialising in magazines that prevented the expression of opinions outside the status quo, the abstract notion of consumerism and subjectivity in tasting. Mark distributed copies of his magazine, Noble Rot, a forum for new wine writing talent.

The Georgian Supra at Terroirs

A Supra is a traditional Georgian banquet. The food is a mezze-style succession of cold and hot dishes with wine flowing alongside. This version was held at Terroirs. Gia Rokashvili, chef at Pheasant’s Tears restaurant, flew over from Georgia to prepare a gorgeous array of colourful dishes seasoned with myriad herbs and spices. The feast was punctuated by toasts (to love, to life, to giving, to God, to peace). Wine was drunk out of traditional clay bowls against a background of polyphonic folk singing. Krakhuna, Tsolikouri, Chkhaveri, Kisi, Chinuri, Shavkapito – these Georgian native grapes we have loved.

A magical evening of Georgian hospitality.

Must remember to stay off the Chacha though!

The Real Wine Month

170 restaurants, gastropubs, bistros and bars; merchants, shops and online retailers participated throughout the UK promoting artisan wines made organically, biodynamically or naturally either by-the-glass or discounted. The month also saw a series of parallel promotional events including wine dinners and masterclasses by Giusto Occhipinti, Vasco Croft, Luc de Conti, Samuel Guibert, Mike Weersing and Sebastian de Martino.

WHAT THEY SAID ABOUT THE REAL WINE FAIR

BY MAIL

• So much fun – was it the great wines, or the winemakers present or the great tasters that gave the room such atmosphere. It didn’t feel like work at all. Loved the space – the light, and the food stands were perfect. –Emily O Hare, River Cafe

• As always it was informative and great to try new wines, meet producers, and soak up their passion (and wine!) for what they do…. –Zeph King, Operations Manager Real Ale Company

• That was immense…Georgia…so cool. So impressed, thanks and well done all! –Sarah, The Bull and Last

• My partner and I had a wonderful time and got to taste some fabulous wines. –Elisa Galvan

• It has been a pleasure being there, tasting, eating, exhange ideas and projects…your professional attitude is not a surprise, hence your good results. You can be very proud of the movement you created –Luciana Girotto, Marc de Grazie & Rococo

ON TWITTER

• If you didn’t make @RealWinefair today go tomorrow. Joyous, life-affirming event. Wine as it’s meant to be tasted – with great people and food –Fiona Beckett, Guardian wine writer

• What a fantastic tasting. Super organized and amazing wines! Thanks to @LesCavesPyrene and @RealWineFair –Claudia Rosati

• Best wine tasting of the year @RealWineFair –Jonny Kleeman

• Great atmosphere, super friendly and some fascinating wines. Thanks and roll on next year! –Olly Smith, TV personality

• Great day, so many nice people! Thank you, makes a long trip worthwhile. –Pigeage

• Truly gorgeous, delicious, insightful and interesting day @RealWineFair. Thank you for helping me find my new favourite wine. –Ellie Poulton

• Well I think we can safely say the @RealWineFair was a success! –Roberson Wine

• The @RealWineFair was totally excellent. –Hare and Billet 

• A thoroughly enjoyable wander around @RealWineFair. Some fascinating wines. –Imbibe UK

• Too many [favourites] to mention. A playground for adults. Just gets better and better. Bravo. –Monique Ziervogel

• We discovered some absolute gems for our new lists. Thanks for having us, great event. –The Ebrington Arms & The Killingworth

• Massive thank you @RealWineFair, especially the chance to taste Binner, Frick, Montenidoli, next time need winery day to see all! –Pyramid Valley wines

• It’s full of real people, sharing real wine and having a frightfully good time. That’s why the @RealWineFair works. –Nik Darlington, Red Squirrel Wine

• I’ve thoroughly enjoyed all that is @RealWineFair, thanks. –Pressed for Wine

• Revitalising day @RealWineFair. Highlights incl. Pheasant’s Tears (Georgia), Anna Martens (Sicily), AA Trinchero (Piedmont), Zarate (Galicia). –Susie Barrie and Peter Richards, TV personalities

• Congratulations! What a fantastic fair. We’re already looking forward to the version of 2013. –Lena Sarnholm

• @RealWineFair @LesCavesPyrene Thank you, thank you very much, distinction to the organization, distinction to the public –Bernabe Rafa

• Cracking effort over the weekend! Enjoyed Georgian wines and Portuguese bubbles! Tobacco Dock was a great venue, top good job! –Please Fund Us

• Excellent examples of some truly natural wines. –Hannibal Brown

• Had a fantastic time @RealWineFair Sunday. Was some wonderful wines to sample. Don’t forget Real Wine Month is still ongoing. –Brula Restaurant

• Awesome, seen heaps of great comments, @RealWineFair rocks! –Tom Belford, Bobar Wines

• Thanks for having us @RealWineFair. Amazing wines, great people a real privilege to be there. –Si Vintners

IMAGES OF THE FAIR

DVine Fine Wines brought along one sophisticated pooch

The following pictures are courtesy of Jim Budd:

And finally…

Events like this are here to stay. They generate their own momentum and effortless good will. Last month it was Rootstock; in May it will be RAW in Spitalfields. The debate about natural, naked, real or raw wine – call it what you will – has moved on, and most people are focusing on the wines themselves and enjoying them for what they are and not what they should be. On a personal note, The Real Wine Fair was a tonic, reminding me why I love wine and also how much there is to discover about wine – from new growers and new regions to new techniques and new ideas. The people are great by and large – incredibly likeable, sweet, funny and terrifically intelligent, craftsmen all,  poets some, scientists others, sharing their knowledge and wisdom, but humble also in their desire to learn.

Wine, as we understand it, serves a commercial imperative; 99.9% of wine conforms to this imperative. There are, however, rare wines that exist on their own terms, wherein the winemaker has held back from intervention in that you cannot say with certainty that the wines are good or bad. They are sui generis. Genius comes from within; the genius of wine is thus the perfect expression of itself. Evaluative norms do not apply.

I am not saying wine should be raw grape juice and that the winemaker plays no role. There are numerous transformations and evolutions – indeed the living character of the wine depends on these processes continuing. Stable wine is mute, real wine is in constant flux.

This may mean that two bottles of the same wine may not taste exactly the same, a fearful concept in a world dedicated to homogenous products. Yet since we are content to recognise the possibility of mutability within ourselves why may we not assess wine in the same way? And whilst we would obviously not desire to drink anything unpleasant, nor should we flatten our expectations to look for wines that conform solely to specific flavour profiles (ugly expression).

It is almost easier to describe real wines in terms of what they are not, rather than what they are. In a dynamic sense they draw their inspiration from the soil and the stones, from plant life and insects, from the sun and the wind, from the abundant wild yeasts that populate the vineyards and the winery. The vine is a glorious natural mechanism absorbing countless subtle flavour components. The role of the winemaker is perhaps to recognise the genius of the wine: its capacity to be luminous, uncanny, coalescent and fluid and to bring out that truth as gently and sympathetically as possible, to capture and put – using a lovely Randall Grahm expression – the (terroir) message into the bottle.

Through a glass darkly

“Whoever knows he is deep, strives for clarity; whoever would like to appear deep to the crowd, strives for obscurity. For the crowd considers anything deep if only it cannot see to the bottom: the crowd is so timid and afraid of going into the water.”  –Friedrich Nietzsche

(Don’t roll your eyes and tell me that there is nothing Nietzsche couldn’t teach me about the raising of the wrist.)

“Your wines are obscure” was an accusation formerly levelled at us, as if we had wilfully sourced grape varieties that were off the map of human knowledge (here be dragonberries), and sought to promulgate exclusive, recherché wines in order to bamboozle all and sundry. One of our growers even bottled his wines (and still does) with the tag vigneron non conformé on the label, a play on the concept of publish-and-be-damned-in-the-court-of-critical-opinion. Oh, to be different etc. Well, a wine’s a wine for a’ that. Of course, the truth is quite the opposite: neither were the aforementioned grape varieties obscure per se (many have a long and noble heritage), nor were the styles of “natural wine” always so difficult to comprehend, nor were the regions themselves whence the wines originated particularly outlandish. Certainly, knowledge about these wines was not widespread and their individuality was often dismissed as going against the grain. That is not the fault of the wines or the vignerons, however. Until recently we were largely confronting critically closed minds and closed palates.

By some strange logic popularity used to be perceived as an imprimatur of quality (ergo, if a lot of people liked a wine it must be good). Similarly, if a lot of people had heard of a wine it must be good. It’s the argument widely used to justify the extension of brands and to pour money into marketing and label design. Perhaps the real reason why certain wines and not others have became popular is that the public was only being exposed to a narrow range, and, as a consequence, these largely factory-produced vapid simulacra of wines had become, by default, the preferred common denominator of choice. This had nothing to do with democracy or responding to what the customer wanted. Reinforced by the unimaginative buying and the promotional selling policy of supermarkets, wines survived and thrived in the market by a process of simple (un)natural selection: safety first and devil take the interesting grapes and styles. Thus bland consistency (or consistent blandness) was the name of the game, consequently, for a long period, wines were specifically made (or manufactured) to track the hypothetical palate of the mythical general public.

An obscure wine is one where identity and orginality are sacrificed in favour of creating a product to appeal to a perceived common goal; product for a purpose, if you like. Obscurity thus arises when wine becomes a means to a commercial end and is thus transformed by marketing legerdemain into something greater than the sum of its inconsiderable parts. The real wine always has a simple tale to tell, the faux-wine, be it cheap, middling or expensive, owes its commercial life to a marketing myth.

We seek wines that are primarily animated by their terroir. In our view the value of the unadorned (unadulterated) simplicity of the wine lies in its very nakedness. Obscure or pretentious wines disguise the essential transmission of flavour from the soil, the microclimate and the nature of the vintage to the vine and its grape variety; obscure wines are heavily manipulated in order to correct or vault over nature’s deficiencies, either bludegeoning attempts to layer flavour into the wine or using oenology to strip the essential identity from the wines.

The wines we love embrace clarity – through cloudiness (sometimes)! They achieve complexity through simplicity: you can smell and taste every subtle inflection and nuance. The more I taste our “obscure wines” with people (and explain the philosophy behind them) the more I feel that people are beginning to connect with the wines because they understand why they taste the way they do and thus appreciate them for what they are. That is not to say that they are easy wines. You only have to try a Valentini Trebbiano to understand that real wines are living wines – they taste different on almost every occasion, and, as the man himself used to say: “Nature does not leap”.

Tastes change. Now we are praised for championing the cause of the small grower, for offering variety and for challenging conventional perceptions. The map is being redrawn to reflect quality and interest; people want to be stimulated, to experiment and to discover wines which have a story and are crafted with artisan intent. Trends are illusory and the notion of what will sell, and what should sell, is based on a received faux-wisdom rather than real knowledge. If we accept this world-view, it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. Specialist wine companies can help to shift opinion and overcome the restraints of the commercial imperative by sticking to their guns and having faith in and promoting growers who make wines with a strong identity. And this imperative is not exclusive to wine; other artisan food and drink producers are also making a name for themselves, demonstrating that small can be beautiful – and successful – in its own right. Success should not, however, be measured in points and pounds sterling, but in the integrity of the product; indeed, as Schopenhauer, genius is its own reward.

This is an article I wrote on natural wines for the Honest Cooking iPad magazine, a consumer publication mainly for foodies. If you have an iPad you can download it for free in its original form. 

Beneath the roof of a crumbling stone winery in the tiny French town of Martigné-Briand, I perch precariously on the lip of an old barrel. In one hand I grasp the wooden handle of an axe; in the other a bottle of bubbly. A ponytailed bear of a Frenchman grins at me through his bushy beard. ‘Sabre,’ he says, waggling his finger between the bottle and the axe. His equally ponytailed accordion-playing son and his multi-pierced girlfriend egg me on in indecipherable French.

And although the room is spinning a little thanks to an evening of merrymaking, I grip the base of the bottle tighter and swing the axe along it in an upward motion. The cork, along with half of the bottleneck, goes flying into the darkness. I squeal and give myself a few girly claps, overjoyed at my sabering success. But I don’t have much time to gloat, for in the hands of the ponytailed son is now no longer an accordion, but an axe three times the size of mine. With one fell swoop, the cork comes rushing out of his bottle, and the liquid inside goes straight down his gullet. At this moment, although my brain feels as though it has been subjected to a bout of sabering, I take note of the evening’s events, spent in the company of the bear-man whose name is Olivier Cousin, and who happens to be one of the most celebrated natural winemakers in France’s Loire Valley. Before the axe incident, there was a midnight (or was it 1am?) horse ride through the town to the cellars, accompanied by more accordion playing, a cellar dog, and a small group of Olivier’s family members. Although I didn’t know it at the time, there would be more horse riding the next day–a gallop through the vineyards, the land those same horses normally plough. The following week, in the Roussillon, in southwest France, horses would come into play again. This time I’m given the rather reckless responsibility of steering both horse and plough through narrow rows of vines. When I come absurdly close to ripping up a 110-year-old vine I decide I’m better off watching from the sidelines.

These kinds of shenanigans, horse-related or not, are fairly typical when a trip to visit a natural winemaker is in the cards. A far cry from the suited and booted clean-shaven export managers who greet you at the golden gates of many a marble-floored winery, natural winemakers are their tattooed, pierced cousins, the vagabonds of the wine industry, usually scruffy, with dirt on their jeans and under their nails; sometimes sporting colourful shirts, and impressive facial hair, sometimes not. They are the “larrikins and ratbags, the old and the young, the newbies and nerds putting the soul back into wine,” celebrated Aussie wine journalist Max Allen once enthused. They are the colorful characters making wine in a way that is turning the industry on its head.

Let’s rewind. What is natural wine? Isn’t all wine just fermented grape juice and therefore natural?

No, unfortunately it isn’t. And therein lies one of the biggest marketing ploys of the drinks industry. Such is the commercial world we live in, the biggest brands, with equally big marketing budgets, are the ones who get seen on a large scale. When it comes to wine it means these brands drip-feed us images of sun-kissed people handpicking grapes, trodding them by foot, and then leaving them in barrels to miraculously spring forth into wine. Ironically, it’s often these same brands that are the biggest culprits of highly manipulated wine, with Frankenstein-like lists of additives and high-tech procedures being implemented into their wines.

Natural winemaking is a reaction to this, a rebellion of sorts, a “return to the land” and to a time before chemicals and procedures.

Natural winemakers work their vineyards organically. Many of them take this further and work biodynamically, which follows the principle of not only removing chemicals, but of adding health to the vineyards by creating biodiversity within their unique ecosystem with things like cover crops, compost (although many organic farmers do these things too), and homeopathic-like “preparations”. Biodynamics also has a spiritual side related to the energies of the vines in connection with the cycles of the moon and the earth’s rotations, which can understandably be a bit controversial in the context of today’s modern farming, but has a far longer history, dating back to ancient Greek and Roman times. Despite some of its seemingly “out there” beliefs, biodynamics is being practiced around the globe by some of the world’s top winemakers, and its popularity is growing. From my experience, some of the healthiest happiest vineyards I’ve seen have been farmed biodynamically.

Natural winemakers take things one step further and keep their hands off in the winery as well, for a producer working organically can still add and tinker till his heart’s content when it comes to the making of the wine.

In this age of technology, winemakers can choose from a list of legal additives the size of a small book. Like hamburgers at a drive through, they can order chocolate and coffee flavors into their wine by choosing the “toast” level of their barrels. They can choose which industrial yeast will give their Sauvignon Blanc the most peach and pineapple aromas. If their tannins are too soft, they add chemical ones. Same goes for acidity (they can also take it away if the wine is too sharp). They can add a myriad enzymes, gum arabic for texture and sweetness, oak chips, something called Mega Purple or Ultra Red for color and plumpness, isinglass (from fish bladders) for fining, egg whites for clarification, etc etc. If well funded they can buy expensive glistening machines that do sci-fi sounding things like cryoextraction and mircooxigination (to soften and add color), sterile filtering to kill all populations of bacteria (not to mention flavor), spinning cones and reverse osmosis to reduce alcohol…and the list goes on and on and on.

Then there is the hotly contended issue of sulfur. Sulfur Dioxide can be used both during fermentation and before bottling as an antioxidant, antibacterial, and stabilizer. Natural winemakers prefer to use little or no sulfur (although it occurs in small amounts naturally in the wine, hence why very few wines are ever totally sulfur-free). Some believe sulfur is necessary to winemaking, others have managed without it. The key is not to use too much (it becomes detectable as a rotten egg, nostril-burning sensation in young wines, and although not proven, is one of the elements suspected of contributing to morning headaches). Although sulfur is a big issue for natural winemakers, it is often blown out of proportion in the blogosphere. I’ve found the bigger issue is industrial yeast used to give unnatural flavors to wine—there is no doubt, natural wines must use native yeast—found naturally on the grape and its environment.

Go to a large commercial winery and you’ll hear none of this. They prefer you to think about all that foot-trodding and sun-ripening loveliness. Talk of cryoextraction and Mega Purple doesn’t sound quite as romantic.

The problem is, unlike food, they’re not talking about it on their labels either. In fact, wine is one of the only edible substances in which ingredients are not required to be listed on the label (with the exception of the very vague ‘contains sulfites’). In the USA listing ingredients in wine was actually prohibited until recently as it was deemed unnecessary information for the consumer.

And so most consumers remain in the shadows, and the myth of wine as a pure and unadulterated beverage persists.

The good news is, things are changing. These changes are still slow to reach the vast majority of consumers and that’s because natural wines are still made in small quantities. Like with organic food, which took awhile to catch on, these wines have yet to reach the demand levels in which they’ll be usurped by big-gun corporations (with a few exceptions). But within the wine world, the number of winemakers going au naturel is growing at a rapid rate. Italy, which less than a decade ago had virtually no (declared) natural winemakers, now boasts over 100, the second largest contingency after France.

Natural wine bars and restaurants are cropping up around the world. Paris has 160 of them. They’re thriving in Scandinavia, Britain, and America. The Japanese, more sensitive to sulfites, have long been natural wine drinkers. In the past few years, natural wines have been taking center stage in Top 100 lists, and filling the pages of many a wine publication. They are one of the most talked about topics in the wine blogosphere, causing more heated debates than any other category. Despite occupying a tiny slice of the market’s pie, natural wines are making an inordinate amount of noise.

“[Natural wines] are people-driven, not market,” says prominent American wine author Alice Feiring. “The winemakers are growing, the drinkers are growing, hell, I can’t get the wines I want anymore. The competition is cut throat and if I don’t act quick, the stores run out of them.”

So what do they taste like? Stylistically, natural wines can be as diverse as conventionally made ones and range from being more ‘normal’ in flavor profile to completely wild and unusual, with a focus on expressing the terroirs (the environment in which the grapes were grown) and not on ripe fruit and oak.

To the uninitiated, the wildest of the wines can be too far from what they’re used to, with complex flavors of minerals, earth, salt, and sometimes a whiff of a barnyard. Many of the white wines have oxidative qualities that give the wines nutty, spicy, appley qualities reminiscent of cider, a characteristic either loved or loathed. A good deal of natural wines are made to be drunk young and fresh, but some can age for years. A lot of natural winemakers are champions of obscure grape varieties, rescuing them from near extinction. For me, the best wines are pure and lithe, and true to their grape varieties with a strong sense of place. I take a sip and think, “this could come from nowhere else except [insert wine region]”. In an age of winemaking homogeneity, where all too many wines taste the same, they’re a breath of fresh air. Most importantly though, the best natural wines are so darn delicious you could down the bottle with frightening speed.

However, unlike organics and biodynamics, there is no official regulating body for natural wines and therefore no hard-and-fast set of rules; this being something that divides the wine world, with some believing that a set of guidelines would aid in transparency for the consumer, and others believing that the intentions of natural winemakers would be diluted by the confines of beauracracy (as it has for organics) and therefore contradict the grassroots spirit of natural wine.

Perhaps I’m a hippy at heart, but I’m not so bothered by the semantics. I think of natural winemaking as a mindset, a way of looking at the environment and the effect we humans have on it. It’s a decision taken by winemakers to respect the land they’ve been given and, in the process, to make the most honest, tasty wine they can with the least amount of manipulation. There will always be those who jump on the bandwagon motivated by money and trends, but most choose to work naturally because it’s the kind of wine they like to drink. And because they believe it’s right. These are the winemakers whose stories deserve to be told.

People like Fredi “Fresquito” (aka “The Fresh One”) Torres who spent most of the 1990s touring Europe as a techno and house DJ and who now makes some stunningly beautiful wine under the label Sao del Coster in Priorat, northeast Spain. In a region where many a superstar wine is made to suit powerful wine critics’ palates, Fredi marches to his own beat, farming his tiny 6 hectares biodynamically with his mule Ruby and donkey Morena. His flagship ‘Terram’ wine, a blend of Cariñena, Garnacha, Cabernet Sauvignon, and Syrah, manages an unusual freshness in Spain’s heat while also being rich, chocolaty and savoury. I’m told it can age for 20 years, but I wouldn’t know. A bottle never lasts longer than an hour in my house. Fredi is a gregarious charmer. Once, in response to an email I wrote him querying whether he remembered me and if he’d let me interview him, wrote, ”Of course I remember this elegant and smiling little flower. But I have a question: are you sure I am the right guy? You know I am crazy and I speak English like a Spanish cow…”

In contrast to Fredi’s relatively new winery, 31-year-old Luca Roagna is the fifth generation winemaker at his family’s estate, situated in the region of Barbaresco in northwest Italy’s Piedmont. The Roagna family has been making wine here for 150 years. Their website proudly states that they have changed very little in that time, and for good reason. They’ve been making gorgeously complex, unmistakably Italian wine with a hands-off approach long before the introduction of chemicals. Their focus is and always has been on expressing their terroir and native grape variety (Nebbiolo) as honestly as possibly. The results are wines that exist on a higher plane than most, even in the extremely well reputed regions of Barbaresco and Barolo. Luca learned to make wine from his father who learned from his father. Together the two Roagnas run the wildly successful cantina, and are in the enviable position (as so many of these winemakers are) of selling more wine than they can make. But you wouldn’t know it to meet Luca: energetic and cheeky grinned with an infectious laugh, Luca prefers to drink his wine rather than talk about it. And he’s as talented a drinker as he is winemaker. Despite his 5 foot 5 (or so) stature, he can drink me under the table.

But it’s not just Europe that houses the world’s natural winemakers. You’ll find them lurking in the shadows of practically all “New World” countries, particularly in Australia and the United States. But not so in South Africa, where 31-year-old Craig Hawkins is one of the only natural winemakers in the entire country. After travelling the world and training with a whole slew of winemaking greats, he resettled in his native land, an area north of Stellenbosch called Swartland. Blessed with dry heat and old deep-rooted vines (which produce less but more interesting grapes), Swartland is blessed with a soil and climate similar to that of the Roussillon in southwest France. Gentle and soft-spoken, you would never guess this young, sweet winemaker was rocking South Africa’s wine scene, making wines as unlike his compatriots as to give the authorities cause to resist permission for export, on the grounds that Craig’s weren’t representative of South African wines. Ironically, his wines capture the terroir of Swartland like no other. It’s a conundrum that has been the case for other natural winemakers around the world as well.

Whilst Craig is the head winemaker at the organic 56 hectare winery Lammershoek, it’s Testalonga, his own label, which is his baby. Made from old vine Chenin Blanc, his wines have little or no added sulfur. He employs techniques like foot-pressing, lees (yeast) contact for added texture and complexity, and extended skin maceration (leaving the skins in contact with the fermenting juice like a red wine), in an ‘orange wine’ style made famous in the region of Friuli in Italy and the Jura in France. Craig pushes the boundaries of winemaking, constantly experimenting and trying new things. His complex wines have elicited lists of positive descriptors from the biggest wine critics, who celebrate their mouth-watering acidity paired with rich texture, minerality, and layers of fruits and spices. I just say they’re delicious.

There are winemakers like Olivier, Fredi, Luca and Craig across the globe; free spirited, quirky, and passionate people, who may not have the budgets for glossy marketing material, but whose stories deserve a platform nonetheless. They are breathing life into an all-too-stuffy industry. You won’t find their wines in supermarkets or discussed over cigars in leather armchairs. Natural wines—and natural winemakers– require a little time and an open mind. But if you are willing to seek them out, they will seduce you.

As I write this, natural wines are still something of a badly kept secret, adored by some, but unknown to most. And so I find myself in a bit of a pickle. On the one hand, I want to shout about them to the world. I want them to be more accessible on a large scale so they can be enjoyed by all, therefore encouraging more and more winemakers to take a page from their book. On the other hand, there is a danger that with such increased demand, the term “natural” with get appropriated and adulterated–another cog in a money-making machine–and the truly artisanal winemakers, the cheeky grinned foot-stomping horse-ploughing saberers, will get swallowed up in the process.

So drink their wines while you can. For now anyway, the spirit of natural wines is still pure. And this is a rare thing these days.

*Meet Craig Hawkins and Fredi ‘Frequito’ Torres in person at the Real Wine Fair on the 17-18th March!

A bit of grin and bear it, a bit of come and share it
You’re welcome, we can spare it – yellow socks
Too short to be haughty, too nutty to be naughty
Going on 40 – no electric shocks

The juice of the carrot, the smile of the parrot
A little drop of claret – anything that rocks
Elvis and Scotty, days when I ain’t spotty,
Sitting on the potty – curing smallpox

A bit of natural wine, from the organic vine
More than good, it’s fine – it’s out of the box
Drink till you’re dotty, till you’re knocked onto your botty
But not until you’re grotty – just rocked out of your socks

Reasons to be cheerful part 3

- with apologies to Ian Dury

Cracking reasons to spend a day sipping and supping

Galloping great growers

Something for everyone: organic wines, biodynamic wines, natural wines – from nearly 120 artisan producers.  A roll call of the celebrated (Plageoles, Luc de Conti, Mas des Dames, Clos du Gravillas, Gramenon, Cousin, Breton, Mosse, Frick, Boulard, Zarate, COS, Princic, Bressan, Afros, Testalonga)  and those who deserve to be better known (Les Vignes Herbels, Barraco, Rafa Bernabe, Ar Pe Pe, Cantina Giardino, Si Vintners…). Check out the current list of exhibitors on the Real Wine Fair web-site. http://therealwinefair.com/winemakers/

Georgia on our mind

There will be a part of Wapping that is forever Georgia (well, for a couple of days at any rate). 12 of that country’s finest growers will be present and correct to show wines from the cradle of (wine) civilisation. Everything you wanted to know about qvevri but were afraid to ask will be revealed. By the time you leave you will definitely be able to distinguish your Rkatsiteli from your Chinuri. These highly original wines are not like anything you have ever tasted – unless you’ve already been to Georgia and tasted them!

On Tuesday 19th March there will be a full-fledged “Georgian Supra” or banquet at Terroirs. £55 will buy an evening of endless small Georgian delicacies, flowing wine and uplifting song.  Details of Tickets can be bought in advance for £55 per person by phoning 0207 030 0660 or contacting enquiries@terroirswinebar.com

Food, glorious food

Like Damon Runyan’s Nicely Nicely I am known as a character far and wide “who likes to commit eating”. So where do I begin? With the various offerings from Duck Soup, Zucca and Donostia I can flit between and mix and match Spanish, Italian and rustic French-influenced small dishes. Ham and Cheese will deliver some delicious street food snacks that I can devour on the hoof. I’ll also grab some oysters bar to deck on the fly from Wright’s seafood. For a more leisurely bite I’ll park myself at the counter of celebrated Blackheath deli and caterer, Handmade Food, and sample their freshly-prepared goodies.

I am going to want to try some Androuet’s brilliant array of artisan cheeses and purchase a sourdough loaf or two from E5 Bakehouse who will also be serving a hot dish. P.A.F.F. will refresh my palate with their delicious fruit ices. Original Beans produce superb chocolate bars from eco-friendly sources. I’ll buy a bar of their Wild Bean Chocolate and spend some time at their table matching different wines to different types of chocolate in order to answer that age-old question – which wine goes best with chocolate? Answers on a postcard.

For further details on the foodies: http://therealwinefair.com/foodies/

Liquid refreshment, please

Even seasoned tasters suffer from acid attack and tannin on their tusks. So – take an alternative liquid break. I’m a huge fan of Caravan roasters and will need to refuel frequently with their high-class caffeine over the two days. I will also treat myself to a beer or two, care of Camden Town brewery, their crisp Hells Lager being the ideal palate-cleanser for vino-fatigue. For the perfect pre-prandial/post tasting-freshen-up I’m going to soak up a long cool g & t from Sacred Microdistillery and/or Sipsmith.

The Unfiltered Dog @ The Real Wine Fair

At the end of the hard day’s tasting why not pop in to our felicitously-named pop-up restaurant run by Ed Wilson, executive chef of Terroirs and associated restaurants.  A delicious menu of comfort food accompanied by a cracking value wine list selected from growers at the fair. Please reserve your places now by calling Terroirs restaurant on 0207 030 0660.

The Real Wine Shop

Buy a broad selection of organic, biodynamic and natural wines from the fair at the pop-up Real Wine Shop run by Roberson Wine Merchant. Any bottle of wine purchased on the day will receive a special 15% discount.

Roberson will also be running The Real Wine Shop for a further month fromwww.robersonwine.com. Discounts will apply to orders for 6 bottles (10%) and 12 bottles and over (15%).

Seminal seminars

No verbal punch-ups, but rather stimulating and edifying masterclasses from charismatic growers and articulate ambassadors for their craft. John Wurdeman from Pheasant’s Tears will be explaining why tradition is the cutting edge in Georgia, whilst Mike Weersing from Pyramid Valley will conducting a masterclass on skin-contact wines.

The Real Wine Month

If you like these wines you can seek them out in restaurants, pubs, bistros, wine merchants, online retailers and wholesalers throughout the UK. The promotion will last until the end of the March; restaurants will feature wines by the glass. There are loads of tastings, growers’ dinners and associated events. Please check the Real Wine website for details

TUTTO WINES

Amongst the merchants involved in this year’s Real Wine Fair will be Tutto Wines, a company created in the summer of 2012 by Alex Whyte and Damiano Fiamma who wanted to share with the people of London the wines of Italy that they love to drink. Those wines are made by growers who have a respect for the grape, the land and the winemaking traditions of that place.

They represent Italy’s seemingly endless glut of grapes and the places they come from, from the delicate alpine Nebbiolo of Valtellina, to Marsala’s thewy, salty Grillo. Grapes and places you may not have heard of or perhaps cannot pronounce that produce thrilling wines.

They travel to Italy regularly to seek out wines of balance, grace and most of all drinkability. Wines that speak of where they are from and complement the food on the table.

Tutto will be bringing four exceptional estates from their small but perfectly formed wine list to the Real Wine Fair:

Cascina Tavjin, Piemonte (Table 51). Nadia Verrua’s family have been making wines in the hills of Monferrato, province of Asti for over a century. She focuses on the native varietals of where she grew up, producing just a few thousand bottles a year in the cantina underneath the family home. Try some of the lesser-seen Ruché di Castagnole Monferrato, Grignolino d’Asti as well as the more familiar, but beautifully-made Nebbiolo and Barbera.

Ar Pe Pe, Lombardia (Table 61) comprises 9 hectares of vines set on craggy granite terraces in the mountain town of Sondrio in Valtellina. The Perego’s work only with Nebbiolo, or Chiavennasca as it is called in these parts, growing the grapes up to 700 metres above sea level on sheer, south-facing, sunlit vines that dig straight into rock. The resulting fruit is intensely mineral. The transparency of the grape, the singular landscape and the Perego’s gentle hand lend these wines a remarkable sense of place.

Cantina Giardino, Campania (Table 83) work solely with the varietals of their native Campania, searching the region for old vines with great aspects. Grapes are grown at altitude and the wines benefit from the region’s notorious fertility. They have a total of 7 hectares and the tiny size of each vineyard means that everything in the vineyard can done organically and by hand. The pristine fruit that results means that they can take a hands off approach in the cantina and resulting wines are singular expressions of their grapes.

Vini Barraco, Sicilia (Table 86)  While the region is mostly famous for its solera-aged sweet wines, Nino (Barraco) specialises in Marsalan table wines made the way they were before the sweet tooth of the British prevailed. Nino took over his family’s vineyards in 2004 and set about working organically, focusing on the native grapes of his Western Sicily. Fruit is sourced from dune plots right by the ocean and you can taste it in the wines.  Nino’s wines offer a fascinating and rarely seen insight into the Marsalan terroir. Truly some of the most exciting wines from this part of Sicily.

Come and meet Alex, Damiano and their winemakers at The Real Wine Fair.

The Real Wine Fair, Tobacco Dock, Wapping, E1W 2SF

•Sunday March 17th (Trade & Public) 10am – 6pm

•Monday March 18th (Trade) 10am – 6pm

For more information:

www.therealwinefair.com

info@therealwinefair.com

There is no advanced booking for the events, just come early to ensure your seat!

Sunday 17th March

2.00 – 3.00 pm – John Wurdeman of Pheasant’s Tears Winery on “How tradition has become the cutting edge of Georgian wine.”

John Wurdeman (photo by Jamie Goode)

Several years ago, John Wurdeman, now proprietor of Pheasant’s Tears winery, fell in love with Georgia, its culture and wine traditions. A most articulate spokesman for his adoptive country, John is at the forefront of promoting the interests of Georgian growers and winemakers and establishing an international reputation for their wines.

In the past couple of year the influence of Georgian winemaking has been evident in the number of growers who have purchased the clay fermentation vessels called Qvevri and started to make skin-contact white wines.

The revival of the old Georgia is being witnessed in the fortunes of the new Georgia.

4.00 – 5.00 pm – Mike Weersing of Pyramid Valley Vines in Canterbury, New Zealand on “Orange boom – the rise of skin-on wine.”

Mike Weersing, Pyramid Valley

Mike and Claudia Weersing have been ploughing their biodynamic furrow in the beautiful vineyards in Waikari in northern Canterbury for about ten years. Mike studied oenology in Burgundy and has worked at some of the truly great estates in France. The Pyramid Valley wines are utterly distinctive – naturally-made they have purity, focus and nerve. Mike and Claudia have also been experimenting with zero-sulphur wines and white wines made with extended skin contact.

Mike is a brilliant, passionate speaker. Hear the story of Pyramid Wines and how he is pushing the winemaking boundaries in New Zealand.

Monday 18th  March

2.00 – 3.00 pm – Mark Andrew (Roberson) & Doug Wregg (Les Caves de Pyrène) on “Jazzing up the wine world – trends in winemaking, wine writing and wine selling.”

Never has the wine world been in a state of greater flux.  Whilst globalisation has necessarily meant an increasing homogenisation of wine styles on the one hand, it has also provoked a counter-culture of artisan winemakers (doing it for themselves), of opinionated and controversial bloggers, whilst simultaneously engendering a more imaginative approach to wine buying and selling.

Mark Andrew, wine buyer at Roberson and editor of newly-minted magazine, Noble Rot, and Doug Wregg, will discuss these trends (and others) and assess the commercial and cultural influence of natural wine in today’s global market.

For further information, please contact info@threalwinefair.com

Note: All of the master-classes will take place in the seminar room opposite the wine tasting room. For further details please ask at the front desk.

Come and meet the new Spanish Terroiristas

Fredi Torres of Sao del Coster in Priorat with his donkey Rubi

The case for the prosecution: If one limits oneself to the standard offering of Spanish wines at a supermarket or even one of the few remaining national wine retailers, one could be forgiven for thinking that Spain was still in the grips of New World consultant-hiring, North American critic point-chasing wine enterprises, lovers of over-extraction, new oak and expensive, quirky and some would say, vulgar, new bottle shapes.

The case for the defence: at The Real Wine Fair on March 17^th and 18^th, we will debunk this myth by presenting Spain’s most exciting and accomplished ‘terroiristas’, winemakers dedicated to expressing their unique blend of indigenous grape varieties by using old and new techniques, and capturing the physical attributes of their terroir by working organically or biodynamically and with minimal intervention. Some of these, such as Suertes del Marques from Tenerife, are brand new entries to the UK market whilst others, such as Jimenez-Landi, Zarate and Escoda Sanahuja have been at the forefront in establishing a strong platform for thrilling, terroir-driven Spanish wines.

Our pick of the Spanish winemakers attending The Real Wine Fair:

Terrific Tenerife: much more than just winter sun…

• Suertes del Marques, Valle de la Orotava – With native varieties like Listan Blanco and Negro, Tintilla and Baboso Negro, this bodega offers the chance to taste something truly unique. Winemaker Roberto is cut from the same cloth as his mainland stable mates, using minimal intervention and a combination of old and new techniques to produce fresh wines with a sense of place.

Spain’s North West: the Atlantic Influence

Pedro Perez, Guimaro

• Zarate Albarino, Rias Baxias – Eulogio Pomares is the winemaker of these long-lived wines which have the ability to age similar to Riesling. As well as the regular Zarate, there are two single vineyard offerings, and three rare, unusual and minute production reds (around 300 bottles each!) made from Loureiro Tinto, Caino Tinto and Espadeiro.
• Guimaro, Ribera Sacra – we think Pedro Perez makes some of the best Mencia in the world, from ancient and restored vineyards on the vertiginous terraced slopes overlooking the River Sil. Schist soils add a minerality to the perfumed, herbal Mencia grapes.
• Also from the North West will be Bodegas Mengoba, Gregory Perez from Bierzo & Tierra di Cangas and Bodega Alfredo Maestro, Ribera del Duero.

Catalonia and the Levante Coast: Eastern Promise

• Escoda Sanahuja, Conca de Barbera – Joan Ramon Escoda is one of life’s enthusiasts, always ready with a smile. One of the few in Spain to completely eschew sulphur, he uses French and native varieties, a common practice in this outward looking region, to create wines of genuine character.
• Sao del Coster, Priorat – Another of life’s infectious personalities, Fredi Torres makes some of the most elegant, restrained Prioratos in this esteemed DOCa. Equally in love with his gorgeous donkey as his grapes, Fredi’s Terram has found a small but dedicated following in the UK on-trade and indie scene. Come and try top wine Planassos, an 800-bottle-a-year beautiful old vine Carignan.
• Bodegas Ponce, Manchuela – Beautiful Biodynamic Bobals as well as super rare Albilla de Manchuela and Moravia Agria. Juan Antonio uses a Beaujolais-like combination of large format old oak and whole bunch to great effect to tame the often monstrous Bobal and produce wines of refinement and elegance.
• Also present will be Loxarel and Cava Recaredo from Penedes and Rafa Bernabe from Alicante

Central Spain: Garnacha is King

Daniel Jiménez Landi

• Maldivinas, Cebreros – Two guys, halfway up a mountain looking for some old vines. That is pretty much how La Movida came about. Guillermo Fernandez and Carlos Arenas have acquired 4 Ha of super old bush vine Garnacha, which by its very nature, around 950m, is farmed by hand and hoof. A mixture of granite, schist and sand lends beautiful elegance and the use of old oak allows the variety to exhibit all its subtleties. Around 1,600 bottles a year.
• Bodegas Jimenez-Landi, Mentrida – if it is possible for such a young guy as Dani to be an old hand, he is definitely one of the most respected leaders of the Spanish natural scene. He also seeks out old Garnacha and is obsessed by trying to make the perfect wine from each of his individual plots. Undoubtedly world class wines by anyone’s measure.

Still not convinced? Well, you can reserve judgement until after the final summing up, which will take place at The Real Wine Fair, Tobacco Dock, Wapping, E1W 2SF

•Sunday March 17th (Trade & Public) 10am – 6pm

•Monday March 18th (Trade) 10am – 6pm

Natural wines don’t taste like wine (Wines can be beery, cidery, reductive)

Wine doesn’t always taste like wine. Who is the arbiter here? The mythical consumer on top of the Clapham omnibus, a holographic projection of the palate of Robert Parker or some other Rhadamanthine wine critic? Wines certainly don’t taste like each other, so what template are we be working from? Beaujolais Nouveau doesn’t resemble in the slightest Californian Cabernet Sauvignon. Blush Zinfandel, anaemic Pinot Grigio, Chardonnay with oak chips doesn’t taste like wine in any meaningful sense; it is confected grape juice, highly flavoured with external agents, chemical to a fault.

Show someone a poor quality natural wine and they may presume to pass judgment on all natural wines. Whilst there are inferior, clumsy examples of natural wine there are also inferior, clumsy examples of conventional wine. One doesn’t offer a blanket judgment about all conventional wines on the basis of a quite a few rotten apples.

Natural wines are virtually never submitted to the major wine judging competitions. Because they incite controversy one could easily imagine panels split on a fundamental level. Their very existence points to an arbitrariness in the way we perceive wines; one person’s poison is another’s radical joy. The more orthodox taster will attribute his or her dislike to a technical fault in the wine; the “naturalist”, so to speak, will either dispute that is a fault or celebrate the fault as a beacon of individuality. As Goethe said, “Certain defects are necessary for the existence of individuality”.

I encountered an example of this contrary tasting mentality a few days ago when a wine I showed at an event was denounced as corked and oxidised (just to make doubly sure) by a customer who had evidently made up her mind to dislike the wine before she even sampled it. It was neither of those things as it happened, but it was bizarre and twisted. Chacun etc. There a huge number of wines that I will never allow to pass my lips, but there is a place in the pantheon of wine for them. If one’s criterion for faultiness is simple obnoxiousness we would all become arbiters of everyone else’s bad taste.

The beery, cidery accusation is a caricature of some wines that are taken to an oxidative limit or where aldehydes dominate the fruit. Of course, it is a matter of degree, and it is up to the individual taster to decide when the flaw tips over into the fault. To attribute faults to all natural wines on the basis that they are made with few/no interventions is not a scientific approach.

The winemaker has a duty of care to the consumer…

… is the kind of claptrap spouted by consultants to supermarkets as if supermarkets had the monopoly on consumers. The consumer has become a de facto mythical, fearsome, hydra-headed beast created by consumer acceptance panels and so-called arbiters of taste. Please let’s not patronise people by second guessing what they may or may not like to drink, but give them more opportunities to assay different things. Our drinker on the Clapham Omnibus is perfectly entitled to make his or her own decisions without nannying protection; after all if you don’t like something you can simply avoid it in the future. The duty of care argument is a red herring; supermarkets may have restrictive buying policies to filter out unusual wines, but in the real world you can’t legislate for creativity or individuality. One might as well say that footballers have a duty of care to the spectators; that still doesn’t prevent zero entertainment spectacles. Or perhaps we should ask musical artists to compose exclusively for the charts to please the majority of people who buy cds. Or artists to paint pictures to please the widest possible audience. The duty of care is the counsel of mediocrity. The natural winemaker is as proud of his wines as he would be of his children; he doesn’t require the imprimatur of a supermarket buyer or the approval of a tasting board for him to know that he has made a legitimate wine.

You can’t taste terroir in natural wine…

… is a fallacy. Whilst some natural wines are made purely for the purpose of glug (vins de soif, vins de petanque, vins de glouglou – they order these things better in France), simple wines of fruit and pleasure, terroir differentiation is at the beating heart of many natural wines. One can produce numerous examples of wines from all over France, Italy, Spain and the New World wherein the flavour of the vineyard shines through. The two white Sancerres of Sebastien Riffault are a case in point. According to some wine writers his style of wine-making interferes with the expression of Sauvignon in relation to its terroir. Poppycock! Everything he does may break with received wisdom (late harvest, malolactic, ageing in foudre, no sulphur) but if you taste Akmenine (caillottes terroir) versus Skeveldra (flint) you will immediately notice that the wines are entirely different. Undoubtedly certain types of natural wine closely resemble one another – those, for instance, that undergo reductive winemaking or whites that experience extended skin maceration or are aged in foudres (controlled oxidation) – like it or not (and many can claim fairly not to like it) this is the imprint of the winemaking. Terroir, however, is the subtle accent which, when you taste the wines next to each other, pinpoints their respective identities and emphasizes that the wines were born in different vineyards.

Homogeneity is the curse of the international style whereof the wine is so denatured, so reliant on the heavy hand of the winemaker that one might struggle to discern from which hemisphere it originated.

Natural wines are expensive

By definition, organic and biodynamic viticulture cannot be done on the cheap. A truly natural wine will often come from a small domaine with scattered vineyards that are often difficult to farm except by hand and horse. Harvests are selective and by hand rather than machine. The eventual quantity of wine produced may be minuscule, often numbering hundreds of bottles. An artisan product is, by definition, one that is made by hand, not in bulk. Relatively speaking, however, the wines are inexpensive compared to those spoofy efforts concocted by oenologists to appeal to a certain kind of wine critic. Alternatively, take away the marketing subsidies, trumpery and deep discounting of brands and natural wines don’t seem costly at all in comparison.

Natural wine is only popular because it is a trend that people have latched on to

The natural wine scene in the UK, such as it isn’t, is a pinprick, a pleasing divertissement. Those who support the wines are passionate about them and happy to trumpet their virtues. And why not – it is difficult to be passionate about over-marketed brands and the same old growers who have been on the scene for years. To have a scene you must have an organisation and a mouthpiece. Thankfully, the growers are sufficiently independent to plough their own furrow. When they convene it is at La Dive, La Remise and satellite wine festivals which are more like parties or family affairs.

I think we are too hung up on definitions and labelling. We’ve seen how the appellation system can stifle creativity by setting artificial (and occasionally anomalous) constraints. When I buy a unpasteurised cheese in a farmer’s market I’m taking a certain amount on trust and use my knowledge of the maker – and my senses – to make an informed buying decision. I am not buying a label or a movement but the provenance of the food, after all. In the same spirit natural wines are wines made by bunch of growers who happen to feel the same way about wine. They know what they mean individually what it means to work naturally, but don’t feel it is appropriate to have a binding definition to take account of all the nuances and niceties of their craft.

And, as I’ve said, natural winemakers are not targeting supermarkets, high street stores, competitions or international tastings. As I discovered a lot of growers prefer to sell directly to wine bars rather than wine merchants and, in Paris, you see them in those wine bars pouring their own products. That’s what I call getting close to the consumer.

Natural wine is not a mass movement nor is it a visibly marketed one. It is simply that an expanding group of (mostly young) growers is making wine with minimal interventions and there is a small core of devotees who love the way the wines taste. I think we all need to learn to be less concerned about labels and more interested in what’s in the bottle.

The reaction I get from people who drink natural wine ranges from bemusement, amusement, excitement and adoration. Most acknowledge that these are not run-of-the-mill wines, by which they mean wines that feature in supermarkets or the high street. Most acknowledge that the wines possess strong flavours – reds are said to be earthy, rustic, meaty, wild, whilst whites are cidery, funky, spicy, mineral, challenging, food-friendly.

There has been a pseudo-academic backlash to natural wines which reminds me that a few years ago biodynamics was scornfully dismissed as a shitty philosophy buried in a cow horn and the geomantic ravings of a few eccentrics. Nowadays, so many of the world’s greatest growers are biodynamic, or in conversion, that it is nonsense to call it a fringe philosophy even if you think there are questionable elements. Evidence for the validity of an action is not what we may calibrate in a laboratory but can only be seen and understood in the vineyard itself. We shouldn’t really say that certain agricultural philosophies or winemaking practices are invalid because they have no scientific underpinning. Science is not an exact science; history proves that. Natural wine is a choice, the very simple logic being that the best and truest wine is made with the fewest possible interventions. Each year is the beginning of a journey that will take the vigneron in a different direction; the creativity of nature is like Dante’s Virgil (or Beatrice, if the outcome is heavenly!). The role of the natural winemaker is to reflect what he or she is given and try to guide the wine as truly and simply as possible to the bottle.

Le Roc des Anges, Roussillon

There are degrees of what might be described as natural – one grower’s natural wine may be another grower’s “super-natural” wine. Inconsistency and resistance to easy definition are natural wine’s most infuriating characteristic to the majority of critics. Wines are snapshots – different grapes, different terroirs, different blends, young vines, old vines, different vinifications with the wild yeasts and low sulphur adding to the danger. Things happen. Shit happens. Not for nothing are cuvees named L’Echappée Belle, Hurluberlu, Grain de Folie. Natural wines reflect the temperament of the growers and the wild yeasts themselves – restless, dynamic, edgy and unconstrained. Look at the extraordinary of different cuvees made by growers such as Puzelat, Courtois, Mosse and Robinot, something serious, something quaffable, something crazy…

What is the wine about? Imagine a cathedral lit with every light and line focused on the high altar. And on the altar, very reverently placed, intensely there, a stave of oak, a punnet of blackcurrants and the gospel according to Robert Parker. (with apologies to HG Wells)

I love these wines for the same reason that I adore simplicity. They speak directly like an emotion communicated simply in a poem or cleanly presented food conveying strong natural flavours (who cares about rough edges) or an intense piece of music that moves us on our pulses. Art that aims at high art, an aesthetic intending to inspire awe or devotion, may be admirable, but I don’t enjoy it on a visceral level; I don’t feel as if I am participating which is also why I’m not a fan of would-be architectural wines, painstakingly and preciously constructed in the winery, controlled, modulated, honed and toned. The wine is made as a means to end and that end is critical approbation, due respect which will inevitably command a certain price in the market. Most of us drink wine at the table, rather than on bended knee.

Eliminating risk helps to achieve consistency, but is that the point of making wine? Should the artist minimise inspiration (Picasso once said: “I don’t take drugs – I am drugs”) to please the broadest section of the general public or should he or she work passionately with the material in their field.

Fredi Torres, Sao del Coster, Priorat

The first question the natural vigneron should pose him or herself is “what is the nature of my terroir?” Just as great grapes can be ruined by clumsy winemaking so low sulphur wines are irrelevant unless they are a continuation of an organic process begun in the vineyard. Thus a natural winemaker works not in monoculture, but in a varied landscape shared with nature. The vine is part of the landscape; it takes its signature from the landscape. Biodiversity is the key, the vineyard should be alive in every respect for here is where the language of the wine is primarily expressed.

The decision to use wild rather than cultured yeasts further determines whether a wine can be called natural. A natural fermentation with many different types of yeast will make the wine different every year because each yeast has different character and reacts and combines differently. For some winemakers this lack of certainty is a gamble and they use cultured yeasts to give controlled fermentations. Natural wines depend on not filtering out natural diversity; conventional wines profile desirable characteristics.
More contentious is the use (or non-use) of sulphur. According to advocates of no sulphur (such as Houillon) healthy viticulture enables the wine to create its own defence mechanism to bacterial spoilage. He admits, however, that not using sulphur is not a matter of dogma, it is a qualitative judgement, respecting the grapes. There are winemakers who do not have the wherewithal to make this leap to zero additions.

Having said that there is an element of uncertainty most natural winemakers are not swivel-eyed, hocus-pocus spouting fanatics leaving their wines in the capricious hands of nature. Wine does not always behave predictably, either in the winery, the bottle or the glass. As an extreme example the white and red wines of Cornelissen can pong to high Etna of sulphides, mercaptans and je ne sais quoi. Three or four days in an unstopped decanter, however, and the naughty whiffs disperse leaving a lovely, fresh wine. Although this is not always the way things work out, what does not kill the wine can actually make it stronger. The wine, like any living entity, may eventually find its unique natural balance.

The greatest wines need time to settle and you should not expect perfection from the moment you pull the cork. Aeration, the ideal temperature, the shape of the glass, are elements that shape the development of the wine and natural wines are no different in this regard. Reduction is a feature of many natural wines, but reductive winemaking is by no means exclusive to natural wine.
Those who attack natural wines do so on a number of fronts with curious assertions based on rank prejudice at the worst and poor information at the best. It is fine to claim that you don’t like a particular wine because it doesn’t conform to your particular taste, it is a different matter to lump disparate growers and their wines into a single group and dismiss that group unilaterally, and something else to use specious reasoning to reach that viewpoint.