I was listening to Chef David Chang’s podcast, where he talked with sweetgreen co-founder Nicolas Jammet on the new Momofuku x sweetgreen collaboration. It uses kelp, and the two culinary titans were chatting how it is so good for the environment, and how lucky they feel to be in a position that has the power to bring this “uncool” ingredient to mass consumers and make it cool. Chef Chang commented that kelp is what he grew up eating in the 70s, and he feels that the next wave of “innovation” is just going back to how things were done in the last century.
That’s how I feel about a lot of food & bev innovation these days – back to nature. And that brings up natural wine. The first time I heard about the term was when I was working in Amsterdam; a hip coworker was talking enthusiastically about this new wine bar in de Pijp. “They ONLY have NATURAL wine!!” He exclaimed this exclusivity as such a badge of honor, so I went to check it out after work. The bar has every element of the hippest locales in Chicago’s West Loop or NYC’s SoHo: all menu written on chalk board, tiny tables crammed too close to each other, industrial, exposed ceiling, and bartenders who all look like just coming back from their GQ cover shoot. As for the wine? 12 euros a glass. Not bad by Chicago/NYC standard, but definitely pricey for Amsterdam. They were good – I mean, not bad. But what I remember the most about the experience was, well, the experience, not the wine.
Eater had an oped diving deep on natural wine last month, which proclaimed that natural wine “is to the beginning of the 2020s what the craft cocktail was to the onset of the 2010s”. It’s cool, it’s moral, it signals that you not only know wine, but also care about our dirt and soil. I’m all in for anything good for our environment, but I’m still confused on where I stand on natural wine. It is always presented as a premium, with a glowing halo. But I haven’t tasted any natural wine that I’d give more than 3 out of 5 (and I worked a decent amount of years in Europe and then in restaurants) (but if someone has natural wine recommendations, please I’m all in!) I do hope that one day natural wine can be superior not only from a moral sense (and a price sense), but a taste, enjoyment sense.
Querida – thanks for bringing up the topic of natural wine! This is a topic where I have seen a strong divergence between the old guard (including sommeliers and long-standing winemakers) and the new guard (young winemakers and trend-focused media). After conversations with some of my co-workers in the restaurant industry, I’m a little more skeptical of the benefits. On one hand, they are very expressive of the terroir and vintage; without any additives to catalyze fermentation or stabilize the final product, the wine is more of a product of nature than nurture (by the winemaker). This makes for a wholly unique wine. On the other hand, though, there are a lot of cons. First and foremost, natural wine demonizes sulfur as a chemical additive that detracts from the character of the wine – which is untrue by many accounts. Sulfur is a byproduct of all winemaking, even natural – it is essential to the process. Furthermore, sulfur is required for preserving the life of the wine. Natural wine’s lifetime is necessarily less than a year; to create a product that can evolve and improve over years and decades, sulfur is critical. Second, even when comparing natural to young traditionally made wine, there is a markedly different flavor profile. Because of the longer fermentation of natural wines, they tend to have a more “funky” or “barnyard-like” profile, regardless of the varietal. Third, in my opinion, natural winemaking somewhat detracts from the art and science of traditional winemaking – the careful management of blending, fermentation, aging, and bottling designed to create a product that will last years or generations. This loss is less quantifiable, but in an industry that loves the romance of its own existence, it is not insignificant.
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