Dirty, Grimy Wine Marketing
“I think we’ve been living in ‘Parkerworld’ for the last few decades, and many consumers are fed up with homogenized supermarket wines, and now need a bit of singularity, uniqueness and authenticity, not to mention some real quality.”
“So natural wines fill a need for authenticity, for a singular product that was made by a real person, and that tastes unique, and that expresses the terroir of where it came from.”
Fabio Bartolomei, winemaker, Vinos Ambiz on natural wines at Catavino.net
I can dish it out, so I should be willing to take it. And I am willing to take criticism for the stand I’ve taken against the way the so-called “Natural” Wine producers and champions use denigration of wines not invited to their party in order to market their wares.
Fabio is a fairly vocal champion and producer of so-called “Natural” Wine. And he’s a nice guy. But you have to either be so completely wrapped up in your own mission so as to ignore reality or completely ignorant of what has been happening in the world of wine over the past twenty years to be able to come out and say so-called “Natural” wine fills a need for authenticity, singular wine products, real people making wine, unique tastes in wine and wines that express terroir.
As though in the past few decades none of these things existed.
Looking at California alone, the vast majority—probably upwards of 90%—of the wines being produced are made by real, dedicated winemakers who strive and succeed in exposing their terroir and are making wines that are certainly authentic…not to mention, of real quality.
This attitude that everything every wine produced prior to the rise of the so-called “Natural” wine movement is rampant of the movement’s champions. It’s a project built on the desire to denigrate. And that’s ugly.
The next time you hear a fan or champion of so-called “Natural” Wine imply or, like in this case, come right out and say that non “Natural” Wines are inauthentic, lacking in quality, or fail to express terroir, you ought to go take a shower. Because it’s a pretty dirty way to market and promote wine.
As a fellow member of the Swill Producers Guild I say, “bring on the Mega Purple, the sulfur dioxide and anything else you can throw in there”. I think the Wine Wars are about to begin. The pendulum is always swinging. Whenever the practices of some groups goes too far, the response is always extreme. I would be happy if we all could just get along. Forget about defining “Natural”, maybe we can pool our outrage and get the TTB to at least get wineries to put Nutrition Labels on their wines. After all it is a consumable product and as such, we should know what goes into and what comes out of the bottle.
You are certainly correct that some of the innovations “natural wine” proponents claim as their own have been going on for decades and that the wine world is much larger than “Parkerization”+ supermarket plonk. But it is an age-old marketing strategy (especially in politics) to argue that innovations in the past have been “weak tea”, “incremental half-measures doomed to fail”, “We’re doing change right–revolution not evolution”, etc.
I’m not sure I see what is inherently wrong with making this claim if indeed the change on offer is more extreme than in the past–which is true of some (not all) of the proponents of natural wine, especially winemakers such as Frank Cornelissen. (I don’t know about Bartolomei.)
Granted, the definition of “natural wine” is ambiguous and some fairly conventional winemakers are (undeservedly) jumping on the wagon. But why is it morally wrong to point out that one has an approach that offers greater change than past practices in those cases where the claim is true?
You seem to be suggesting that “natural wines” are nothing but ordinary, terroir-driven, small-production wines parading as something else. I’m not sure that is true in all cases.
Hi Dwight.
What I’m claiming is merely that too may champions “Natural” Wine are making claims about these wines that can’t be sustained and in doing so, denigrating all other wines. Read this again: “So natural wines fill a need for authenticity, for a singular product that was made by a real person, and that tastes unique, and that expresses the terroir of where it came from.”
Really…we wine lovers and the 1000s of artisan winemakers who toiled over the past two decades to suss out terroir are being saved by the “Natural” Winemakers who, finally, are bringing “authenticity” and “unique tastes” and “expression of terroir”. Really?
But here’s the real irony, Dwight. How often have we heard “Natural” Wine’s Champions complain about others claiming that their wines are “dirty” or pools of biodiversity or un-travellable? They object to this characterization. Yet they have no problem characterizing all other wins a inauthentic, devoid of terroir’s signals and made by not-so-real people.
It’s dirty, ugly, marketing.
Agreed they should dispense with the “real person” nonsense, and the concept of “authenticity” is as abused as the word “natural”. But some of these wines do taste differently, although most don’t appeal to me. And if someone thinks the expression of terroir really requires minimal (or no) use of sulfur dioxide that strikes me as an arguable point about which winemakers will legitimately disagree. So I think there is some reason to draw a contrast with conventional wine making in their marketing.
Maybe they should promote their wines as “pools of biodiversity”–isn’t biodiversity a good thing?
That the backlash against Parkerworld is here and very, very real is only denied by those last few dead-enders waiting patiently for their Parker scores to start bringing in the orders from China. This, however, has very little to do with the natural wine movement (whatever that might be today) and much more to do with simple palate fatigue from overblown wine combined with an increasing education of and access to previously hard to find good value wine regions in Europe.
Authenticity has much more to do with an expression of place (which California is quite frankly still horrible at) and honest pricing (i.e. the antithesis of which would be a recent “cult winemaker” who has never produced Albarino in his life, yet releases his first effort at $50/bottle or twice as much as the best old vine Albarino coming out of Rias Baixas) than the ever shifting ground of what constitutes “natural wine.” Terroir driven wines, expressing both a sense of place and value are not dependent upon “natural” production methods, though the two are not mutually exclusive either.
There is a saying that is making the rounds of the wine world I work in: “Having a wine list full of Napa Valley Cult wines is like having a closet full of leisure suits.” It’s becoming clear that the Napa Valley heyday of approximately 1994-2008 was not a solid trend with any real foundation or roots but rather a passing fancy and fad driven by too much money, too little sophistication, some glossy coffee table magazines and a fat lawyer in Baltimore…….an era of bad taste that American wine consumers will increasingly look back on with a mix of amusement and embarrassment….like fondue, pet rocks and leisure suits.
Isn’t all marketing dirty and grimy?
Bosis
Bosis,
I don’t think all marketing is dirty and grimy, Bosis. For example, many wineries will invite customers to their winery for a lunch, where they taste back vintages, dine and hear discussions of the wines they are consuming. Sounds pretty clean to me. Now, if at this meal, they went about saying all other wines are inauthentic and not made by real people, that would be dirty and grimy.