With regard to “Natural Wines”, what’s wrong with this sentence:
“Along with eschewing additives, natural wines are small-batch, made using traditional equipment and fermented using the wild yeasts that occur naturally in the winery, contributing to the terroir of the finished product.”
All correct answers (there are more than one) receive a Huzzah!
You get a modified “Huzzah”, Jeff
A finished product does not possess terroir. Also, what is “traditional equipment”?
re: Also, what is “traditional equipment”?
Feet?
I stopped reading at “…eschewing additives.” Screw it.
“Contributing to the terroir” I prefer wines that only possess partial terroir.
Words like these are almost compulsory it seems for natural wine advocates. I think “eschewing” is a pre-industrial word for “avoiding”.
Take this from the UK’s Gergovie Wines:
“We work with a few of a new generation of winemakers eschewing chemical pesticides and fertilisers in favour of letting the land and the grape speak (sing even). Heavy-handed manipulations are not used at any stage of the wine-making and the fermentation is the product of wild, indigenous yeasts. You will not be tasting industrial products but a direct expression of grape, place and personality.”
Traditional equipment? Does this mean feet and horses?
Small batch? 10 litres? 1000 litres?
The yeasts in the winery are not necessarily related to the terroir. Yeasts do come in on the grapes but there are others in the environment as well
As there is no charter for “Natural Wines” it’s very hard to establish what exactly one is. It would seem that “natural” winemakers don’t do more than what other good winemakers do anyway.
The term is derogatory towards other wines, implying they are not natural and therefore bad, however while grape juice may naturally want to be wine, wine wants to be vinegar, and so some “un-natural” intervention is always needed.
Um, because terroir is viticulture (in the vineyard) based and not viniculture (the practice of winemaking techniques) based? Therefore the precious and unpredictable use of indigenous yeast has nothing to do with terroir?