Natural wine – Vinification
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The process of making wine includes multiple steps from farming, harvesting, pressing, macerating, fermenting, aging and so on… The ways in which each of these steps are realized depends upon the winemaker’s decisions. Some choose to harvest manually, others use machinery. Some decide to let indigenous yeasts, naturally present in the environment, take care of the fermentation while others incorporate yeast batches bought at a lab. Some filter their wines, others do not. Ultimately, these choices depend on the winemaker’s vision and philosophy. Today, we will drive into the world of natural wines. Those wines for which winemakers opt for minimum intervention to express their grapes’ most natural aromas, reveal their authentic terroir, and return to more sustainable practices. We will assess how these wines differ from others and expand on their underpinning philosophy.
What is an organic wine? What is a biodynamic wine? What is a natural wine?
Chances are, if you are not a wine professional or connoisseur you have no idea what differentiates all of these. Indeed, there is no simple answer, because making wine takes time and is the sum of numerous complicated, personal choices. Hence, most people have no idea what unfolds behind the scenes of transforming grapes into a drinkable alcoholic nectar, let alone what differentiates a “normal” and an organic wine. To understand a little more how natural wines differ from other types of wine we have to talk about some of the steps in the winemaking process.
To state things simply, the process of making wine can be divided into 4 main steps: farming, harvesting, vinifying, raising and bottling. Natural winemaking differs from other styles during farming, harvesting, and vinifying. Hence these are the steps we shall explore subsequently.
In the farming stage, winemakers cultivate a vine plant until it blooms and delivers a fruit: grapes. Winemakers must wait until these grapes ripen before harvesting them. During this phase, vines are subject to changing weather: sun and drought in summer, rain in fall, snow and cold in winter, and frost as well as hail storms in spring. While vines have adapted to resist these changes, it sometimes does not resist extreme weather events. To protect their plants, and safeguard their harvest, winemakers often treat their vines with natural concoctions or chemicals. Conventional and organic winemakers often react to these harsh events, treating their vines afterwards to compensate for damages. On the contrary, winemakers working biodynamically try to anticipate these events, by treating their vines with natural products beforehand. Professionals making natural wines believe they should not alter nature’s will. As such, they follow a 100% organic farming policy of no pesticides, and no irrigation system regardless of weather each year.
Once grapes are ripe, harvesting can begin. Harvesting dates will vary from one region to the other, depending on the different weather events that took place throughout the year. Although the global trend is drastically shifting towards earlier harvesting dates caused by drier and warmer climates. On the one hand, some winemakers harvest with machines to reduce the cost of labor. On the other hand, some only harvest by hand. Hand harvesting has 2 major advantages. First, trained harvesters can recognize healthy grape bunches from unhealthy ones that may hinder vintage quality (wine from a specific year). Second, hand harvesting ensures grapes are not crushed or damaged before being processed. Natural winemakers belong to the hand-harvesting school as industrial harvesting is forbidden according to the natural wine philosophy.
Then, in the cellars, harvested grapes will be transformed into wine by fermentation – this is called vinification. This crucial process is perhaps the most technical one as it is divided in many substeps entailing a series of natural chemical reactions, and (alcoholic) fermentation is only one of them. Many important differences with natural wines take place during vinification with a policy of no intrants. In other words, natural winemakers do not alter or correct these natural reactions by adding or subtracting elements to the wine. For instance, fermentation naturally occurs when grape juice is placed under conditions of darkness, and cool temperature because grapes contain yeast in their skin. These natural yeasts, also called indigenous yeast, are composed of different strains varying in quality, among which some are desirable while others are unwanted. Only the Saccharomyces cerevisiae yeasts are the tenors of a positive fermentation. Indeed, they are the ones contributing to the formation of alcohol as well as production of beneficial metabolites that confer to wine its unique, recognizable aromatic panel. A common practice to isolate S. cerevisiae and control the micro-organic environment (i.e., prevent the growth of spoilage microorganisms) is adding Sulfur dioxide (S02) prior to the onset of alcoholic fermentation. As a matter of fact, sulfur is the only element protecting wine from brettanomyces yeasts, bacteria infection, and oxidation in the long-run. Nevertheless natural winemakers, following their no additive policy, refuse to add sulfur before and during alcoholic fermentation – keeping a leeway of adding sulfur up to 30 mg/l after fermentation. They believe this alters the pure taste and expression of wine.
Furthermore, there are other elements than sulfur that can alter the structure and characteristics of a wine during vinification. Among which, adding sugar, or extracting water out of the wine to keep only the most significant composites. One technique for water extraction is known as reverse osmosis, which consists of exerting high pressure (80 bars) to filter water through a semipermeable membrane while retaining other important molecules. This type of processing is coined as a “brutal and traumatic physical technique” and those are forbidden in natural winemaking.
As you may have understood by now, natural winemaking differs from other types of wine by relying solely on organic farming, hand harvesting, and sustaining to a minimum intervention policy during vinification. The goal behind these choices or constraints, depending on how one sees it, is to create more sain, sustainable, and authentic wines. Notwithstanding this aim is noble, some attack the durability, travelling, and aging potential of these wines. Indeed, they can often be exquisite when tasted in the cellars, developing powerful, even sensual fruit aromas, and a mighty minerality. Nonetheless, they must be drunk rapidly as their low sulfate dosage will not protect them from deterioration over time. The question remains whether the trend will persist or die down over time. In the last 10 years their demand skyrocketed in accordance with a more general customer trend of returning to local, natural practices and products. Nowadays, a growing number of natural winemakers are confronted with difficulties to sell their stocks and are left with growing uncertainty ahead of their future. With a rising competitive natural market some winemakers may be forced to return to conventional winemaking or seek other means to popularize their wines.
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