Natural Wine
Festival A’dam

a bit of context

Call them ‘unconventional’, ‘low intervention’ or ‘raw’, natural wines are causing a stir in cities worldwide. ‘Natural’ (versus conventional) sounds kind of cool, it has a ring of ‘rebelliousness’ to it. Some of these winemakers pride themselves in being ’terroirists’. Some like to see natural winemakers as ‘the punks of wine’. But below the hype, there’s a deeper story to be unearthed.

Winemaking (like all agriculture) rapidly industrialized during the second half of the 20th century. In the service of higher production, stability, and consistent flavor profiles year over year, winemaking became heavily reliant on fertilizer, pesticides, tractor tilling, machine picking, adding yeasts and large quantities of sulfites, and various other chemicals. As mass production became the norm of modern winemaking, ‘efficiency’ became its motto. And ‘profit maximization’ of course. Greed was good. With three euro wines in supermarkets all over Europe, consumption was democratized. Finally, everybody had it all. But did we really?

Monoculture, erosion, the ‘winemakers disease’ and infertile soil
Industrialized, aka ‘conventional’, winemaking means monoculture; lands that are vulnerable to erosion, vineyard workers who develop Parkinson’s disease en masse (a link that’s recognized by the French government), and wines containing glyphosates and other chemicals. That stinks a bit, now does it?

In the late 1970s, certain winemakers began to realize that this type of agriculture was not healthy. Neither for the workers being doused in Roundup (glyphosate), nor for the life in the soil (that has to help feed the vines) that was turning infertile and at times even toxic. And it definitely wasn’t sustainable for the grapes: the one and only ingredient that a wine should in fact contain. In 1981, Marcel Lapierre made his first sulphite-free wine and became a pioneer of natural wine. He never looked back.

Most vineyards in the natural wine domain are small operations run by family, friends, and hired hands in harvesting season. From the grape to the bottle, the entire value chain is transparent and centralized. This is unique in the world of processed food (and manufacturing in general), where value chains tend to be complex and intransparent. It means that natural winemakers, these individuals who are both farmers and creatives, know like no one else the effects of weather, the time of picking; basically any intervention will have on their product. Their sensitivity to subtle changes in the system makes them the proverbial canaries in the coal mine of agriculture.

Nature’s fuzzy logic
These ‘rebels’ we’re talking about realized they needed to turn their vineyards into biodiverse ecosystems. They did away with the tidy, ‘bald’ vineyards, with their mathematically straight rows of vines and total lack of crop or flora diversity. Instead, many adopted the biodynamic principles of Rudolf Steiner or at the very least worked organically, whether certified or not. They started to use the incredibly efficient design that comes built-in to nature: value the system and the system will create abundance. Their vineyards had cover crops in between rows of vines, often with trees or herbs growing and sometimes they had animals grazing to work with nature’s apparent chaos to pioneer earthbound means of growing grapes and making wine. True, to the casual onlooker these vineyards may appear messy, and the wines they produce may be cloudy and unfiltered, but most of all they are alive.

When you think about it, the underlying logic is either surreal or perverted: Somehow we were led to believe that the modern use of pesticides and fungicides was ‘clean’, that adding specific yeasts, sugar, acids, tannins, wood chips, and substantial amounts of sulfites helped wines to ‘taste better’. And that the few producers who are taking the age-old principles of nature to heart were ‘unkempt’, ‘unconventional’, and now: ‘rebellious’.

Times are changing
It’s only been recently that things are changing. Wines with nothing taken out and no added substances (except tiny doses of sulfites) are having their moment. All in the service of wines that truly reflect the terroir and the fruit that make up that life force. Living wines. When you think about it, this should be normal. It’s not cool. It is just common sense. And sometimes sticking to common sense requires the single-mindedness of a visionary. Or a rebel.

At the Natural Wine Festival A’dam, we salute those wise, stubborn visionaries – the hard-working, hard-headed winemakers. We invite you to come and meet them and of course to taste their wines with us on November 18h @ de Hallen in the heart of Amsterdam.

At this second edition, we will also feature the Green is Golden market (no admission fee for the market), with 25 hand-picked ‘eco-systemic’ food suppliers.

NB
There’s no global standard for ‘natural wines’. The term itself can be discussed for days and is as helpful as it is futile. Many winemakers who work biodynamically without additives have no desire to be categorized as ‘natural winemakers’. So instead of debating too much about criteria, let taste guide you and talk with the winemaker, hear how they work the land and how they make their wines.