Andy and Sebastien Riffault in Sancerre
NATURAL WINE DEFINED
At Artisan & Vine, all of our wines are either local (English) wines or natural. “Natural wines” are not yet legally defined within the EU. At Artisan & Vine, a natural wine is one made in a biodynamically or organically farmed vineyard, with indigenous (wild) yeast fermentation of hand harvested grapes, with minimal or no added sulphites or flavour enhancers. The principle is to source wines that demonstrate a clear Sense of Place. They taste like they come from somewhere rather than something.
Why are organic wines not enough? Within the EU, a certified “organic wine” only guarantees you organically grown grapes; the winemaker may add flavours (such as wood chips or caramel), stabilisers (such as sulphites), and preservatives during the wine making production. This is how mass produced cheaper wines can be created.
Natural wines are wines created with minimal intervention from the wine maker. Natural wine making requires the artisan to carefully attend to all steps of the growing, fermenting, and blending processes, knowing that additives cannot be used to correct the imperfections of nature. As Tim Atkin MW concluded in his May 2010 article in The Times, “Natural wines are the opposite of mass-produced wines, of “spoofulated”, personality-free beverages that could come from almost anywhere. These are hand-crafted products”. Often this makes natural wines commercially unviable on a mass, low cost scale. Vintages can vary significantly from year to year based on climate conditions, and personal attention means very low yielding vineyards. I reckon you’ll taste this difference.
HOW AND WHY I CAME TO LOVE NATURAL WINE
It was as late 2007 that I attended my first biodynamic wine tasting. I have never looked back. I tasted five wines that day and was instantly in love. These wines had such purity of flavour and intensity of character. Nothing needed to fight its way to unleash qualities in my mouth; everything seemed in balance. I understood that I was tasting a limited sample of wines, but I also understood that I was tasting something different. I equate it to the feeling you have when you taste real cocoa versus mass produced chocolate, or fresh squeezed juice versus that from concentrate, or percolated coffee versus instant. Even if you have no knowledge of how these products are produced, you taste that there is a difference. That is the feeling I first had about biodynamic wines and I have not changed my mind.
WINE ADDITIVES
There are some 60 different non-grape wine additives permitted to be added to ‘wine’ by EU law but Food Labelling Regulations in the UK exclude all drinks with an alcohol content exceeding 1.2% by volume, meaning only very low or non-alcoholic beers, wines and ciders are required to list all ingredients. Personally, I find that a little troublesome. It means I can’t be sure what I’m putting into my body when I order wine at a restaurant, bar or shop. It is a strange fact, I think, that in the UK my orange juice is served with so much information while I may not even know what grape a given wine is made from.
I’m building a small library of information on different wine additives allowed by the EU. Click here to read more.
