Foodizen: What's in Your Glass?
Apr. 23, 2019
The world of wine has not been, historically, the all-time place to look for social consciousness, diversity, or ethics. That's not to say that vino is any more than lacking in these virtues than any other corner of society. Simply with the age-old stereotype of the rich vino snob, wine is particularly like shooting fish in a barrel to dismiss equally hopelessly unenlightened. There'south a reason, subsequently all, that i of the most talked-nigh pieces of vino writing last year, past Jon Bonné in Dial , was titled " Why Is the Wine World So United nations-Woke ?"
And yet, the nation's buzziest beverage tendency—or move, depending on who you speak with—is undoubtedly the ascent of and so-called natural wines. Philadelphia was a little late to the tendency (or move), but just look at how the city'south wine lists take inverse over the past few years. At present, you'll be hard-pressed to discover a popular bar or restaurant without at least a few funky, fizzy, cloudy, or earthy wines with cool labels and catchy names. Example in signal is the most predictable contempo eating house opening of the leap, Pizzeria Beddia'due south reincarnation in Fishtown, which owner Joe Beddia calls "a sit-down pizzeria with natural wine." Beddia recently told Grid Magazine : "Everyone cares where their food comes from, but wine'south another matter … What's in your glass? You probably couldn't say what's in there."
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By now, we're keenly aware of food movements like farm-to-tabular array, of sourcing produce sustainably and locally, and the push to support restaurants and companies that pay a living wage and work for social justice. Only is drinking an organic, skin-fermented, unfiltered, unsulfured wine, made from a lesser-known grape, role of that motion to change the world? Aye and no. Maybe. Information technology'southward a stickier question.
"You can definitely say that natural wines take a identify in that movement. It'south the same style we think about food, about what we put into our bodies," says Etinosa Emokpae, head sommelier at Walnut Street Cafe, which has 1 of the urban center'due south best wine lists, and a wide selection of natural wines. "I don't desire to say, 'If you don't drink natural wines, y'all're a terrible person,'" Emokpae says, with a express mirth. "Only if you have in mind how to take better care of the planet when you drink wine, that'south definitely not a bad matter."
"Natural wine has made vino more accessible to more people. Not only dudes in suits drinking big red wines in a steakhouse," says Tim Kweeder.
"Natural wine" is, naturally, a adequately vague (and charged) term, just information technology basically encompasses a number of approaches to grape growing and winemaking. On a basic level, it means the grapes are grown using organic farming practices in depression-yield vineyards, handpicked, and so immune to undergo "spontaneous" fermentation, with wild yeasts present on the grape skins. Information technology'due south often a affair of what's not added. Most "unnatural" commercial wines—peculiarly many of the mass-market bargain bottles under $x—are total of synthetic compounds and chemicals. More than than 60 additives can legally be added to wine earlier it's bottled. Only the natural winemaker adds goose egg (or almost nothing) and removes nothing (or nearly nothing). Above all, natural winemakers are exceedingly transparent about their choices, often press technical lists of winemaking decisions on labels and websites.
"Information technology always starts at the level of farming," Emokpae says. "You accept producers that are caring about their land, thinking about what's amend for their land."
An even larger question is i of climate alter and biodiversity. For some fourth dimension now, I've been arguing that people should drink more weird and obscure wines . For years, the global wine industry had been devolving toward a monoculture, with local, indigenous grape varieties ripped out in favor of more than immediately assisting, mass-marketplace types—such as chardonnay, pinot noir, and cabernet sauvignon. There are ane,368 known wine grape varieties, but most fourscore percent of the globe'south wine is made from just 20 kinds of grapes. Many of the rest confront extinction. It's probably non a surprise that the kind of winemakers who abound obscure grapes are often the aforementioned ones who are committed to organic farming, hand harvesting and natural winemaking techniques.
Information technology's why Emokpae stocks her vino list with lesser-known grapes such equally müller-thurgau, tannat, and listan negro. "What grapes grow the best and where? Information technology's not like you can simply grow pinot noir or chardonnay everywhere," she says. "People are starting to understand that farmers have to make decisions based on climatic change. It's just an environmental reality."
Still, the definition of "natural" is hotly debated. Some natural winemakers eschew adding sulfur, which means they bottle wine cloudy with sediment. Some winemakers historic period the wine in concrete tanks, or even clay amphora, instead of wood barrels. Some go out white wine on its skins, creating the orangish wines that have gained popularity over the past decade. What all concur on is that the producer should use "minimal intervention" when making wine. This can be taken to an extreme: An acclaimed Austrian natural winemaker once told me he planned to stop tasting his wines earlier bottling them, because he felt even his own human sense of taste was an intervention on nature's volition.
Unsurprisingly, natural wine has faced hostility from the established vino community. Many superlative critics and sommeliers dismiss many natural wines as "flawed"—which is what the establishment e'er does. The music establishment said the same affair about jazz, Elvis, punk, grunge, and hip hop when each came on the scene. But only sample some of the natural wines poured at Walnut Street Cafe, such equally the light-bodied trollinger from Germany or the serious carignan from Mendocino, California—both easy-drinking and serious, a contrast of bright, fresh fruit flavors, and more complex notes and structure—and y'all'll see what side by side-generation deliciousness tastes like.
Is drinking an organic, skin-fermented, unfiltered, unsulfured wine, fabricated from a lesser-known grape, part of that movement to change the world? Yeah and no. Perhaps.
A more nuanced and astute argument against the natural wine motility is that it's too niche, insidery, and hipster-focused. Plenty of the near prestigious European wines would certainly qualify as "natural." For centuries, they've been organically farmed, handpicked, wild fermented, and bottled with well-nigh nix intervention. Only how could, say, an old-school Rhine riesling—with a staid, old-fashioned characterization full of scripty German words and an unpronounceable umlauted proper name—compete with a blend of pinot gris and riesling from Oregon called "Where Ya Pajamas At?" with a cool cartoon label (a terrific wine, past the mode, from old Philly residents Ross and Bee Maloof). Accept a wild guess which wine younger, less experienced consumers are going to gild.
"Natural wine has made wine more attainable to more people. Not but dudes in suits drinking large red wines in a steakhouse," says Tim Kweeder, who has extolled the virtues of natural wine for years at a.kitchen, Kensington Quarters, and now as the general manager of the soon-to-open Bloomsday Cafe , a new all-twenty-four hour period café and natural vino bar in Society Hill. "Natural wine has been slowly on the rise worldwide for 20 years," Kweeder says. "But lately, finally, information technology's become more than of a buzzword in Philadelphia."
It'southward generated so much buzz that even the Pennsylvania Liquor Command Board has taken notice. At the Fine Wine & Good Spirits store at 11 th and Anecdote, wine specialist Max Gottesfeld has added several display shelves dedicated to natural wines in just the past month. "In that location's massive growth in natural wines," Gottesfeld says. "The growth is well-nigh equally large every bit the growth in rosé over the past few years."
This is non to say that Gottesfeld hasn't been stocking and promoting natural wines for the amend part of a decade. Merely, until recently, they were obscurely shelved under "organic wines." Gottesfeld finds himself now fielding questions on natural wines from customers who, before now, had merely drank mass-market chardonnay. He says, "They come up in and say, 'I read about orange wines, do yous have any?'" In response, he's written new shelf talkers that give a sort of crash grade to customers in Natural Wine 101.
The just downside? The supply of natural wines is still relatively pocket-size.
"Information technology'due south hard to get these wines anymore," Gottesfeld says. "They've just become so popular."
Jason Wilson is The Citizen'south 2022 Jeremy Nowak Fellow, funded by Leap Signal Partners, in honor of our late chairman Jeremy Nowak. He is the author of iii books, including near recentlyGodforsaken Grapes, series editor ofThe Best American Travel Writing, and writes for the Washington Post, New York Times, New Yorker and many other publications.
Photo by Anthony Pezzotti 
brandonburborpoes.blogspot.com
Source: https://thephiladelphiacitizen.org/foodizen-whats-in-your-glass/
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