DROPLETS: The Week in Natural Wine
Vital natural wine counter-propaganda. This week: Is natural wine fascist? The impending claret catastrophe. The problem(s) with natural wine apps. R.I.P. Frédéric Henry. And more.
DROPLETS is a roughly bi-weekly round-up of quick takes, clapbacks, shout-outs, and other miscellany related to natural wine, wine-at-large, and the restaurant scene in Paris and beyond. It’s a smorgasbord of natural wine counter-propaganda to the Anglophone and French wine media. The first three topics in a given week are free, with access to the full deluge of ten topics limited to paid subscribers.
1. IS NATURAL WINE FASCIST?
On the 28th June, Eataly founder Oscar Farinetti used the occasion of Carso wine event Mare e Vitovska near Trieste to launch several rote broadsides against natural wine.
“Natural wine is a fascist term,” says Farinetti. “We need freedom.”
Farinetti’s Orwellian charge has been eagerly picked up by Gambero Rosso, who subsequently hounded a perceptibly peeved Luigi Tecce for commentary on the subject when all the Campania vignaiolo wished to speak about was his own aglianico.
At a moment when Italy’s governing party has roots in neo-fascism; when its rough equivalent in France just narrowly missed winning a parliamentary majority; when an openly fascistic candidate is barreling towards the US presidency (again), Farinetti’s use of language is ill-timed, if only because examples of actual fascism abound and in no way resemble natural wine.
Farinetti’s sentiment feels newsy because of who is saying it, and because of the prominence of Eataly.1 But it is far from creative; in fact it is a routine and unimaginative rhetorical flourish among conventional wine types everywhere. (I hear it often in France, too.) Such people also like calling environmental regulation “eco-fascism.” There is an obvious through-line to their reasoning: it is the facile, self-interested libertarian impulse of people defending their profiteering from scrutiny, whether at the hands of government regulators or, in the case of natural wine, more informed consumers.
Ultimately my difference with Farinetti lies with his conception of freedom. For winemakers, I would associate freedom with the possibility of producing wine without dependency on purveyors of agrochemical or enological additives, and without the necessity of conforming to wine ideotypes which have themselves been thoroughly corrupted by intensive farming and enological additives.
But for Farinetti and many of his suppliers, the right to maximize profit by maintaining and exploiting consumer ignorance is also, I suppose, a form of freedom.
2. CLARET CATASTROPHE
Vitisphere reports that in the face of an ongoing crisis of poor sales and climatic distruption, Bordeaux syndicate president Stéphane Gabard suggests a new strategy based around the creation of a new Bordeaux AOC sub-appellation for a sweetened, light red wine to be entitled Claret.
Not Clairet, which already designates a specific style of Bordeaux rosé, but Claret, with the T pronounced.
Alexandre Abellan’s interview, conducted at the syndicate’s July 12th general assembly, is straight-faced and respectful, but attains a certain comedy when even he cannot resist questioning Gabard’s utterly daft plan.
“You don’t fear that the nuance between claret and clairet would be a source of confusion for consumers?” he follows-up, after confirming that the difference in pronunciation between the two putatively different wine types would be perceptible only to French speakers.
“In the category of rosés, we have Bordeaux rosé and Bordeaux clairet. In the category of reds, we have red Bordeaux and Bordeaux claret. Voilà, we’re talking about two different things,” says Gabard, who throughout the interview comes across rather like a Martian sent to infiltrate human culture.
As historical precedent for the proposed new wine style, Gabard cites the British term claret, which remains in use, and which was first recorded in the 17th century referring to a light red from Bordeaux. He claims this origin to be distinct from that of the French term clairet, despite obvious etymological indications to the contrary.
The intentions of this superficially nonsensical project become clear only in light of the syndicate’s aim for Claret to be the first AOC to authorize the addition of sugar after fermentation (l’édulcoration), via MCR (concentrated rectified must) up to 7g/L in the final product.
“To have drinkability and roundness, we want a certain easiness, even at a low temperature,” claims Gabard.
What we’re talking about here is a coordinated attempt to blur the lines between wine and wine cooler, and by doing so, to create a sugary beverage aimed at what might politely be called very, very new wine markets far overseas.
To criticize wine neophytes’ taste for sweetened wines is to invite charges of elitism and rational-sounding appeals to the primacy of subjectivity in taste. But the fact is our personal tastes, when considered en masse, present certain externalities. Gabard’s plan for Bordeaux Claret is a nightmarish roadmap to viticultural spoliation, an encouragement to Bordeaux growers to push yields and harvest underripe, effectively outsourcing normal photosynthetic production of grape sugar to other regions (those producing the concentrated rectified grape must, which, let’s recall, is almost never organic, since those taking the trouble to farm organically rarely do so in service of making MCR).
Gabard says he hopes for Claret production to be effective in time for harvest 2025. But perhaps others with more influence in the region will speak up before then.
3. ARE YOU APP-Y NOW?
In an episode I take to be karmic retribution for my work exposing the controversy surrounding Sylvie Augereau’s message to vignerons participating in La Dive Bouteille, my own messages to vignerons participating in Monday’s Haut Les Mains salon in Burgundy have escaped the dedicated Whatsapp group and become the subject of controversy.
The salon’s organizer, my friend Jon Purcell, asked the group what everyone thought of allowing an outside wine app company to produce branded name plates for each winemakers stand, with QR codes linking to profiles on the company’s service. I am (or was, eep!) on friendly terms with the company’s founders, but the offer struck me as a poor fit for various reasons, and I made the mistake of gingerly speaking out against the proposed collaboration. This instantly enraged at least one Burgundy winemaker, who accused me of “talking shit.”
He was right, to the extent that it’s not a good look to critique the work of colleagues behind their backs in a Whatapp group. So I thought I’d explain my mild opposition to such a collaboration here, in the public record, as it were. I hope it will be taken as a matter of principle and really nothing personal. (The company’s presence at the salon is not a big deal to me either way.)
As I explained in the Whatsapp group, I distrust any company's effort to unite lots of small natural winemakers alongside lots of larger and usually less-natural winemakers under one brand, because in practice it tends to turn into a greenwashing (or natural-washing, as the case may be) service for the less-natural ones.
There is also the issue of the proliferation of QR codes on tasting tables. I don't think it's necessarily in the interest of small-scale natural winemakers to appear highly keen to harness the power of technology to “educate consumers” / market their wines, because this is a commercial posture associated with large-scale conventional wine producers with social media managers and advertising budgets and far more wine to sell.
This particular offer of collaboration also felt one-sided. In exchange for the winery information and tacit endorsement of every estate participating in the salon, the company would provide… Name plates that have the effect of making the company look like a paying sponsor of the salon. Usually companies fork over actual sponsorship money for that kind of product placement. I honestly just didn’t want the organizer to get rolled in this exchange.
It is a feature of our era that everyone seeks to package their activity as an app, rather than, say, as a magazine or a wine retailer. Perhaps it is because, thanks to the precedents of Google, Instagram, Uber, Spotify, et al, we associate the word app with a profitability and reach far beyond those more traditional activities. But natural wine, as an agricultural product subject to the rhythms of fermentation, is just not as big or as bankable as ride-sharing or photo-sharing. As a subject, it is barely bigger than a hood ornament for those seeking to make millions off the conventional wine trade.
Subscribers can scroll down for 7 more curated links and quick takes, on topics including Raisin’s business model; EU wine labelling law; Mes Bourgognes in Beaune; Chanel winemaker Nicolas Audebert, and more.