Speaker 1: Natural wine is a term that doesn't have a rigid
Speaker 1: or standard definition. As we learned from our friends in
Speaker 1: Port one of the series, natural wine, in its essence
Speaker 1: is really just about a non intervening style of winemaking
Speaker 1: that adds nothing to the fermenting grapes or in the
Speaker 1: vineyard from which they originate. From this definition, the question
Speaker 1: many of you have been wondering is what is added
Speaker 1: to wine? Isn't it just grapes? Well, let's address that
Speaker 1: and dive back in to natural wines Part two. As
Speaker 1: Somalias and wine nerds and so on kind of began
Speaker 1: to realize that, like, you know, we should ask questions
Speaker 1: about how things are made. I think the general public
Speaker 1: has become aware of it at a similar pace, maybe
Speaker 1: like five years behind me. You know. The momentum in
Speaker 1: terms of the way that like guests and consumers ask
Speaker 1: about these things and talk about these things has become
Speaker 1: really powerful, I would say, in the last five years.
Speaker 1: That's Amanda Smelts. She's the wine director at Estella and
Speaker 1: Cafe Ultra Parody so in New York. She's also a
Speaker 1: leading protagonist in the natural wine movement. Alright, cool, um,
Speaker 1: so why don't we just start off we have some
Speaker 1: working understanding of natural wine. But since there is no
Speaker 1: formal definition, maybe we could just get a definition from
Speaker 1: Amanda Smelts about what you think natural wine is. I mean,
Speaker 1: there's no obviously there's no formal board because you know,
Speaker 1: it's a term that doesn't belong in the Ousford English Dictionary.
Speaker 1: But there's there's a fairly agreed upon working definition among
Speaker 1: those who work with not or wine, or who make
Speaker 1: it or who are around it a lot. And the
Speaker 1: idea is generally speaking, in the vineyards and in the sellers,
Speaker 1: nothing added, nothing taken away. So when it comes to farming,
Speaker 1: that means you don't use that. This is probably the
Speaker 1: most important part. You're not using chemicals in your vineyards
Speaker 1: when you're adding anything to vine your you know, farming
Speaker 1: at all, it's it has to be organic compounds, ifting
Speaker 1: at all. And then when it comes to your seller work,
Speaker 1: I actually fermenting and making the wines, you're not adding
Speaker 1: any chemicals. They're either or any other host of synthetic additives, colorance,
Speaker 1: all kinds of different stuff that is that are currently
Speaker 1: legal to be added to wine in the aim of
Speaker 1: making kind of the most transparent wines possible, And at
Speaker 1: what point in your career did you notice that natural
Speaker 1: a wine was something that might have been something that
Speaker 1: was more for people who were in the industry, so
Speaker 1: you're fellow wine nerds and maybe other industry people too,
Speaker 1: something that as a buyer you started to notice people
Speaker 1: coming into your establishments and asking you about the process.
Speaker 1: For me, was a gradual one because there there was
Speaker 1: not such a clear distinction and not such a clear
Speaker 1: conversation at least here in the States about wines that
Speaker 1: were maybe made in a different way. The means of
Speaker 1: production were certainly not the thing that you started talking
Speaker 1: about first. When you're tasting, you know, wines with a
Speaker 1: vendor or when you're listening to an importer talk. Mostly
Speaker 1: people are trying to you know, sell their wines and
Speaker 1: their products that they import, without kind of any conversation
Speaker 1: about how things are made. But that has changed a lot,
Speaker 1: I think, as the conversation about how things are made
Speaker 1: in terms of food and beverage around the world has
Speaker 1: changed definitely, and that sort of checks out with what
Speaker 1: we've been hearing from other folks that we've talked to
Speaker 1: as well, and of course in my own observations. What
Speaker 1: it seems like you're kind of making the link here
Speaker 1: between a group of let's say, influential UM wine buyers
Speaker 1: and UM wine makers that really spawn from an environmental concern.
Speaker 1: Do you think that that's a fair kind of place
Speaker 1: of origin for the natural wine movement, is that it's
Speaker 1: in relationship to an environmental practice. I think that there
Speaker 1: are two or three fundamental like like origin concerns or
Speaker 1: kind of themes that are behind it, But environmental concerns
Speaker 1: are is definitely ground zero. The only other one that
Speaker 1: I would say is actual quality of wine, Like people
Speaker 1: talking about like what does wine tastes? Like what are
Speaker 1: global tastes? Like what does it mean for there to
Speaker 1: be a global taste in wine? Because that was a
Speaker 1: really big issue. It continues to be a huge issue.
Speaker 1: Most people don't think it's a problem, but ultimately a
Speaker 1: few people here and there started to pipe up and say, hey,
Speaker 1: why is it that all of a sudden, red wines
Speaker 1: taste very much the same everywhere from Rioja to Bordeaux
Speaker 1: to Napa Valley to Burgenland, Like why is it that
Speaker 1: I can crack open for red wines from all of
Speaker 1: those places and everything has the same style and the
Speaker 1: same seller work, you know, the same type of production.
Speaker 1: Once people start to notice that, like it's almost like,
Speaker 1: you know, it's almost like you've had the wool poled
Speaker 1: over your eyes a little bit. You're like, wait a minute,
Speaker 1: I've just opened forty Napa cabernets and I can barely
Speaker 1: tell the different between all of them. You know, to
Speaker 1: the untrained eye, they all kind of taste the same.
Speaker 1: Or you could insert category here, you know, salving oblanc
Speaker 1: from wherever? What's going on here? And I think that's
Speaker 1: the second question of origin, is why does all this
Speaker 1: stuff taste the same. So it's it's a question of
Speaker 1: both quality of wine and character of wine itself in
Speaker 1: terms of like consumption, and then obviously environmental concerns, which
Speaker 1: is where does this stuff come from and how did
Speaker 1: they get here totally, which again just completely checks out
Speaker 1: with the previous conversation that we had with the winemakers
Speaker 1: from the other right, who both mentioned, you know, environmental
Speaker 1: concerns as well as a pursuit of their own artistry,
Speaker 1: kinds of wines that they wanted to make as part
Speaker 1: of their own expression as artists, which I found to
Speaker 1: be compelling as well. So I guess in terms of
Speaker 1: the discourse that is happening in a more insular community,
Speaker 1: let's say the wine community, and specifically the US wine community.
Speaker 1: You know, we seem to see headlines with greater frequency
Speaker 1: now about natural wine, and then these articles always kind
Speaker 1: of pop off in a way that feel oddly emotional
Speaker 1: people who are removed from these communities, so for for
Speaker 1: people who are are far away from the wine industry,
Speaker 1: and we see these really spirited exchanges like what are
Speaker 1: we supposed to make of that? And why is it
Speaker 1: that people feel so strongly about? Okay, this is such
Speaker 1: a great question. So I'm gonna liken it to a
Speaker 1: thing first and then I'll explain in more practical I
Speaker 1: think terms. But the first thing I will liken it
Speaker 1: too is, you know, when everybody listened to opera in
Speaker 1: Vienna at the height of the Austro Hungarian Empire, and
Speaker 1: opera was the form, right, and somebody introduced the first
Speaker 1: opera in German, you know, like when German operas began
Speaker 1: to be the thing as opposed to say Italian opera
Speaker 1: or and so on and so forth. I think whenever
Speaker 1: there's a major shift in a like deeply well known
Speaker 1: and well regarded esthetic media. Entire cultures are kind of
Speaker 1: rocked by it, you know, especially if the art form
Speaker 1: or the craft work or whatever it is. The cultural
Speaker 1: nexus is super important to people if it if it's
Speaker 1: closely associated, like in the case of opera, with national
Speaker 1: identity or cultural identity, if it's something that brings people
Speaker 1: a lot of meaning and a lot of joy and
Speaker 1: a feeling of importance in their lives. Um when there
Speaker 1: are major paradigm shifts in those things, I think it
Speaker 1: takes on the hue of the personal because it's stuff
Speaker 1: that's deeply beloved by people. So if you follow wet
Speaker 1: Stone media closely, you'll know that there's nothing that I
Speaker 1: know more about or care more about than wine. In fact,
Speaker 1: I loved it so much that for an entire decade
Speaker 1: it was my job just to drink wine. Like Amanda,
Speaker 1: I was a sammie, which is how the French say
Speaker 1: trained wine professional. But over time, as I began to
Speaker 1: rise up through the ranks in my career, I couldn't
Speaker 1: move beyond the overwhelming lack of diversity in the wine industry.
Speaker 1: The further along I moved, the bottles and the wine
Speaker 1: producing regions I was exposed to were fast and ever changing,
Speaker 1: but the people for whom I was opening those bottles
Speaker 1: were decidedly less so. So I decided to do something
Speaker 1: radical in my mid twenties. I decided that I wanted
Speaker 1: to connect with the black and indigenous communities in the
Speaker 1: western Cape of South Africa, who were the overwhelming majority
Speaker 1: of the labor force but represented less than even a
Speaker 1: single percent of its ownership. I began to think of
Speaker 1: wine as a catalyst for social change, for historical and
Speaker 1: anthropological learning, for identity and origins. And in this work
Speaker 1: there was an epiphany. It was that wine did not
Speaker 1: belong exclusively to the French or the Italians, no matter
Speaker 1: how hard my formal education tried to convince me. Through
Speaker 1: working with the families in South Africa's wine industry, I
Speaker 1: began a process that I would call decolonizing wine, a
Speaker 1: process that culminated in two thousand seventeen, where I traveled
Speaker 1: to the Republic of Georgia, often called the Cradle of Wine,
Speaker 1: to visit the oldest grape vine in the world that
Speaker 1: is still being used to produce wine. We're in the
Speaker 1: village of Church Cardi and We're gonna go see a
Speaker 1: very very old vine. Do you see this is not
Speaker 1: a tree? So earlier today we saw one year old vines,
Speaker 1: which we're about that big, and four year old vines
Speaker 1: the oldest probably in the world. Huh yeah, it's the
Speaker 1: oldest in the world. Which is to gives us a grape,
Speaker 1: and it is to ali, it is for Senator yourself.
Speaker 1: This is the most amazing thing I've ever seen in
Speaker 1: my life. This is unbelievable. And I think wine is
Speaker 1: in this special there's really special nexus between like you
Speaker 1: were just saying, agricultural product and environmental reality and a
Speaker 1: made thing, right, human artifact, cultural artifact, and an aesthetic object.
Speaker 1: It's it's not only one of those things, it's it's
Speaker 1: caught in the crosshairs of both. And so that means
Speaker 1: people who care about things as diverse as climate change, farming, music, art, cooking,
Speaker 1: kilinary history, you know, I don't know, collecting things. There's
Speaker 1: like so many different angles through which people might care
Speaker 1: about wine because of that interesting overlay of you know,
Speaker 1: environment and means of production and farming and then aesthetic
Speaker 1: things that I think this is a truly major paradigm
Speaker 1: shift in the global culture of wine, and it is
Speaker 1: having the same sort of impact as something, you know,
Speaker 1: as profound as translating an ancient text from Latin into
Speaker 1: Old English. You know, it's a stupid thing to compare
Speaker 1: it to because obviously wine isn't important as those ancient
Speaker 1: ancient texts. But but or say, as opera was to
Speaker 1: the Viennese. You know, I think that that's what's happening,
Speaker 1: and and that's that's why people are responding to it
Speaker 1: with this kind of vehemence. Because while wine is not
Speaker 1: art exactly, it does carry some of the hallmarks of art,
Speaker 1: and it definitely is craftsmanship, and it's definitely labor and
Speaker 1: it's definitely farming. So there's lots of entry points through
Speaker 1: which you could really come to care for this strange
Speaker 1: living artifact, and lots of entry points in which it
Speaker 1: could come to represent your culture, or your history or
Speaker 1: even just your your sense of art, which means that
Speaker 1: it is weirdly very democratic. It means that lots and
Speaker 1: lots of different of different people can care about wine
Speaker 1: from all many, many different walks of life as long
Speaker 1: as you have access to it. I think that's why
Speaker 1: people are heated because because it's it actually does have
Speaker 1: the power to move. It has the capacity to speak
Speaker 1: to many, many different people from lots of different angles.
Speaker 1: And because it speaks to so many, when there are
Speaker 1: big challenges or big changes kind of presented to the
Speaker 1: commonly accepted way of doing things worldwide, we feel the
Speaker 1: heat a little bit. Wow, congratulations to you. That's officially
Speaker 1: the best description I've heard of this internal ire around
Speaker 1: natural wine conversations. You know, You've given me a lot
Speaker 1: to think about, because now I'm thinking about wine in
Speaker 1: a democratic sense, which of course makes me think about
Speaker 1: our own political system here and the challenges that Democratic
Speaker 1: Party has as a party of big tens and a
Speaker 1: wide variety of ideas. On the one hand, it's very
Speaker 1: easy for people to find themselves in these broad politics,
Speaker 1: but on the other hand, when it comes to say,
Speaker 1: electing a candidate suitable to around, you know, much more
Speaker 1: difficult because the reasons that we've shown up to support,
Speaker 1: or the areas in which we see ourselves reflected, of course,
Speaker 1: are are varied, and that makes it hard. Yeah, that
Speaker 1: makes it really challenging. So um, I think it's exactly
Speaker 1: the right analogy and helps me understand is there a
Speaker 1: social capital or is there kind of an idealism in
Speaker 1: people coming to this wine tint who never found a
Speaker 1: relationship to wine before. Is there some cash and people
Speaker 1: saying like, I'm into natural wine and therefore like I'm
Speaker 1: part of this movement now? Well I wish, I wish
Speaker 1: that my answer were no, But my answer is yeah,
Speaker 1: for sure, it's hip. It's become hip. But I think
Speaker 1: we should push at and poke at why it's become hip. Right,
Speaker 1: it's because of what you say. You say, Okay, at
Speaker 1: least on the surface, natural wine seems to present this
Speaker 1: thing that is more democratic, it's not just superficial. It
Speaker 1: arises up out of you know a handful of people France,
Speaker 1: you know, California, you know, lots of Australia, like lots
Speaker 1: of different places, being like I don't want my wines
Speaker 1: to taste like everybody else's wines anymore. Like there's something
Speaker 1: really unnerving there, and and you don't know any better.
Speaker 1: You just keep drinking them like whatever, it's no big deal.
Speaker 1: But the moment that someone presents one of these wines
Speaker 1: to you and you go, holy crap, that tastes so
Speaker 1: different from anything else I've ever seen what's going on here?
Speaker 1: Is it wrong? Is this? Like? You know? And I
Speaker 1: watched that happen literally every day at my job, Like
Speaker 1: all the time. People are like, Oh, I don't know.
Speaker 1: This wine is so different? Is it? Is it bad?
Speaker 1: I think it's bad? You know. So when you when
Speaker 1: you have that much of like a jarring kind of
Speaker 1: encounter with something that you can smell and you can
Speaker 1: taste and you can feel in your body, Okay, so
Speaker 1: now you're like, whoa, I'm awake? What was going on before?
Speaker 1: And the answers that are behind what was going on
Speaker 1: before are not cute, They're disconcerned. They're disconcerting. And when
Speaker 1: you start to get a little bit of an understanding
Speaker 1: on what has happened, i e. Like the mass industrialization
Speaker 1: of wine across the globe, that you start to think like,
Speaker 1: I don't know, I don't really I don't love that.
Speaker 1: H of course not the same as the conventional wines,
Speaker 1: which were made to taste like the other. Perhaps they
Speaker 1: were made to taste like wines that had performed well
Speaker 1: in the meat. If we don't know anything about natural wine,
Speaker 1: and we've only been drinking nine dollar mile back from
Speaker 1: anywhere from Australia or to Argentina. What is the experience
Speaker 1: that we can expect as a consumer as a drinker
Speaker 1: when we are drinking natural wines versus wines that don't
Speaker 1: share that label. Well, it depends a little bit again
Speaker 1: on the means of production, because under the wide umbrella
Speaker 1: of natural wine, they really can taste quite quite different.
Speaker 1: And I think to me, fundamental thing you should expect
Speaker 1: first is that everything you've ever tasted in wine before
Speaker 1: that is going to change. So like the first thing
Speaker 1: you can expect is difference, and I think that is
Speaker 1: that's crucial, right because it means that you are reintroduced
Speaker 1: to your own senses and you hear them say this
Speaker 1: is different from my previous sense memories. Now that can
Speaker 1: those wines can be maybe not so perceptibly different from
Speaker 1: a conventional wine because maybe they were, you know, put
Speaker 1: in used oak barrels, and maybe there's a little bit
Speaker 1: of a sulfur dioxide application, and maybe there's a slightly
Speaker 1: more ripe fruited style and they're a little bit more polished,
Speaker 1: and so maybe to the uninitiated they won't be that
Speaker 1: clear right away, but there are some where, maybe because
Speaker 1: of the means of production again, what happens in the
Speaker 1: cellar and the lack of preservatives added. Sometimes these things
Speaker 1: can smell and taste really wild. And so the way
Speaker 1: that I translate wild is you know, often people will
Speaker 1: smell them and be like, whoa kind of sour. People
Speaker 1: will struggle for words to describe it. Other times it's
Speaker 1: like wow, really heavy, like, because the aromas can be
Speaker 1: explosive like that, Like the actual bouquet of wine can
Speaker 1: become the type of thing that I will often say
Speaker 1: like jumps out of the glass and you barely need
Speaker 1: to put your nose near the glass to smell it
Speaker 1: and sense it because it's aromatically so supercharged. So the
Speaker 1: range of experiences can be kind of different, but I
Speaker 1: mean actually quite broad. But as a first principle, everyone
Speaker 1: should be prepared to smell and taste something that is
Speaker 1: unlike anything they understand as wine before. Right. That makes
Speaker 1: sense because in people reflecting back to you, these potentially
Speaker 1: unusual smells which are reflective of nature, you know, something sour,
Speaker 1: something yeasty, something funky, something dank. These are all characteristics
Speaker 1: presumably that the winemakers themselves are trying to bring forth
Speaker 1: and and present right, So um, in the transparency that
Speaker 1: you're alluding to, part of what the offering is in
Speaker 1: the transparency is the expression of the wine without the
Speaker 1: manipulation of you know, some of these other chemical inputs
Speaker 1: or even winemaking inputs, so that people can you know,
Speaker 1: experience the full breadth of whatever the land has to say.
Speaker 1: You know, one of the things that you have you
Speaker 1: have to know about kind of conventional winemaking or more
Speaker 1: industrial winemaking is that I alluded to it earlier. But many, many, many,
Speaker 1: many forms of additives are legal, both in the United
Speaker 1: States and in the EU and kind of all over
Speaker 1: the world, depending on you know, country to country. And
Speaker 1: some of those additives essentially have an origin that are
Speaker 1: from either animal material or protein material, like you know,
Speaker 1: eggs and egg derivatives are really common. They're used as
Speaker 1: clarifying agents, you know, just the same way that like,
Speaker 1: if you're not specific in a restaurant, you may be
Speaker 1: surprised to find that there is, say, for example, gelatine
Speaker 1: used as a stabilizer or as a textural thing, and
Speaker 1: the gelatine is you know, animal derived as opposed to
Speaker 1: or or when you're thinking about cheese and say you're
Speaker 1: a vegetarian and you're you know, you find out that like, okay,
Speaker 1: animal renn it. You know, it's the same thing with winemaking.
Speaker 1: And again like this is about signing a light on
Speaker 1: the way things are made. I mean, I know I
Speaker 1: see a lot of I see a lot of like
Speaker 1: media articles and so on that are click baity these
Speaker 1: days that are like, oh the death of the term
Speaker 1: natural and can we stop using this word? And can
Speaker 1: you know, I don't know. Wittgenstein said all of our
Speaker 1: problems come down to problems of language, right, and so
Speaker 1: it's just talking about whine at all is a challenge.
Speaker 1: And I can tell you that from having to do
Speaker 1: it every day, you know, trying to find language that
Speaker 1: that approximates what two different people mean when they're attempting
Speaker 1: to relate sense experience with this, you know, aesthetic and
Speaker 1: agricultural object before them being smelled and tasted and consumed
Speaker 1: by them. Adding in the subjectivity of the human experience
Speaker 1: and the difficulty of you know, coming to agreed upon language.
Speaker 1: We have to do the best we can right to
Speaker 1: understand each other. So if we're trying to describe an
Speaker 1: entire paradigm shift in how people attend to their vineyards,
Speaker 1: how they harvest their fruit, how they ferment that fruit,
Speaker 1: how they usher that fruit into a completed state, bottle
Speaker 1: it and send it off to people to be consumed.
Speaker 1: And it's very very different from industrial and you know,
Speaker 1: slightly more conventional methods. What then are we to say, right,
Speaker 1: that just took me like fifteen words to try to
Speaker 1: describe to you all the steps in the process. We
Speaker 1: have to find some kind of signifier that enables us
Speaker 1: to continue having the conversation. I think the reason that
Speaker 1: people are all up in arms about it is that
Speaker 1: there's this you know, sort of ridiculous thing where people
Speaker 1: are like, well, you know what, what wine is unnatural?
Speaker 1: And it's just like, well, now we're playing semantics, right,
Speaker 1: and we're not actually pointing at the root issues, which
Speaker 1: which are farming and the finished product, and like how
Speaker 1: much are we asking questions about where do things come from?
Speaker 1: What is the origin of my drink? And we're obsessive
Speaker 1: about definition and we're obsessive about that. To me is
Speaker 1: there is the bigger picture question and the rest of
Speaker 1: it is sort of I don't know, squabbling over the crumbs,
Speaker 1: you know, you know, categorizing instead of being interested in
Speaker 1: disc active and qualitative understandings of things. Right, this is
Speaker 1: us getting caught up in, you know, in labeling. And
Speaker 1: I would love to recenter questions about means of production
Speaker 1: back on everybody's mind and on everybody's lips, because they
Speaker 1: are really serious questions attended about like health, beauty, and yeah,
Speaker 1: justice too, not to mention economics and power. You know.
Speaker 1: So I'm totally fine with the term if it gets
Speaker 1: me talking about those things that people you know, cluche,
Speaker 1: I know, I love. I'm starting to develop a newfound
Speaker 1: affinity for this phrase natural wine for all the reasons
Speaker 1: in which it has been a conundrum in trying to
Speaker 1: explain or describe. I think that's kind of the magic
Speaker 1: of the term, especially if we were to extrapolate, you know,
Speaker 1: this like democratic analogy, and I think one of the
Speaker 1: stifling elements could be trying to appease so many different factions. Yes,
Speaker 1: and I totally I think that we actually could see
Speaker 1: a lot of how that can go wrong. Organic as
Speaker 1: a label in which the certification to get the label
Speaker 1: is inherently excluding people who otherwise tons of farmers, tons
Speaker 1: of farmers practices, right, so in a way, you know,
Speaker 1: organic is able to be co opt and in a
Speaker 1: weird way, a less effective or less exhaustive, you know,
Speaker 1: words to describe who is actually acting in the most
Speaker 1: environmentally progressive or responsible way with natural wine, and saying
Speaker 1: that we have a roughly agreed upon term that is
Speaker 1: about nothing added and nothing taken away. You keep alluding
Speaker 1: to it as a signifier, which I think is actually
Speaker 1: a lot more closely aligned with the way that human
Speaker 1: beings are able to understand social cues and able to understand,
Speaker 1: you know, big ideas that we understand perfectly well are
Speaker 1: not absolute. Human beings are intellectually mature for the most
Speaker 1: part enough to understand that nothing is purely absolute, or
Speaker 1: a few things are. And so when we talk about
Speaker 1: things as less absolute than say organic, it actually opens
Speaker 1: up a space for us to to go deeper because
Speaker 1: it doesn't leave people out. It's less exclusive because it
Speaker 1: can't be co opted, because there's no formal language for
Speaker 1: it's just a signifier. This okay, So this is exactly
Speaker 1: why I actually I kind of love the term. I
Speaker 1: love it because some people will be like, well, it's
Speaker 1: a slippery slope, and you know, big businesses can co
Speaker 1: opt this idea of natural and and you see it now.
Speaker 1: You see like big grocery stores abroad and elsewhere trying
Speaker 1: to like make their weird natural wine and they're just
Speaker 1: you know, they're you know, there's a there's like co
Speaker 1: opting as always every subculture, every subculture tries to get
Speaker 1: co opted or like is you know, there's an attempt
Speaker 1: toward that kind of at any point, right, But I
Speaker 1: kind of love that it is slippery. It's that's literally
Speaker 1: all that's happening here, as opposed to understanding practice, you know,
Speaker 1: and as opposed to getting a deeply narrative and a
Speaker 1: deeply qualitative and an experiential understanding of things which require
Speaker 1: time and effort and dialogue and study. You know, all
Speaker 1: of that stuff is hard, and everyone wants to just
Speaker 1: be able to be like, well, this bogus because you know,
Speaker 1: the terminology doesn't make any sense and who knows what
Speaker 1: they're talking about at all. Like that's that's such a
Speaker 1: quick way to be intellectually superior because you feel as
Speaker 1: though the definitions are not clear enough. I love that
Speaker 1: this pushes back against that a little bit. You know,
Speaker 1: it's really more like are you trying to be correct
Speaker 1: or you trying to be understood? Absolutely? Absolutely, and do
Speaker 1: you just want to be the smartest guy in the room.
Speaker 1: Because wine is a really sensitive place for that button
Speaker 1: to get pushed as well. You know, given that wine
Speaker 1: has been traditionally and especially it's especially bad in the States,
Speaker 1: associated with having some level of kind of sophistication, and
Speaker 1: therefore it is elitist because of those associations. People really
Speaker 1: want to define wine in this way that makes them
Speaker 1: feel like they have mastery of it and they have
Speaker 1: knowledge of it, and that's that's the social capital they're
Speaker 1: looking for. But like wine eludes these things, the practice
Speaker 1: of fermentation eludes these things. Wine when it is living
Speaker 1: and when it hasn't been stultified by industrial process, it
Speaker 1: is it's alive in the bottle, it's alive in the barrel,
Speaker 1: it's alive in the tank, and it changes. It's a
Speaker 1: moving target, right whether you whether you're in your first
Speaker 1: fifteen minutes of a bottle or your two hours in.
Speaker 1: If that wine is sound, you're going to be experiencing
Speaker 1: something different kind of at every moment. So what does
Speaker 1: it taste like? I'm like, I don't know. Mark fifteen
Speaker 1: minutes or like mark three hours. You know, I wanted
Speaker 1: to taste like yesterday? What's it tastes like today? Same object? Right?
Speaker 1: But time and change and feeling have altered the experience
Speaker 1: of the thing that's experiential understanding versus definition, right and categorizing.
Speaker 1: And I don't know, maybe that's why I fell in
Speaker 1: love with wine, because it is elusive in that way. Okay,
Speaker 1: so now that we've engaged in some wine philosophy, let's
Speaker 1: talk about the thing that's probably more important than any other,
Speaker 1: which is how to drink. So when you're tasting wine,
Speaker 1: the first thing you'll want to do is look at
Speaker 1: the wine. No really, I mean like, look at the wine.
Speaker 1: See what it looks like. Is it shiny and golden
Speaker 1: around the rim? Is it pale and brickish? And the
Speaker 1: center core transparent or opaque? Not that what you see
Speaker 1: is always what you get with wine. But what looking
Speaker 1: at it does is it forces you to pay attention.
Speaker 1: And since wine is a multisensory indulgence, paying attention will
Speaker 1: be your greatest resource for enjoyment. The next thing to
Speaker 1: do is to smell. And when I'm smelling wine, I
Speaker 1: have this two steps approach. First, I take a whiff,
Speaker 1: not a huge one, just like a grazing one. And
Speaker 1: this is a habit I developed from my sunnier days,
Speaker 1: where I would smell hundreds of wines each night, primarily
Speaker 1: just to make sure that they were okay. If it's
Speaker 1: not okay, what's most often the case is that it
Speaker 1: smells a little bit like wet, moldy cork. If detected,
Speaker 1: it is this pungent and unpleasant smell. When you go
Speaker 1: to a restaurant and you order wine. Have you ever
Speaker 1: noticed how they first give you like a little teeny taste. Well,
Speaker 1: this is your window to detect a flaw. If you're unsure,
Speaker 1: don't be afraid ask if there's someone there to validate
Speaker 1: your suspicions. Almost always, even if it's on the edge,
Speaker 1: the house will do the right thing and get you
Speaker 1: sorted with a new glass. Okay. So then after that
Speaker 1: initial grazing with I pick up my glass and I
Speaker 1: give it a big swirl. You know what I'm talking about?
Speaker 1: The thing where people who seem like they know a
Speaker 1: thing or two about wine are always doing well, what
Speaker 1: they're actually doing is bringing oxygen into the glass. And
Speaker 1: it's this invitation of oxygen that really allows us to
Speaker 1: smell the true character of the wine. After you give
Speaker 1: it a whirl, give it a world. But a sort
Speaker 1: of disclaimer is that when I taste, I am ashamed
Speaker 1: to say that I do the thing where I make
Speaker 1: the slurping noise. I mean, I'm not obnoxious about it.
Speaker 1: I take a small sip and with the tip of
Speaker 1: my tongue on the roof of my mouth, I bring
Speaker 1: in the air sort of like an inverted whistle. The
Speaker 1: wine moves along my mouth, along my palate, and then
Speaker 1: right before swallowing, I give a good swish, kind of
Speaker 1: but not exactly like a mouth wash. The part that
Speaker 1: comes next is my favorite part. It might last a
Speaker 1: second or several minutes, but it's the finish or the
Speaker 1: contemplate of moment, just after the wine goes down and
Speaker 1: the brain begins to make sense of what it just
Speaker 1: had and how all the parts fit or don't fit together.
Speaker 1: But of course, you could also just like you know,
Speaker 1: drink the wine, pay attention to what you like or dislike,
Speaker 1: try to find the language from a dialogue with the
Speaker 1: bartender or the internet to synthesize whatever you just tasted.
Speaker 1: This level of engagement will help me better enjoy wine, because,
Speaker 1: after all, and drinking wine, enjoyment is always the desired ye.
Speaker 1: So if you've made it this far, then it is
Speaker 1: without a doubt clear that wine is really special to me,
Speaker 1: and this two part series is really special to me.
Speaker 1: So thank you for listening. I hope you've gained a
Speaker 1: deeper understanding and appreciation of natural wine and understand why
Speaker 1: it's been at the center of a discussion in the
Speaker 1: larger cultural conversation about the things we eat and drink,
Speaker 1: how they're made, and where they come from. I hope
Speaker 1: that if you have the opportunity to try natural wine,
Speaker 1: that you do so, and you can check out our
Speaker 1: website if you'd like to see some of our favorite
Speaker 1: wines from many diverse winemakers who we would love for
Speaker 1: you to support and are sure that you will enjoy it.
Speaker 1: Thank you, Amanda Smelts, wine director at Estella and Vino
Speaker 1: Parody So in New York And to write out, we'll
Speaker 1: play another clip from Wild Grapes, a short film I
Speaker 1: shot with my dear friend and brother who was also
Speaker 1: a partner at Whetstone, David Alexander, from our two thousand
Speaker 1: eighteen release of Wild Grapes. What I came to understand
Speaker 1: is that this day was not a day of remembrance,
Speaker 1: rather a revival of spirit. Wine is central to Georgian culture,
Speaker 1: and once again I'm taken by the earnestness with which
Speaker 1: it permeates daily life without pretension. This ceremonial but informal
Speaker 1: inclusion affirms my own mission to demystify one, to shed
Speaker 1: it of its formality, and in doing so share the
Speaker 1: gift of a new tongue, a language that, once learned,
Speaker 1: deepens our capacity for pleasure and connects us to a
Speaker 1: collective human history. Special Thanks to my business partner who
Speaker 1: makes all things possible at Whetstone are co founder Melissa
Speaker 1: she Thanks mel. Thank you to Selene Glazier, who is
Speaker 1: our lead producer. To Cat Hong, our editor, to habn
Speaker 1: Obasa Lassa and Quentin lebou Are production interns. To our
Speaker 1: friends at iHeart Radio for helping us bring you this podcast.
Speaker 1: To Gabrielle Collins are supervising producer, engineer J. J. Pauseway
Speaker 1: and executive producer Christopher Hasiotis. I'm your host, the origin Forager,
Speaker 1: Stephen Saderfield, and we will be back here next week
Speaker 1: with more from Whetstone Magazine's Point of Origin podcast.