home : wine recommendations : wine girl for hire : bio : articles : contact

What Happened at the Portland Indie: Part One
May 06, 2008

I found my narrow seat on the plane, and I spent five hours between the knit of My Life as a Man and the pearl of gearing up for more email bombs, fallout from my Los Angeles Time editorial entitled "California wine? Down the drain."

In the warp and weft of it all, I mulled over a big, fat old conundrum about how to present the How Natural is Natural panel that kicked off the Portland Indie.

What is the best way to distill the arguments and sparring and jabs down to the essentials?

I think it all comes down to a New World disconnect around concept of terroir and a human twisting and obsessing over semantics.

But first some background.

Lisa Donoughe created the Portland Indie Festival. Now in its 4th year, this is two days of tastings from Oregon's teensiest wineries, too small to show their wines at most big venues. This year Lisa, also the genius behind LAD Communications added two terrific seminars. And I coordinated and moderated How Natural is Natural.

I gathered an interesting quartet; the perplexing Clark Smith (Vinovation & WineSmith), the animated Amy Lillard ( La Gramiere from the S. Rhone, and fellow blogger), pensive Aaron Lieberman ( Cottonwood and Owen Roe) and avuncular Oregonian, Doug Tunnel (Brick House).


Clark Smith makes wine with yeast and chips and micro oxygenation and alcohol adjustment (all technologies that he sells) lobbied for a ‘definition’ of natural wine and would like standards outlined for certification. "I thought that's what we were here for!" he argued.

This did not go over too well with the crowd, and I too let go of my sheep's clothing--the neutral moderator---I pointed out that the terms biodynamic wine and organic wine already should cover (and hopefully will) the ‘natural’ category, so why create a third category to confuse the consumer?

The first wine I needed to drink upon returning home was one of my last two bottles of the Clos Roche Blanche 2002 Cot. It stunned me. I bowed to it. It was at its perfectly floral moment.

Look For Part Two Where Terroir Shakes the Room
Comments

Clark's right.

[Blinking... looking around the room... wondering "Who said that?".... "Did *I* just say that?"]

"Natural" remains undefined.
What does Demeter have to say about the use of commercially available yeast nutrients? How about filtration? How about egregious use of new oak?
So Clark is right about the need for clarification.

Of course, one suspects that lots of folks bring up this point to put forth the argument that ALL winegrowing is unnatural, therefore we shouldn't fuss the enzyme-added-watered-back-VL3'ed-aroma-enzymed-de-alcoholized-oak-chipped-acid-from-a-bagged-bentonited-100%-brand-spanking-new-3-yr-air-dried-Francois-Frered-micro-bullaged-sterile-filtered stuff.
Which is ludicrous. Because, while all winegrowing requires some form of intervention, not all interventions are equal.

Still, it would be nice to have a clearer understanding of what "natural" really meant.
Voluntary ingredient labelling would go a long way towards clearing that up.

 Bruce G. on May 7, 2008 01:36 AM

Nonsense, Bruce. The problem with the wine industry these days is that many wineries keep looking for more and more monikers, tags, buzz words to guide their consumers into safe purchasing havens. We do not need another buzz word, especially in an industry that chooses to look the other way in so many other viticultural issues. If being environmentally responsible ("All Life forms welcome") means anything to you OTHER than a marketing handle, then support wineries who do it IF YOU LIKE THEIR WINES. Brickhouse is a great place to start. There are as many different approaches to biodynamic, organic, natural, as there are wineries trying to farm them. Let's not force them into another box unless you're prepared to enforce yet more regulations, and thereby eliminate one of the last bastions of creativity and independence in American viticulture: the small family winery.

Ken S. on May 7, 2008 07:27 PM

Ken:

Not sure what you're on about here.
Maybe I'm reading you wrong, but I fail to see how voluntary ingredient labeling would qualify as yet another buzzword, or would threaten the independence of any producer.

 Bruce G. on May 8, 2008 02:05 PM
Post a comment