EBTL.050817

On Natural Wine, Punk Rock,

and Too-Easy Analogies

Moving in wine circles, one often hears natural wine described as the “punk rock” of the wine world, whether in reference to individual enfant-terrible producers (such as Andrea Calek in Ardèche, or Collectif Anonyme in Banyuls) or to the prevailing anti-establishment ethos of a “movement” that, depending on whom you ask, may not actually exist as such. British booze writer Henry Jeffreys has been one of few to pursue this analogy with any specificity:

Punk was a reaction against bloated prog rock or packaged pop like Olivia and John. It promised to return to the true spirit of rock ’n’ roll. Natural wines are a reaction to over-manipulated wines made to impress rather than to drink. They hark back to some sort of prelapsarian past where wine was pure.1

Natural wine, the lack of an official definition notwithstanding, can be thought of as wine that is both more and less than organic: made by people, usually small vintners who grow their own grapes rather than buy them from farmers, who eschew chemical pesticides, fertilizers, additives, and other “corrective” interventions, both in the field and in the winery, but who may not participate in the regulatory apparatus of organic certification. Beyond this fairly cursory description, natural wine, like punk, can be understood as a threat against the established orders of taste and cultural production (and in the case of wine, even of agricultural production). Its provocation straddles the aesthetic and moral divide, wielding authenticity as a weapon in (potentially irrelevant) battles over what even deserves to be considered “wine.” And, as is to be expected, there is an appropriate amount of vitriol and polemic to be found on both sides of the discussion. The colossally influential critic Robert Parker famously referred to natural wine as a “major scam being foisted on wine consumers,”2 Newsweek dismissed it as tasting “worse than putrid cider,”3 and in perhaps one of the most punk analogies to date, wine writer Stuart Pigott pointed to “so-called ‘natural’ wines, meaning wines that in the cellar where they were made were allowed to behave like badly brought-up teenagers who seldom wash or shave and ignore the everyday rules of polite behavior,” as the crux of the problem with what he has described as the rise of the “hipster sommelier.”4 On the opposing front, natural wine advocates have dubbed the process of globalization and de-diversification of wine “Parkerization,”5 and with such labels as “natural wine,” “authentic wine,” and “real wine,” it is not difficult to imagine in what esteem they hold the rest of the wine world (often dismissed as “conventional” or “industrial” wine). The rhetoric of romantic radicalism runs strong, not least in the words of filmmaker and natural wine advocate Jonathan Nossiter, director of Mondovino (2004) and Resistenza Naturale (2014):

In ten years, these renegades have transformed the basic idea of wine, especially in France and Italy, while exposing the cynicism and chemical manipulation of most conventional wine… These natural winemakers have scorned the cynical bureaucratic compromise of certified “organic” wine to renew a libation that has provided joy and comfort for eight thousand years.6

In short, one can discern a minor moral panic within the rarified confines of the wine world occasioned by this naturalist provocation that is not dissimilar to the aesthetic horror with which early punks were met (and in most small towns probably continue to be met, if my own experience as freaky teen in the mid-nineties means anything).

In his article, Jeffreys speculates as to whether the decline in relevance and appeal of punk rock also contains a lesson for us about the future of natural wine. After all, claims of music journalists aside, was not punk merely a trend fuelled by an able hype machine and the seductive allure of youthful iconoclasm, of which only a few credible scraps remain? Jeffreys writes,

In my opinion, punk’s influence is best heard in bands that took the spirit but not the music such as Dexy’s Midnight Runners and the Pogues. But natural wine is surely also, like punk, clever marketing no matter how much the organisers of the various natural wine fairs try to deny it.

This is where I think Jeffreys’ comparison falters—not on the grounds of the weakness of the analogy, but on his ultimate ignorance of his chosen analog. Like the majority of popular commentators on the history of punk, Jeffreys makes the mistake of conflating the demise of the phenomenon itself with the expiry of its time in the limelight. Only in recent years have music critics and wider audiences come to be vaguely aware that long after the Ramones and the Sex Pistols burned out or graduated to stadium shows and Spector Sound, there remained ever-growing legions of disaffected, irritated, impassioned youth who continued putting on concerts, piling into vans and releasing shitty, brilliant records (or, as often, tapes) for other shitty, brilliant kids. Where is the emergence of hardcore punk in Jeffreys’ analogy, or Riot Grrrl? Or Ebullition Records and the publication of newsprint magazines like Maximum Rock’n’Roll and HeartattaCk, to say nothing of the uncountable thousands of DIY zines and labels? Where are Fugazi and Bikini Kill, Spitboy and His Hero Is Gone and Los Crudos in this narrative? They are invisible precisely because the account presumes the significance and the relevance of punk rock were coterminous with the attention paid to it by mainstream music journalism.

So what does a revised, better-informed understanding of punk’s history (and present) contribute to such an analogy? While I don’t disagree with Jeffreys’ suggestion that “Time will tell which producers turn out to be the Boomtown Rats and which the Pogues,” I think there is an interesting lesson about taste and appreciation to be considered. Perhaps one of the most valuable contributions of natural wine, on an intellectual and aesthetic level, may be to destabilize and encourage reconsideration of what it means to be a “good wine” (as punk did with the idea of a “good band”). While there are numerous natural wines that are excellent by even the most traditional standards, whether it be the turbidity of an unfiltered wine, a whiff of animal funk, or the slight spritz of latent fermentation in the bottle, many natural producers have helped to create a space for appreciating qualities otherwise proscribed as faults or flaws—new avenues for experiencing and making sense of the pleasures of drinking; like feedback and screaming, outside of the conventional register of taste.7

On a recent visit to Montreal, natural winemaker Olivier Lemasson commented that in France, for the most part, no one knows or cares who he is—there he is a farmer, it is only in Montreal and New York and London that he is treated like a rock star. Indeed, it is notable that much of the furor surrounding “natural wine” is to be found among the wine critics, sommeliers, and journalists, rather than the vintners themselves. So perhaps more important is what the story of punk rock suggests for the future of natural wine: the possibility that when the trend has subsided, there will nevertheless remain a community of committed producers and appreciators who continue to believe in the importance of a vibrant opposition to the standardized and soulless (or what they view as such). Toiling in relative obscurity and indifference to the market as the primary arbiter of taste, making what they love and loving what they make. DIY or die.