Notes on Natural Wine

The argument against natural wine usually goes like this: it is inconsistent, sometimes faulty, and propped up by ideology masquerading as taste. These criticisms are not wrong. The argument for natural wine rarely goes well, because its proponents tend toward the evangelical, and evangelism is exhausting in a wine bar. What interests me is the middle ground — the bottles that taste like something specific, made by someone who made a decision, in a place that left a mark. This is not unique to natural wine. But natural wine, at its best, makes the decision-making visible in a way that conventional wine often does not. A wine that tastes of brett and reduction is not, by definition, better than a clean Burgundy. But it is asking a different question. Whether you want to answer it is up to you.