Arianna Occhipinti Winery
Arianna Occhipinti helped to popularize, and thus define, natural winemaking through her wines sourced from organically grown grapes.
You’d be excused if you thought that natural wine was the hot new thing in winemaking. The term seems to have exploded out of nowhere in the past few years, fueled by Instagram-savvy young sommeliers and wine enthusiasts extolling the virtues of these less manipulated wines from every corner of the winemaking world. Proponents of natural wine argue that it is not new at all, but a return to an old style of winemaking. Skeptics say that it is just another fad destined to burn out or fade away — like Chianti in straw-covered bottles. But what is natural wine?
Wine industry professionals can have a tough time trying to provide a concise description. And, until a group of Loire Valley winemakers won approval from the French government to give the Vin Méthode Nature designation last year, the term was not subject to regulation anywhere.
Theoretically, natural wine reaches back to a time before modern technology changed the world of winemaking. Practically, it is understood to mean wines made from grapes farmed using organic or biodynamic practices and produced with no additives, minimal intervention in the cellar, and little to no sulfur added during the winemaking or bottling process. These bottles also often come from wine regions that the casual drinker might not recognize and feature more obscure grape varieties than their more conventional counterparts.
They tend to be lower in alcohol, higher in acidity, and a good, if not perfect, complement to most any food.
Natural wine can also be seen as a sort of wine industry abreaction to the excesses of the 1990s, and early 2000s, a time of a great homogenization of wine styles across the globe fueled by prominent wine critics who consistently gave more favorable ratings to wines that were intense, full-bodied, and high in alcohol. These critics also tended to focus on international grape varieties like Cabernet Sauvignon, Syrah and Chardonnay.
This gave economic incentive to grapegrowers to tear out lesser-known local grape varieties and replace them with international ones. It also encouraged winemakers to use strains of yeast engineered to produce higher alcohol wines as well as sugar, grape concentrates, enzymes, and other additives to produce highly processed, critic-friendly wines. (There is no federal requirement to list the ingredients in a bottle of wine.)
Those additives and manipulations made wines that were, if nothing else, consistent. Because natural wines are made without these tools, they can be a frustrating group for a consumer to navigate. The best examples can be transcendent, offering a pure glimpse into the wine of the region from which they came. The worst are nearly undrinkable, plagued with faults like brettanomyces, a strain of yeast that can make wine taste mousy and unappealing.
Want to try natural wine? Find a trusted, knowledgeable wine professional in a restaurant or local wine shop to start exploring these wines. In the meantime, these bottles and producers are a good place to start.
Zinfandel is this country’s great contribution to wine — typically rich, high in alcohol, with a deep, spicy, brooding fruit. Winemaker Faith Armstrong’s Onward Wines Mendocino Nouveau Style Zinfandel 2020 ($23) is nothing like that. It’s light, charming and chuggable, with a palate bursting with juicy raspberries, strawberries and herbs de provence. This wine is sourced from a single vineyard, the organically farmed Hill Vineyard in Mendocino County, California, which has been in the same family for five generations.
Jean Foillard was a revolutionary in Beaujolais as a member of the “gang of four” — a group of young winemakers in the 1970s and early 1980s that eschewed the region’s increasingly industrialized approach to winemaking and turned to minimal intervention wines. The Foillard Beaujolais-Villages 2019 ($29) demonstrates that natural wines can be serious and complex as well as thirst-quenching. This is 100 percent Gamay and has a savory, brooding streak underneath its cherry and cranberry fruit; that gives it a sophistication missing from some wines from the region.
One of the most important voices in the natural wine world hails from Sicily. Arianna Occhipinti helped to popularize, and thus define, natural winemaking through her wines sourced from organically grown grapes near Vittoria in the southern part of the island. Her entry-level red, Occhipinti SP68 Terre Siciliane IGT 2020 ($31), is a blend of native grapes Frappato and Nero d’Avola, and its strawberry fruit is framed by a beguiling and delicious peppery smoke. It is well-made, delicious, and has clear roots in the place where it was grown — everything a natural wine should be.
All wines are available for purchase or order at area wine shops. Note: Bob Hemauer consults with the Tornado Steak House on its wine selections.
