Thinking · Wine
Natural wine and the perfect wine
Natural wine has brought a precious question into the cellar: what are we willing to give up in order to have a perfect wine? I love this question, because it puts the wine and its place back at the centre.
A challenge to the aesthetics of perfection
Classical oenology has a precise aesthetic: the perfect wine. Stable, clear, bright, soft, identical from one bottle to the next. It is an extraordinary technical achievement, and it often comes at a price: a little body, a little complexity, a little aromatic intensity left along the way.
Natural wine challenges this aesthetic, and I welcome the challenge. It is an agreement between producer and consumer: we give up part of the formal perfection to have a fuller, livelier wine, closer to the grape. A slight haze, a deposit, a less brilliant colour can be the sign of a choice rather than of a mistake.
The line: originality
There is, however, a line that is never crossed, and it is the originality of the wine. An oxidised wine, or one with volatile acidity, has olfactory characteristics that are similar or identical regardless of variety and terroir: that wine tells the story of the fault, and stops telling the story of its place. Many of the molecules responsible for faults, beyond a certain threshold, make any wine taste the same.
This is why the fight against the homogenisation of perfect wines must never turn into an even stronger homogenisation, the one created by faults. Natural wine is worth it when it is recognisable: when you find the variety, the vintage, the hillside in the glass.
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We start from the wine you want to make and the people who will drink it. Message me on WhatsApp and we can talk it through.
Message me on WhatsAppThe conscious compromise
Between formal perfection and the fault there is a wide space, and that is where I work with the producer. On that aesthetic we can consciously compromise, when it serves the client and the wine they want to make. Consciously means that the choice is made together, knowing what is gained and what is risked, with tasting and analyses in hand at the right moment.
It is a choice that changes from cellar to cellar, and even from tank to tank: it depends on the wine, on the market it addresses, on how far the producer wants to go. My task is to make the choice clear and to follow it all the way to the bottle.
What I ask of a natural wine
I ask it to respect the variety and the terroir, with no compromise on this, and to have an excellent bouquet and a full flavour: the expressive freedom born outside the canons of clarity and colour has to reach the nose and the palate. When it does, natural wine is one of the most beautiful things a cellar can make.
Frequently asked questions
Can a natural wine be made without faults?
Yes. Giving up formal perfection, such as absolute clarity or a brilliant colour, is a choice of style. Oxidation and volatile acidity are faults that make different wines alike, and they are prevented by following the wine step by step, from vineyard to bottling.
Which compromises do you accept in a natural wine?
Those concerning the aesthetics of the perfect wine, chosen with the producer and according to their market. I do not accept faults that take away the wine’s originality.
Do you advise natural wine producers?
Yes, in Campania and wherever a project calls for it. The work starts from the wine the producer wants to make and from the people who will drink it.
The service, vineyard and cellar, is described on the page Viticulture and winemaking consultancy. Other writings are on the Thinking page.