Watch Out for Natty-Washing

There is plenty of evidence that natural wines are maintaining steady sales despite the overall drop the wine industry is experiencing. I found this anecdote from Jeremy Parzen to be particularly interesting.

Arguably the most interesting thing overheard by an intrepid wine blogger at TexSom this year was the following.

Wine sales are down,” observed one speaker at a break-out session. “But natural wine sales continue to stay steady. We need to start looking at natural wine as a way to answer the current demand for wine.

This was followed by something said wine blogger never thought they would hear uttered by a leading U.S. wine professional, words spoken by someone who runs a high-end wine program in an upscale market.

I don’t mind giving my guests a wine that I find defective if that’s what they want. I now have a natural wine by-the-glass on my list, they said.

Hmmm. That’s just one data point but the idea might catch on.

So is big wine going to give up their pesticides,  fining agents, oak adjuncts, sulfites, MegaPurple, and sugar enhancements to sell wine to younger consumers?

Will high end, prestige wineries take the risk of using native yeasts and leave their enzymes and yeast nutrients on the shelf during difficult vintages? Maybe for a batch or two under a second label.

There is little danger  that “natural” will suddenly become mainstream and change the industry from within. The danger is that the word itself will get hollowed out, turned into yet another shiny marketing bauble to dangle in front of the under-40 crowd who’ve grown weary of Chardonnay With Training Wheels™.

We’ve seen this move before: “craft” beer that’s brewed by multinational conglomerates, “artisanal” bread par-baked in a factory, “natural flavors” labels slapped on products that are as industrial as a shipping container. Once a word carries cultural cachet, it’s only a matter of time before the big players run it through the spin cycle and serve it back to us with a focus-grouped story.

So watch out for natty-washing. The next time you see a corporate back label crooning about wild yeasts and hands-off vinification, you might want to check if that “feral” Chardonnay was actually born in a stainless-steel tank, inoculated by the legal department, and raised on a steady diet of marketing buzzwords.

Because if there’s one thing more natural than wild yeasts and cloudy juice, it’s a billion-dollar portfolio manager discovering their inner pét-nat.