The Art & Craft of Natural Wine

April 26, 2012 in Comment with 17 Comments

“… if you will make a man of the working creature, you cannot make a tool. Let him but begin to imagine, to think, to try to do anything worth doing: and the engine-turned precision is lost at once. Out comes all his roughness, all dullness, all his incapability; shame upon shame, failure upon failure; pause after pause: but out comes the whole majesty of him also; and we know the height of it only when we see the clouds settling upon him. And whether the clouds be bright or dark, there will be transfiguration behind and within them.”

- John Ruskin, The Stones of Venice 1851

I’ve been trying to get my head around Natural Wine for a while. It’s not so as to understand the wines or what certain winemakers are trying to do, but why it creates such animosity and argument. If you will indulge me a moment, I’d like to put forward a way of looking at this which involves a sci-fi film, 19th century wallpaper designs and the Dynasties of Port wine which I look forward to discussing with producers and consumers at both upcoming ‘natural’ fairs – RAW (The Artisan Wine Fair) and The Real Wine Fair.

Jasmine block-printed wallpaper designed by William Morris. (Details from Linda Parry, William Morris and the Arts and Crafts Movement: A Sourcebook, 1989.) (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I do not want to be drawn into the debate over the term “Natural” to describe this end of the wine spectrum. I feel it is as good a title as any, and in any case, I believe this term will soon/eventually disappear. This style of wine will survive, we will just think of it differently. I am not arguing for one side or another, but I do think we should support a range of viewpoints.

Like most wine discussions, arguments about Natural Wine mainly revolve around the liquid in the bottle – how it gets there, what it tastes like, and what it should be called. This seems logical, after all, we are interested in wine, right?

In fact, I would argue that it is not.

Taste IS a personal thing, and one can like or hate individual bottles, but this is not the same thing as appreciating the motivation behind how they were made. I personally don’t like (any) cheese, but I do appreciate the craft of cheese-making.

The ‘features’ of the Natural Wine movement include: a focus on sourcing organically grown materials, minimising the human inputs and interactions with these materials in the winery, and attempting to bottle a liquid that expresses a unique character associated with the grape and the place it comes from. These are all laudable aims, but they are also open to measurement and criticism, which is what occurs.

We’ve come to accept organic viticulture as rational, but there are always choices to be made on details, such as ripeness for picking. Then, what counts as “intervention”, when in fact, as even Doug Wregg has pointed out, there’s no such thing as natural wine, only natural vinegar? And finally, when the resulting wine smells unlike any other wine on the market, is this to be interpreted as a fault, as a character of the terroir usually filtered out by technology, or simply a winemaker’s preference?

The two sides of the debate will argue these points interminably, but because they are seeing the argument from different perspectives, they will never agree. I believe that a little reframing of the discussion, might, if you will excuse the pun, bear more fruit.

“… we now have discrimination down to a science.” – Gattaca (1997)

In the general market, we have come to accept the role of technology [in its broadest sense - as the application of scientific knowledge] to allow us to consume with consistency, quality and reliability. This is true not just in wine, but across the board. Wineries proudly announce the technical qualifications of their wine-making staff and their latest investments in machinery. They adopt ever more clever, innovative and ‘scientific’ practices to remove variability caused by nature and human error when making their wines in order to achieve these perceived values for the consumer. When they do come across issues, even ones such as environmental responsibility, they ‘fix’ them with more technology – lighter bottles, recyclable plastic, alternative energy and so on. Science begets more science.

This is the underpinning to quality marks such as “Parker Points”, Gold Medals and sweetness scales; it is taken for granted that we are all consuming the same product so we can measure these wines and judge them. If it ticks the boxes, it is good. If it strays from the accepted scales, it is bad.

From this perspective, Natural Wine is at fault. Like a brilliant child who has grown up wild without attending school, he fails the standardised test. In the great terms of reference of the film Gattaca, he’s an (in)valid. As the ambitious Vincent Freeman, conceived ‘naturally’ by parents who could have had him ‘specified’ from the lab, but who still wants to head into space, says:

“I’ll never understand what possessed my mother to put her faith in God’s hands, rather than her local geneticist.”

Do we want wine lists made up from ‘perfected’ interpretations of wines, or do we want them to be varied and evolving, capable not only of fault, but of greatness?

Truth to Material

As I was vividly reminded when watching Zev Robinson’s latest wine documentary, “Life on the Douro” recently, making wine is just as much to do with the interaction of people and places as it is about the liquid that ends up in the bottle. Natural Wine should not argue over levels of sulphur, tannin or VA or whether a wine is ‘better’ because it was made in a clay pot. It seems to me that instead it is driven by a rejection of these technological terms of reference.

Arts & Crafts Armchair at V&A Museum

The Natural Wine movement is not the first to take this approach, and looking at other experiences might be able to teach us lessons. The Arts & Crafts movement famously did much the same for design and architecture in the late 19th Century. John Ruskin and William Morris may not be names you are familiar with, but they too were reacting to a society falling for technology (the Industrial Revolution) and argued that the division of labour and reliance on machinery was damaging society. They argued for design to be “true to its materials” and avoid unnecessary ornamentation or fakery, for the designer-craftsman to be involved in the product at all stages (hand-making everything), and for a return to ‘craft’ production instead of machine precision. It is really not hard to see the parallels with wine.

Let’s compare an IKEA chair with a craft-made kitchen chair. Both are used for sitting on, but they are different, not because of exactly how they were made, but because of what they mean to us. One is a disposable, mass-produced consumer good to be replaced when it inevitably falls apart (it must, they need us to buy again); the other is an heirloom, a piece of furniture and art to be treasured, and one whose minor flaws are integral to its story.

Even if this is true, there is always a time and place for both approaches, and no reason for being absolutist. There’s space in our life for IKEA kitchens and 3L bag-in-box wine as well as Morris & Co Wallpapers and Qvevri wines.

Arts & Crafts did not survive for long, but it did matter. It failed in large part because although craft production is attractive, it is not commercial – it doesn’t scale. There are only so many tables & chairs you can make each year if you have to do every stage yourself, and they become expensive. Natural Wine faces the same issue. But the ideas behind Arts & Crafts did inspire others to change, to make more honest products, to think of the people and societies who made and consumed the products they were creating. This movement inspired designers like Charles Rennie Mackintosh and architects such as Frank Lloyd Wright and the Bauhaus movement and still influences thinking today.

But will it age well?

You can convince someone to want to taste a bottle of Port by telling them a story about carving vineyards out of steep rocky valleys, shipping wines up and down treacherous rivers and across dangerous seas, and the huge wealth and desperate ruin that families experienced as a result, without once having to mention what the wine tastes like.

Taste is only a part of the consumer experience, but the process can be important if it is part of the context and the experience.

If we accept this, then it won’t matter how it is made on either end of the spectrum, and we can get on with focusing on the people and the story, and the impact, of the wine.

I honestly believe that the term “Natural Wine” will eventually disappear because once this extreme of the wine world is accepted and less radical, once its principles have been more widely adopted and reinterpreted, it will be meaningless as a differentiator. I look forward to new terms and movements emerging, and the wine trade should support this, not fight it.

It will have been a success because a small group of people encouraged us to see the world of wine differently and reach for the clouds.

[Disclosure: Vrazon has agreed to attend the RAW Fair to run the "Access Zone Unfiltered" social media space during the event in 2012, and we look forward to listening and learning about different views on these wines, and tasting wines. This post is not meant as promotion for one event or another however]

About Robert: Robert McIntosh is a wine blogger and online communicator on WineConversation.com, a prolific twitterer (@thirstforwine) and an occasional contributor to wine magazines as well as speaking at wine events. Robert is co-organiser of the annual European Wine Bloggers Conference and Born Digital Wine Awards, promotes international online wine communication, and advises companies about how to engage through social media. Robert also has some trouble communicating in the third person.

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http://arnoldwaldstein.com/ awaldstein

Nicely written and thought through.

Maybe you are right that the category will dissolve once the changes are internalized by the mass market. There is historical precedence in politics more than food products (like organic) I would point out. The term ‘organic’ and ‘natural’ and ‘vegan’ are on a rise in the states for restaurants and markets and this will not change for awhile. Wine is riding these coat tails.

What you and most everyone seems to ignore is today’s connected market.

Consumers shop with these filters, even at a high level like ‘Artisanal’. Online and offline. This is a generational connected market. This is how they shop, by category, by words that categorize, by icons that spur memory.

The internet has made the local global, the artisanal personal to a mass market (see Etsy) and there is ingrained behavior to know who you are buying from and the authenticity of the product and people.

My sense, and we disagree, is that this will fall nicely into the category of Natural, not with shrillness that the industry brings to the debate but naturally. And with the great benefit of connecting a new group of wine consumers with an attachment to this story-telling, iconic juice that both you and I love so much.
- http://thirstforwine.co.uk thirstforwine
  
  Thanks Arnold – I should have guessed that you’d be the first to reply
  
  I completely agree that we use filters, but I think that Natural is only a temporary version, a holding space for a bit more variety and specific terms.
  
  I briefly toyed with the question of what “movements” there had been in wine – and other than recent organic/bio-dynamic/natural I couldn’t think of them. In any case, it seems that there might be an interest in differentiation through philosophy as well as technology, and if Natural inspires more groups to emerge, then this could be more helpful for consumers.
  We shall see
  - http://www.winetravelmedia.com/about Wink Lorch
    
    Excellent and thought-provoking article and I broadly agree with you a) that the term ‘natural’ will disappear in time and b) that the producers are in a sense giving a wake-up call to others who may learn from their approach and adopt certain parts.
    
    But I would like to comment on your answer to Arnold re “movements” in wine. Previous to the organic movement, the movements that wine consumers really ‘bought’ have been the varietal movement, especially Chardonnay and Cabernet, and the White Zinfandel movement. Yes, I can hear everyone reading this shudder. But the reality of movements is that they need numbers (if they are to be more than simply a niche trend)… And numbers for even the broadest definition of organic wines, there simply aren’t.How many organic ports are there? Not many I don’t think. I just read a piece on Champagne that said how whereas the CIVC trumpets the fact that they are becoming more and more environmentally friendly, there are now just 55 certified organic/biodynamic growers in Champagne (out of 15,600) with, in four years time an expected 1 million bottles of Champagne from organic vineyards – out of the 300 million produced each year! You can’t make much of a movement out of these figures.
    - http://thirstforwine.co.uk thirstforwine
      
      Thank you Wink, and I agree with you about the varietal issue. In fact I was toying with exactly that thought myself – that the introduction of single varietal wines from the New World was a ‘movement’ in itself and another example of how you do not need to consciously sign-up to a set of rules for there to be a common way of looking at the world.
      
      I’m not sure whether numbers maketh the movement however. If it requires you seeing the world in a different way, of defining your own terms (or at least how you use them), then whether it is just a niche or sees mass adoption isn’t a test of its value, only its success.
      
      The success of organics might actually be that wines do not need to be wholly organic, because they made non-organic growers and producers be more responsible, even if they don’t follow the rules. Collectively we have accepted at least some of their ideas.
    - http://arnoldwaldstein.com/ awaldstein
      
      Thanks for this Wink.
      
      Re: the term and it’s usage and interest.
      
      I have had three new client calls today for advisory work.
      
      In each case, unprompted the exec on the other side, ended the conversation by opening a discussion about Natural Wine from posts from my blog.
      
      People need categories that provide an umbrella for thinking. A varietal umbrella, like the big Zin explosion in Cal in the 90s opened up the varietal generally but in a narrow swipe.
      
      Natural as a category spreads horizontally as a lens to think about wine and encourages learning, exploration of taste and greater appreciation.
      
      That breadth. That segue to understanding more info about wine in general is why I feel like I do.
      
      This is not an argument to convince, just my belief.
Ben S

Hi Rob,
I think the comparisons with Ruskin and Morris are a bit invidious – after all there are hundreds of ‘craftsmen’ (and women) winemakers who have no affiliation or indeed truck with the so-called Natural movement but are equally as far from the flatpack philosophy as is possible to be. And you seem to suggest by your comparison that natural wine producers are somehow being more ‘honest’? What’s dishonest about trying to keep your wine in tip top condition?
I tasted some amazing wines at last year’s natural wine fair, but equally a whole bunch which I found pretty undrinkable. What is more unpalatable than they were though is the idea that it’s all part of some kind of nebulous crusade and therefore more worthy than ‘unnatural wine’. I dislike organised religion in any form! *rant over*
- http://thirstforwine.co.uk thirstforwine
  
  Thanks Ben. I do take your point, but what I am trying to point out goes beyond the individual wine-makers and commentators. If there is a “movement” it does not have to be by a set of rules they all agree to – that’s an association or club. The fact is that there is a philosophical underpinning to some of this that has a LOT in common with what inspired Arts & Crafts, and as such they are all one and the same. I’m not enough of a sociologist or design historian to point to more people and examples, but you do not HAVE to sign up to something to be part of it.
  
  As for the use of “honest”, I was looking for a term that covered a lot of issues – not made-up, unadorned (in the design example), unvarnished … and using it does not imply others are the opposite – that’s going back to the semantic criticism of ‘natural’.
  
  I hoped to have avoided saying some wines were more ‘worthy’ than others. What I wanted to ensure, however, is that whole categories of wines are not dismissed because of how some choose to promote them, or whether you personally like the wines. We need more variety.
  
  I too was not a fan of MANY of the wines I tasted at the Natural Wine Fair last year, but I still think that we ought to support the idea.
  
  Coming back to design, it is a bit like those modern/retro design shops you occasionally see around London – the shop as a whole looks good, and with all the pieces together you see what they are trying to achieve, but when you go in, you find there might not be an individual piece you could buy that you like enough, or would “fit” in your house. You can’t reject it as bad design though.
  - http://www.facebook.com/people/Jonathan-Hesford/712434096 Jonathan Hesford
    
    I like the analogy Robert. I’m a big fan of the Arts and Craft movement and there are similarities with Natural wine but there are flaws in the comparison too.
    Morris and Ruskin were talented artists. Their followers were all accomplished designers and craftsmen. They created things of beauty that had a similarity of style while remaining true to the hand-crafted views. Perhaps there were Art & Crafts guildmembers who made shoddy furniture but they are lost to history. The guilds didn’t have rules about where the wood was sourced, which tools were allowed and which weren’t. Arts and Crafts furniture was also intended to be more beautiful and longer-lasting than factory-made furniture. A lot of Natural wine doesn’t do that. On the other hand a lot of artisanal wine (that’s short-hand for hand-crafted wines that are made with or without organic viticulture or a strict list of what no to do in the winery) are. In the end, what killed the Arts and Crafts movement was Heal and Stickley, who mass-produced “craftsman” furniture. Making it cheaper and more accessible while looking, to all intents and purposes, like the real thing. Heal and Stickley were the forerunners of Habitat and Ikea, who are the opposite of Ruskin and Morris. True craftsman furniture today is expensive and not easily found, but it still exists.
    
    This is probably going to happen to the Natural Wine movement. If it remains popular, a large wine company will make a cheap organic wine, refrain from using the “banned” products and techniques and turn out millions of bottles of slightly funky wine. Soon every supermarket will have a Natural wine range. Just like every cosmetics company has a natural range and every drugs company makes alternative remedies.
    
    At the same time, I hope (or I may as well sell up now) we will still have artisanal winemakers crafting their sought-after, individual and distinctive wines. And we’ll still have wine writers trying to encourage people to seek out the authentic and individual instead of the uniform and mass-produced.
    - http://thirstforwine.co.uk thirstforwine
      
      Thank you – very useful. I am not, and never claimed to be, an expert on design history. I would ask you, however, whether it is not true that there is a difference between the Arts & Crafts Movement, which encouraged a return to craft skills IN GENERAL because of their social agenda, and the guild/Morris &Co/etc. that were specific companies or organisations. I am not arguing for any winemaker or region in particular, I’m just hoping that we can have a debate based on the premise the that goals of the Natural Wine movement have merit irrespective of personal taste and individual winemaker skill. As for the future of Natural Wine, I also agree. But if large companies are forced to invest in organic viticulture, to consider wines with other taste profiles as valid, other grape varieties as useful, … then isn’t the world already a slightly better place?
      - Robert Joseph
        
        My initial response to your very thoughtful piece was lost in the ether (unreliable wifi connection) and others have made many of the points that I set out to make.
        But there is one that remains. Arts & Crafts chairs, Heals chairs and IKEA chairs all support the weight of an average human being and do not wobble. The proverbial visitor from Mars would recognise them as belonging to the same genus. Cloudy, cider-like white wine is NOT of the same genus as the other whites (organic, biodynamic or conventional/industrial). Nor are reds that fall apart within a quarter of an hour of being opened. These are the equivalent of badly made chairs.There are two lots of people out there 1) – the majority – wine lovers like us who enjoy good wine, however it is produced (though quite reasonably preferring the method to be as natural as possible; and 2) – the tiny minority – the political/religious stalwarts who happily overlook frankly wayward wines in their keenness to support the cause.We went through the same process in the 1980s when Nouvelle Cuisine chefs – including Mossiman – abjured seasoning in the quest for “real” flavour. I well recall fillet of beef poached in its own juice and an orange mousse made purely of orange. For some unaccountable reason, these dishes are no longer on offer chez Mossiman or anywhere else. I’ll predict that the same will be true of most of the more eccentric “natural” wines on offer today.
      - http://thirstforwine.co.uk thirstforwine
        
        (Seems we’ve reached the end of the nesting ability of this thread, so responding here to Robert Joseph)
        
        Thanks Robert. This is still a criticism of the specific wines rather than the principle of the movement behind Natural Wines … unless you are saying that NO good wines can be made following that particular approach?
        
        I can’t imagine EVER wanting to own anything made by Tracey Emin (or Damien Hirst), but I can’t reject all Britartists (or whatever the ‘movement’ is called) because of that (see my last paragraph in response to Ben above)
        
        Is there no value in them questioning the alternative ‘faith’ in technology to resolve any issues we have with the production of wine?
        
        I wasn’t “privileged” to try much Nouvelle Cuisine but could it not be argued that it inspired chefs to do something new (presentation-wise if nothing else) and disappeared because the best bits were incorporated into “mainstream” cooking? In that case, let’s at least praise the good bits instead of attacking the whole movement.
        
        I’m no apologist for bad winemaking – I hope you know that. My hope is to find a decent number of wines at the upcoming Natural wine events that (probably) could not have been made in any other way, and that I enjoy, to bolster its claim.
        
        If not, then I will gladly say so
http://www.twosisterswinetripping.com/ Erica Landin

Possibly the best writing on natural wine I have seen this year. 99% of all the communications around natural wine are focusing on what it is or what it is not – this is an interesting take on societal influences. Good job.
- http://thirstforwine.co.uk thirstforwine
  
  very kind words – though I have to say that I still don’t feel I’ve expressed everything I wanted to get across, but hopefully it can start a slightly different discussion that doesn’t descend into heated argument (again)
Fabio Bartolomei (@vinosambiz)

Sorry, I’ve arrived very late to the party! But my laptop is broken and my mobile is too small to type out a proper comment! Anyway, here’s my 2c worth now that I’ve managed to get access to a keyboard:

I find this ‘movement’ thing very interesting. I don’t think that preferences for certain grape varieties or wine regions really count as movements within the wine world; they seem to be more like superficial fashions or passing fads. I’d look outwith the wine world altogether for a movement. And the biggest and most significant one that I can see, as far as natural wine is concerned is the organic/green/sustainable/environmental ‘movement’ that been going on for decades. More and more citizens and consumers seem to care more and more about the environment and about what’s in their food (and by extension, in their wine). Is natural wine not just attempting to fill a huge gap in the supply of wine, that is not covered by the legislation? I’m referring to the de facto lack of legally defined ‘organic wine’. Up to now there’s only been “wine made from organic grapes!” and nothing covers what happens to those organic grapes once they’re in the winery. I think that the natural wine philosophy covers this gap, even though it’s not precisely defined (yet!).

I don’t think the term “natural wine” will disappear at all! If anything I think it will increase in popularity and be strengthened. I did a bit of research and discovered that the term was first used (in writing) in 1907 in the Languedoc, so it has a long history of usage behind it. Also, more and more mainstream wine-writers use the term ‘natural wine’ as opposed to any of the possible proposed alternatives. Only time will tell though I suppose.

“Consistency, quality and reliability” are not really qualities that can be argued with! BUT. Although consistency over time is very important to mass-produced, high-volume products and brands, I don’t think it’s that important to artisan type products. Consumers of natural wines understand that that there will be year-on-year variations depending mostly on the climate and to a lesser extent on the winemaker’s hand. But there will still be a general consistency to a given winemaker’s wine. Same applies to reliability: I think that consumers (fans!) of a given winemaker can be fairly confident of the wine they’re going to buy. Quality is the tricky one! I don’t mean to be provocative here but I believe that ‘quality’ means one thing to industrial high-volume producers, and another thing to small artisan type producers (whether of natural wines or of conventional wines). Industrial quality, for me, is compliance with legislation and with commercial and marketing criteria, whereas artisan quality is concerned with the ‘real’ intrinsic quality of the raw materials and with the processes that this raw material is subjected to.

Lastly, I’m wondering if there is not room enough in the wine world for all types of wine? For natural and non-natural, for mass-produced and artisan, for any category that we care to come up with, in fact? And not only am I wondering why certain anti-natural wine writers are so upset and aggressive, but I’m wondering why any sort of debate is necessary at all! I mean that the market for natural wine is so small and specific that it will always be a niche market, and never really compete directly with high-volume wines in supermarkets.
- http://thirstforwine.co.uk thirstforwine
  
  Thanks for the effort of getting this up. I don’t disagree with you, and some of the points are covered above. In answer to your last question, yes, there is room for all types, but humans ALWAYS categorise things so we need names for these categories.
  
  The debate is necessary in as much as it helps to highlight the key elements that differentiate some wines from others, helps to increase focus on the best elements, and encourages others to consider adopting them.
  
  I fully believe that the argument will move on because we will have to take a look at how reliant we are becoming on technology, and how we could be only small steps away from being able to create truly industrial wine. The effect will be to move at least part of the market in the opposite direction, and these arguments will help to define that new market.
  
  Be warned!
  - Fabio Bartolomei (@vinosambiz)
    
    Robert,
    
    Yes, humans do tend to categorize – too much perhaps, and to look for patterns and causes and effects where none exist! But, as far as I’m concerned, natural wine will get categorized for me by Others, no matter what I say or do, so I see it as completely outwith my control. No doubt the day will come when natural wines are officially defined and legislated, and there will be ‘natural’ wine’ lines in the supermarkets! Which of course may in fact be a ‘good thing’ in the wider scheme of things, and then we’ll have to invent a new category! And yes of course, debate is obviously necessary! I think I was writing too fast and not revising what I wrote! I didn’t mean to say that debate wasn’t necessary!!!
    
    What do you mean by “only small steps away from being able to create truly industrial wine”? Surely, industrial wine has been produced for decades?
    
    I don’t believe that the natural wine market is being driven by a rejection of technology, per se, though it may look like it. I think it’s being partly driven by a rejection of the effects of the use of this technology on the wine.
    
    A rejection of technology is what the Amish or the Mennonites do. They reject technology on principle, full stop. They would probably love any natural wine, no matter how faulty, funky, oxidized, volatile, microbiologically alive it was, as long as they knew that it was made without the use of technology. I personally quite like technology – I’m a sci-fi fan, an ex-trekkie (the therapy is going very well thanks!) and a Culture junkie! But I choose not to use the technology available to me because I believe it’s actually detrimental to the quality of the product I want to make.
    
    I think that natural wine people do reject certain types of wine, but there are two types of wine here that ought to be distinguished in this debate: one is the mass-produced industrial product type wine. I don’t think there’s any doubt about the fact that this type of wine does not and cannot express any type of terroir. It’s a manufactured product that has been built to specifications of taste, acidity, sweetness, alcohol level, and other commercial and organoleptic criteria, etc. That’s not to say that it doesn’t taste nice, is not worth the price, or that millions of people don’t buy it and like it. I have no issue with at all with that. It’s a different product, a different market, and nothing to do with natural wine as far as I’m concerned. That’s also not to say that anyone rejects it utterly, like Satan, say! I personally drink the stuff every day, for example (even though I’d much rather be drinking something else!).
    
    The other type of wine in question is fine wine, quality wine, estate produced wine. There’s no doubt in my mind that these wines really do express the terroir. But even though everybody knows (or can find out) how the grapes were grown (organic or biodynamic or whatever, as in the case of DRC for example), there’s no way to know what they actually did to the grapes once they got them into the winery! (And now we’re getting deep into terroir territory!) Are these producers really expressing the terroir as faithfully as possible or are they manipulating the wine too much to conform to expectations of what their terroir ought to be? I think that many natural wine proponents believe that natural wines, because of the low intervention in the winery, can express the terroir better than conventional, quality, fine wines that have been intervened on more can.
    
    I said “partly” above because I don’t think the technology aspect is the main driving force behind the current popularity of natural wine. I think the main thing is the environmental/ecological/organic/greening phenomenon that has been happening for decades, and which is finally affecting wine too. It’s the zeitgeist, man!
http://twitter.com/tomcwark Tom Wark

Robert,
This issue of the “natural” approach to winemaking needing to be adopted is a false desire. All of the processes employed by this movement have been adopted. Minimal intervention, reduced use of S02, a focus on communicating the terroir, reduced or no oak. This is all a commonplace goal among artisan winemakers across the globe who have been at it for decades and long before the “movement” claimed be something new or radical or different.

The champions of natural wine are myopic in this regard and it strikes me as singularly odd.