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Over the last few years, consumers have taken a greater interest in where their food and drink comes from. Allied to this, ethical issues such as sustainability, carbon footprints, packaging waste and fair trade have risen to the forefront of public consciousness. Could it be that the time is coming for ‘natural wine’?
Of all alcoholic beverages, wine can claim to be the most natural. It isn’t manufactured, in the sense that grapes contain within themselves all that is needed to make wine without any additions, save just one: that of sulphur dioxide (SO2).
The molecular guardian of wine, SO2 is added to wine almost universally because of its role in protecting against unwanted microbial growth and oxidation. But some winemakers, aiming to make wines without any such additions, have been trying to work without SO2 at all. In Europe there is a growing ‘natural wine’ movement, which is a loose coalition of artisanal producers aiming to work without any additions of yeasts or preservatives during the winemaking process. Most, though, make the concession of adding a little SO2 at bottling.
Many of these producers gather at regular natural wine fairs - and there is a growing band of Parisian wine bars who specialise in natural wine. The unofficial founding father of the movement is the late Jules Chauvet, a scientist and winegrower from the Beaujolais region, who is now revered by many. As well as working on natural wines, Chauvet was an expert taster who today is probably best known for designing the standard ISO tasting glass that is widely used across the wine world.
It would be convenient to dismiss such ‘natural’ wines as a fringe activity, irrelevant to the wine trade at large. But in March 2008, major UK supermarket Sainsbury listed the first really commercially significant NSA (No Sulfite Added) wine, part of their ‘So Organic’ range, and retailing at £4.99.
The wine in question is a South African Cabernet Sauvignon 2007 from the Stellar winery, and comes with a neck tag explaining the concept behind the wine. ‘Sulphites (sulphur dioxide) are generally added to wine as a preservative and an antioxidant’, it reads. ‘The warm, dry South African climate allows the production of perfect quality ripe grapes. Careful grape selection and handling, coupled with the best of modern winemaking and bottling techniques has enabled this wine to be made without the addition of sulphites. Once opened, do not store this wine’. This is quite a complex message for consumers to take on board, and there is a concern that if Sainsbury’s promote this wine as being healthier or more natural than wines with sulfites added, then shoppers will begin to question the soundness and healthfulness of the rest of their range.
So what does the wine taste like? It isn’t at all funky or faulty, and the dominant feature is pure, focused blackcurrant and blackberry fruit. It has purity |
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and freshness, and there’s no sign of any oxidation. It over-delivers for the price point.
How has Stellar achieved this? “Modern production techniques and equipment make the use of SO2 less critical than in the past,” explains Stellar’s winemaker Dudley Wilson. “Standards of hygiene in cellars are much improved and the widespread use of stainless steel makes cleaning much easier. With the selection of healthy fruit at optimum ripeness in the vineyard, there is little need to use large amounts of SO2 at the start of the wine making process.” Wilson has also made a concerted effort to protect the wine from oxidation during the winemaking process. “Most wine makers rely on the presence of SO2 to protect the wine when a lot more could be done by looking at dissolved oxygen in wine and understanding where it came from.”
Wilson prepares the wine for bottling by protecting it with inert gases, and also measuring oxygen pick-up to make sure that this protection is working. He adds that, “working with a dissolved oxygen meter has also exposed that the most common methods to protect wine with inert gas are more ritualistic than effective.” The bottling machine he uses pulls a vacuum on the empty bottle, fills it with nitrogen, and then fills it with wine. The wine is also sterile filtered just before entering the bottling machine. “The aim is to have almost no dissolved oxygen in the wine before bottling, to have no oxygen pick up during the filling process and to have the wine sterile at bottling,” says Wilson.
“On the question of shelf life,” he continues, “it is my opinion that if the wine has not oxidised within the first three weeks post bottling, then it will age according to the style in which it was made.” Wilson says the style is often dictated by the tannin profile, pH, volatile acid content and wood influence, so it will be subject to the same ageing factors as a normal wine, assuming that there is no ingress of oxygen or microbes through or from the closure. “One sometimes errs on the side of reductiveness when bottling some of these wines and they may, just after opening, exhibit some atypical bouquets. A bit of airing will invariably remedy this. Another feature to look for is the colour intensity. Even though these wines are chosen with a dense structure, the lack of bleaching SO2 results in wines with exceptional richness of colour.”
What were the motivating factors behind Stellar’s decision to make NAS wines? Wilson cites two. The first was the recent legal requirement to put ‘Contains sulfites’ on the label of any wines where sulfur dioxide has been added. “Many people mistakenly think that organic wines are SO2 free,” says Wilson, “so we anticipated a bit of confusion when this happened.” The second was the fact that in the United States the label organic has been restricted to wines where no SO2 has been added. “We |
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saw that there was a large niche there to be exploited,” explains Wilson. “I do not refrain from using SO2 to sleep better at night.” He adds, though, that “I have learnt more about SO2 by not using it than I had over all the previous years”.
Not all wines are suitable candidates for being made without SO2. “Generally wines with deep colour and rich tannins are the best candidates,” says Wilson. “We have tried it with white wine and have had some success, but the process is far more unforgiving than reds,” Wilson reports. “It often requires a lot of work to stabilise and bottle when we are still taking in red grapes. One doesn't have the safety net of tannins to mop up oxygen. Hyperoxidation and fermentation with bentonite are all options that can be explored but the resulting style will not be as fresh and will not really work on Sauvignon Blanc.”
So far, Wilson reports that the response to his NAS wines has been very good, especially among consumers who have concerns about the effects of sulfites on their health. “There are probably as many people who write in claiming they can now drink wine again who have probably been affected psychosomatically, as those who have found relief from a genuine intolerance towards SO2,” he adds.
But there has been some hostility towards the Stellar initiative from within the trade. Critics of NAS wines assert that claiming wines without added SO2 are more natural is a nonsense, because all wines contain some sulfites as a by-product of fermentation.
Stellar are not the only winery that have attempted to make a commercial SO2 free wine. Australian giant Hardys have been marketing a range of three wines: a Cabernert Sauvignon, a Shiraz and a Chardonnay, in their NPA (no preservatives added) range, which retails for around A$15.00 ($13.70/€8.80). These wines are only available in Australia because there are concerns about how they will ship. The Chardonnay is made by using juice hyperoxidation to drop out all the phenolic compounds, and then it is handled reductively once fermentation is complete.
According to ex-Hardy’s winemaker Tony Milanowski, who was involved with this product line, “NPA wines were never a big seller. I think we made 5,000 cases of each a year, which is a minor compared to the amount of Banrock Station and Crest that was made. I think they were definitely marketing to people with specific health concerns and not people interested in natural wine.”
Wilson doesn’t think that NAS wines are going to become commonplace. “We will certainly be increasing the proportion of our production that is SO2 free, but I doubt it will catch on elsewhere,” he comments. “I can't claim to understand everything about not using SO2 and still rely a lot on intuition, not something you can write down on paper and pass on as a recipe.”
For the trade at large, it would be good if this current NAS initiative could spark some debate about the intrinsic ‘naturalness’ of wine. The trade needs to tell consumers that, whether or not SO2 is added, wine is actually different to other alcoholic beverages in that it is, to a very large degree, natural. The image of wine’s naturalness could be very important in coming years in helping consumers choose wine as the natural, food-friendly alcoholic beverage of choice. In the current climate of huge interest in the origin and green credentials of food and drink, that could be a strong hand to play.
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