Natural/Natty Divide
Natural/Natty Divide
The needed differentiation between Natural Wine and Natty Wine.
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Once again I bit off quite a bit. This article is more of an outline for what I’m hoping will be a larger and better researched piece.
“There’s Natural Wine and then there’s Natty Wine,” my friend Jarred Guild once said to me at a party. “Natural wine is like normal wine that’s made and farmed organically and Natty is style, hype, the look of the thing,” he explained. Something happened and he had to leave the conversation or I left, I don’t remember.
That short interaction stuck with me lo these many months.1 I’ve been mulling it over and working this distinction into casual conversation and have found that not only is a Natural/Natty differentiation intelligible, but it’s actually useful. Many people equate the two when trying to describe a wine they don’t like. After I politely posit the distinction between Natural/Natty Wine, I’m able to ask what they find challenging about specific wines. Okay so it’s useful, but what does it .
A Natural Wine is the theoretical framework, the ethos and Natty Wine is an aesthetic (the look of the thing). Natural Wine is biodynamic/organically farmed grapes and unspoofilated in the cellar. On the other hand, Natty Wine has criteria, those include brilliantly colored wine, indigenous grape varieties, skin contact, undisgorged Pet-Nat, irreverent labels, and many more.2 It’s almost like if Natural Wine was the thing the ethos, then Natty Wine is the marketing. A skin contact, BioD, Verdeca from Puglia imported by a “Natural Wine Importer,” would be called a Natty Wine.
You’ll know which is which when you see it…if you’ve been around long enough to recognize it. For example, the wines made by Ridge Vineyards are Natural but not Natty. A Natty Wine is (should) always natural (though though it’s difficult to check), though a natural wine isn’t always Natty. It’s like the difference between a square and a rectangle. Now we know the difference but its also important to know how each ‘genera’ came about.
We can say that Natural Wine came about as an appendage of the organic movement that grew as a response to post-war chemical fertilizers that were killing the overall health of vineyards. The Natural Wine origins are credited to Beaujolais Negociant Jules Chauvet.3 Farming came first and the wine making followed suit. If you’re not going to farm with inorganic fertilizers and pesticides it makes sense not to fuss with new technology in the cellar. Natural Wine has a pretty clear beginning and definition, Natty Wine doesn’t seem to have that luxury.
If we absolutely have to pin point the beginning of the Natty Movement I would say it was Alice Feiring’s 2008 book, “The Battle for Wine and Love: Or How I Saved the World from Parkerization.” There where many other people working, writing, importing natural wine at the time but Feiring was the face of the spear.
The wines enjoyed a cult following for a time. A few bloggers like, Aaron Ayscough’s Not Drinking Poison in Paris or Jeff Weissler of Conscious Wine intensified interest in Natural Wine.4 As time progressed and the message spread, The Underground aged and began to populate portions of the Mainstream. As Natural Wine’s popularity grew it transitioned from an ethos/structure to a fashion. Celebrities like Hip-Hop artist Action Bronson started touting Natural Wine. Heck, I made a “Hella Natty” shirt.
The public eventually grows weary of empty sloganeering and maybe we are witnessing the decline of Natty Wine.
When Natural Wine became cool is when “Natty Wine” as a concept broke off from Natural Wine. As Natty Wine grew into its own it took on a new set of values. The main one is a reaction to the aesthetics of the heavily extracted, oak and fruit bombs that pervaded the American Market.
Essentially being the marketing arm of Natural Wine it makes sense that Natty Wine’s foundation would be an aesthetic reaction. When a movement, like Natty, is built on aesthetics a lack of substance becomes a problem. The public grows weary of empty sloganeering and maybe we are witnessing the decline of Natty Wine.
After last week’s review of Rachel Singer’s memoir, “You Had Me at Pet-Nat” had a great conversation with Ryan Stirm of Stirm Wine Co. To paraphrase we came to the conclustion that this book was the last Natty feel good story. In effect, “You Had Me at Pet-Nat” represents Peak Natty. It’s a sentiment that I agree with. Signs of it’s decline abound. You have a tapering off of celebrity endorsements. Alice Feiring has less influence abated after advice she gave during the Anthony Cailan sexual harassment incident. Finally we have the aftermath of C-19. A large popularizer, the natural wine festival circuit, had to hibernate for a while. I mean on Instagram the only anti-Sulphur meme’s you’ll see are all ironic.
This doesn’t mean that Natural Wine is dead. Let me replete, Natural Wine, Organic Farming and low/no intervention winemaking will not go away. I am not trying to hasten it’s demise by saying Natty Wine is on the decline. All I’m saying is Natty Wine wing’s are clipped. There will be a drop off in new importers specializing in Natural Wine and fewer wines marketed as such. The fans of challenging wines in majors markets will continue to support makers of challenging wines,5 but it will be a smaller group with less influence on the wider wine world.
I hope that this distinction makes sense and is useful when you encounter closeminded individuals that go into a tirade at the mere mention of ‘Natural Wine.’ I know writing this article has made me actually put my thoughts into perspective about what Natty and Natural actually mean. I hope that the future will continue to be bright for Natural Wine. Lord knows backtracking on Organic farming and chemicals in wine would be detrimental to the wine industry not to mention the quality of the product on the shelf.
Thank you for reading this basis for a fuller article. Please don’t hesitate to email me with thoughts or corrections. I really enjoy talking about this stuff.
?, maybe years? Again, I don’t remember.
Natty Wine is where we get the phrase Zero-Zero; nothing added, nothing taken away. In practice Zero-Zero really means no Sulphur added.
A good history of Natty wine can be found here: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/11/25/how-natural-wine-became-a-symbol-of-virtuous-consumption
Though Monroe doesn’t differentiate between Natural and Natty she seems to be discussing the media and hype around Natural Wine, the Aesthetics, which I call Natty Wine in this article.
Hella Natty, Funky some might even say flawed,
Thanks for the succinct bibliography in the footnotes!
Damn, let me get this beautiful friendship started! Cheers!