What is Post-Natural Wine?

How “natural” became a tired cliché. And why wine world focus has shifted from cellars to vineyards

Roberto Frega is an unlikely wine writer. An accomplished political philosopher and pragmatist who has written volumes on American reformer John Dewey (1859-1952) and on democratic theory (in French and English). He holds a permanent research post at France’s national research service.

And somehow in recent years, he began to think about wine, winemaking, and wine aesthetics.

His recent book, written in his native Italian is, Il Vino Post Naturale (Post-Natural Wine) published by Ampelos (which published the Italian edition of my South of Somewhere as Altrove a Sud). Frega’s main thesis is that while early pioneers of natural wines sought ways to move away from the excesses of chemicals in vineyards and cellars, subsequent generations using the “natural” label have hardened around formulas and even champion wine defects as part of the flavor profile.

Meanwhile, a new generation he calls “post-natural” is unconcerned about labels but is doing heroic work in the vineyards to be better environmental custodians while improving their wines.

The book deconstructs, what I think many of us have experienced. That natural wine—which started as a conscientious and liberating movement-- quickly turned into dogma and marketing pap that gave cover to a lot of naïve, careless and often anonymous liquids.

The good news of post-natural wine, says Frega, is that it’s working. The revolution in the vineyards we have all witnessed has transformed to better quality and terroir-driven wines without stylistic labels.

I connected with Frega, 56, via Zoom this week. He spends most of his time working at his home in the Romagna hill town of Brisghella (pop. 7,000) surrounded by forests and vineyards. From here he also runs a small company, called Sartoria del Vino, importing some of his favorite French wines to Italy.

What follows is our conversation, edited for brevity and clarity.

Robert Camuto: Roberto, tell me a little bit about your life, and how you got interested in wine and natural wine.

Roberto Frega: I have been living on and off between Italy and France, because I did my PhD in France, then I came back to Italy, then I moved again to France, then back to Italy. I’ve always been passionate about wine and have been a wine lover. And then some years ago I came in touch with people more into the natural wine movement.

I maybe I already drank wine with that could be called “natural”, but I wasn’t really into the debates about what is wine? or what is natural wine?

RC: So how did that change?

RF: I was actually drinking a lot of wine, meeting lots of winemakers, and when I began reading, I suddenly realized that there was something odd: The natural wine books I read were talking about things that happened in the past: the excesses of chemicals in wine and the way nature was abused in France, Italy and elsewhere. There were scandals in Italy in the 80s that there was the Beaujolais Affair in France (2005). Terroir was just exploited, and nature was not respected. And, and in the end, wine turned out to be not good.

And at the same time, I was meeting lots and lots of wine makers who did their first vintage between, let’s say, 2004 and 2015: people that now are in their 40s. And these winemakers were extremely minimalistic with what they were doing in the cellar, they were adding very little sulfur, maybe doing clarification if really needed. But you couldn’t find any recipe. They didn’t call themselves “natural”.

They were they were always saying, “It depends. It depends,” and “don’t ask me stupid questions, because I have no recipe. It really depends according to the to the vintage, and if I have to do something, I do it, and if I don’t, I don’t.”

But then at the same time, they were also talking a lot about the kind of innovation they were bringing to the agronomic part. They were basically spending lots of time in the vineyard and experimenting with massal selections or with new techniques which were inspired, for example, by biodynamics or by permaculture, and agronomic philosophies that became popular from the beginning of the 2000s.

This way of doing wine was neither conventional, whatever that means, nor “natural”. And so, my reflection began about how, as a philosopher, I could say something relevant about this and the malaise about the state of discourse.

RC: In the book you write about the evolution of natural wine from the ‘70s and ‘80s to what you call “natural wine 2.0.” What do you mean?

RF: I was looking for a way to say what I love from the natural wine movement and separate it from what I just dislike. By dislike I mean when I go to a natural wine fair and I just think most of the wine is not good. Or when I am in a restaurant and I have to send wine back because it’s just not good.

Whereas when you taste wine from the first generation—of the early 2000s and earlier, it was a different story. We were talking about Giuseppe Rinaldi (Barolo) before, but there are lots of others like Pierre Overnoy (Jura). Their idea was about making better wine while doing less in the cellar. And the wines are pure, precise, expressive, but at the same time, they are okay. There may be some bottles which are less happy than others, but overall, there is not a problem.

RC: So, in the 2000s things changed to natural wine 2.0...

RF: That was the time when natural wine became a brand. Technology was available everywhere, and you had laboratories everywhere, but you had people say, “No I won’t do an analysis because I am natural.”

And there was a crystallization of taste toward the style, which meant lots of cloudiness in the white wines—even though you can make a natural wine which is crystalline and clear. So, my thought was, if you don’t do it, it’s because you like it turbid. You like turbidity in your wine, because it becomes a sign of, natural wine. It’s not about making the real thing, which is natural. It’s about making it look like a natural wine. The same was true for flavors of acetic acid and brettanomyces. Because either you like brett or you don’t like it. If you don’t like it, there are things you can do (starting with controlling temperatures) to naturally to avoid it.

RC: One of the first natural wine makers from Beaujolais Marcel Lapierre (who died in 2010) and his son Mathieu, worked vigorously testing their barrels and intervening with cold temperatures and even sulfites if volatile acidity got out of hand. But you’re saying many less disciplined natural producers either did not care or sought these things out.

RF: To me, there have been two trends going on at the same time, one of the wine makers, and the other among wine consumers.

From the consumer end, (in the 00’s) wine was perceived as becoming academic and snobby and good wines were becoming extremely expensive. So therefore, many people, say 20 to 25 years old, said “Okay, let’s, let’s look somewhere else. There is this natural wine movement. The wines are cheap. They don’t ask us to be knowledgeable about the appellation, the history, the tradition, etc.” So even if you had a passion or an interest in wine, and you didn’t have much money, and you knew nothing, you could still appreciate this natural wine.

And so there is a generation whose taste has been educated on this model of natural wine 2.0 which is a kind of stereotype of how natural wine should look and taste, independently from the fact of whether it has been done in a natural way.

RC: You write about how sulfur dioxide (sulfites) has become the bogeyman for natural wine 2.0, when in fact quality winemakers today use far less than in the past.

RF: The natural wine movement is a movement like all the revolutionary movements in history look for radicalizing trends. You have this in Maoism, in Communism, it doesn’t really matter. In such movements purity becomes a way to gain leadership in the movement. And in this case, the focus was on sulfites as the real enemy. Therefore, the less sulfites you used, possibly zero, the purer you were.

I think it’s a sign of times. Twenty-five years ago, in Italy if a winemaker wanted to appeal to the market, they would write “barrique” on the label, now they might write “without added sulfites.” Basically, it’s a marketing strategy.

RC: In the book you write that chemical wines are over. What do you mean?

RF: My take on chemical wine is polemical: They exist, of course, but not in the world of fine wines. Supporters of natural wines say wines are either natural or chemical. And my point is that so many good wines are neither! People should stop saying that if you do not drink natural wines you will likely drink chemical products. This is stupid and false.

RC: I interview a lot of wine makers, mostly in Italy, and in the last 10 years or so, everybody’s showing me the work they do in the vineyards, working with regenerative agriculture, cover crops, their pruning and training systems, and what they do to promote soil life. In the cellar they are gentle, not extractive. They use native years, don’t filter or fine and use minimal sulfur. And yet they don’t call themselves “natural”. This applies even to wealthy investors who are passionate about a place and want to do things right. They might bring in Claude and Lydia Bourgignon to study their soils and terroir and hire Simonit & Sirch to train their vineyard pruners. This, I assume, is part of this post-natural culture.

RF: Yes. The wine makers in the field, wine makers I love, were always talking about what happens in the vineyard, what they were discovering, new techniques. Yet everything I was reading about, about in natural wine, from books, manifestos, and also protocols, was talking about the cellar. Everybody was obsessed with this sulfite thing. They were saying, “provided the grapes come from organic viticulture, it’s fine.” But I mean, you can have extremely insensitive and exploitative organic viticulture.

So post-natural, is this idea of: Let’s change what we are talking about. Let’s stop talking about sulfites. I don’t care. Let’s talk about what happens in the vineyard. And let’s go there. Let’s go back to the vineyard.

Of course, in the world of natural wine making, everyone says, “the vineyard is very important.” But then my point is, “Look at, look at where you put your time, where you put your efforts.” Because doing agriculture in the way of the post-natural movement, takes you three times as much time in the vineyard.

RC: Why did this action shift to the vineyards? Why is there so much attention in these last years on making things sustainable. Is it awareness about climate change and the environment?

RF: I see two things. The first is generational. The people who are today in their early 40s or younger, they have an ecological sensitivity prior generations didn’t necessarily have. It’s more diffused. And I think when they talk to their peers, the people of their age who drink their wines, they are exposed to expectation about respecting nature.

If you read the work if Max Léglise (enologist at the French research center in Beaune 1962-1984), he wrote about bringing the organic revolution to the cellar. But the first priority was the vineyard, then the cellar. So now we are finally going back to that.

The second thing I would add that is important is the higher level of training of this new generation. Most of them have degrees in agronomy or in or in enology. Most of the time in France and in Italy, you cannot get a degree in enology without studying agronomy. So, when they come out of university, they are well acquainted with biodynamics, permaculture, regenerative agriculture.

Also, this generation is more experimental. They share knowledge. And they are open. And they have access to agronomists and enologists who are open to new things.

RC: Let’s talk about terroir. I was living in France 25 years ago, and I remember natural wines as part of the whole movement of artisanal wines and undiscovered terroirs. Then things split between the “natural” camp that cared about natural purity as you say, and the terroir people who cared more about their place. I’m a terroir guy—always will be—I love to discover a place, traditions, food that pair with wines. That to me is what wine culture is about. But in a lot of the natural wine discourse, I don’t find that interest. And that’s a big turnoff.

RF: “One of the things that really pisses me off is when I taste a wine, and the first thing that comes to my mind is “natural”. I can’t think about the vintage, the grape or the terroir. It’s just “natural”. This is something I cannot stand. I mean, I’ve tasted wine that could have been Chenin from the Loire or could have been Albana from Romagna, or whatever, because you have this strong reduction, lots of volatile acidity, turbidity, all done in the same way.

RC: Which is the very opposite of terroir.

RF: There is an intrinsic tension between natural wine and terroir. The way of wine making can erase the traces of terroir. To express terroir, you have let some microorganisms run their course and suppress others so they don’t dominate.

RC: In natural wine communication there is often very little discussion of place.

RF: In the first part of the natural movement, many wines were kicked out of the appellations because those who led the appellations said, “This wine doesn’t belong with us.” The second generation of , wine said, “I don’t care about appellations, let’s stay out.”

But then the problem is you stop conversation with people in your place. How can you express terroir if you just reject the cultural part of terroir, which is tradition, and you say, “I don’t belong to your community?”

The post natural winemakers, nine out of ten, came back to the appellation system. They try to reform it from the inside. And maybe they have one cuvee or two for which they say “I want to do it my way. I won’t ask for the appellation recognition.”

RC: One person who comes to mind is Arianna Occhipinti who I recently revisited. She has said all along for the last twenty years that she’s about terroir. That natural methods were never the end. That she doesn’t want people to taste her wine and say, “that is natural,” but she wants them to taste and say, “wow that is good.” Her wines have improved and become cleaner. Is this something of what you’re talking about?

RF: Absolutely Ariana. Maybe she’s someone who went farther in the natural movement, then stepped back a bit. Whereas I have lots of examples of people who simply never went in this direction.

There is also a kind of time delay between France and Italy. In France, everything began earlier in the natural movement back in the 70s. And so, the move towards post-natural wine started earlier.

In France it is somewhat easier to find someone who does the wine in the way I would call post- natural—where you are just amazed at the kind of investment they put in the vineyards, wanting the grapes perfect. In Italy I still find a world which is more polarized between a little too natural for my taste and wines that are a little too controlled.

RC: what is your view of the future of wine? Is it post-natural, and how do you see things like new hybrids and genetically edited vines?

I think that the future is post-natural even in Italy. I’m hearing more and more when I talk with the people in the wine business that tastes are changing. I went into a wine bar last week, and someone was asking, “Why don’t you have natural wine anymore?” And the owner said, “I cannot, because people keep bringing the wine back. They don’t like it; they don’t want it. They want clear wine, reliable wine, they don’t want this.”

I think taste is going into this direction. And I think those who did the right training can do post-natural wine because they know how to do massal selection. They know how to control temperature. Those who simply made natural wine because it was easy, you really didn’t need any training, because, as they said, “I do nothing. I bring the grapes and I press them,” will have a problem. Now, if you do nothing, you just make bad wine and don’t sell it anymore.”

RC: Generally how natural can agriculture be when 99 percent of vines (except some planted in volcanic and other sands) are grafted on phylloxera-resistant rootstock? It’s a strange system where the vine is not really a whole vine.

To the point of disease resistance, what do you think about either new fungal resistant hybrids or PIWI (approved in French appellations like Champagne and Bordeaux) or gene editing as proposed by (Italian researcher and ampelographer) Attilio Scienza as a way to use less treatments in the vineyards?

RF: I have no a priori against genetic editing. I’m totally open to it. But it should be controlled, like everything, of course. I mean, when you recognize a new a new type of clone, it may take 20 years to test. The PIWI strategy I think is much slower, and I don’t see the wine quality as that good.

And then I would say the other strategy is you have is stop growing grapes in some places and accept that climate is changing. And you know, if you look at the history of the last ten centuries, growing patterns have changed. There are places where we grow today where it was impossible 50 years ago, but where 200 years ago it was possible.

As far as phylloxera I don’t have the knowledge, So, basically, we use rootstock, which is grafted to the vine and separate because we don’t have another solution for these grapes we love which are still attacked by this small beast we don’t know how to control.”

RC: Tell me about your next book.

RF: It’s a more academic book, also written in Italian, but I hope to publish in English. It’s taking an aesthetic theory of style and applying it to wine. It’s called “Style in Wine.”

RC: I’ll look forward to continuing this conversation when it comes out.

RF: With a glass.