We are in the early days of the natural wine revolution but there is a perfect storm of social change that has long been brewing.
The wine industry has been overdue for disintermediation and the rise of the artisanal movement, the preeminence of the social web and natural wine phenomenon itself are helping to tip the scales and push this forward.
There are at least four big intersections that are coalescing to create large changes in the wine industry:
1. Surging growth of artisanal and natural wine makers
The quality and quantity of small production, natural wines, especially from Europe, is ramping fast. Extremely high-quality, food friendly and just plain yell-out-loud great natural wine is becoming easier to find at local restaurants, bars and wine shops. My post on this here.
2. Farwell to Parker and the arbitrary arbiters of taste
The crashing decline of the Parker era and the dethroning of the wine pundits as purveyors of public taste has truly occurred. Handing the mantel of good taste back to the consumer is positive for the growth of unique, terroir-driven natural wines. The changing of the guard to the social era from the autocratic taste legislation of the last few decades has at long last been completed.
3. The global movements to take responsibility for our planet, eat clean and live sustainably is neither fashion nor trend, but reality.
What we wear, drive, eat and consume have all taken on a sustainable direction. Wine is late to the game but more than welcome aboard. The offshoot of this change in human perception is the surge of the artisanal movement in food and crafts and the appreciation of the unique and the local—natural wine is a missing link in this ecosystem.
4. Rise of the social web and the dawn of personal referrals as the marketing ecosystem for wine.
It’s remarkable that wine, which engenders such personal passion, is so late in finding a home on the social web. If you go to Amazon to buy a refrigerator or a beach umbrella, you have easier access to personal reviews and referrals than when making a wine purchase.
The dramatic rise of the citizen wine blogger is the first signal of this change. Social communities around wine and natural wine specifically are about to explode and interconnect and initiate a referral-based system for the wine world. This is already prevalent in food and travel, in fact in most commerce segments. Wine is late to arrive on the social web scene but will create a tidal wave of change.
Transformation is certainly in process…but there is some real confusion in defining “What is natural wine?” especially around the definitions of what Natural and Organic and Biodynamic and Sustainable mean.
To the broader wine drinking market, which is approaching organic wine from both a taste and a lifestyle point of view, squishiness between these terms is not getting in the way of becoming entusiasts of this new generation of great wines.
But it is confusing at its core because there are discrepancies by geography to what these terms mean.
Organic, the easiest segue from the food industry, is a loaded term when applied to wine. It means different things in N. America than it does in Europe and the rest of the world.
Do you consider organic to apply to only what you do in the vineyard (as in Europe), or in the cave as well (in N. America as pertains to sulfites)? Do you subscribe to the addition of sulfites, restrictions to indigenous yeasts, chaptalization as non-organic processes? Do you believe in the orthodox biodynamic approach to wine making? And do you believe that only certified organic is organic?
Translate these questions to labels and certification and the mix gets messier.
My sense is that most wine consumers want assurances that the fruit is grown in organic and natural ways. They eschew chemicals and pesticides in their food. They do as well in the grapes from which wine is made. Beyond that, most consumers don’t really understand enough to care. Yet.
I’ve adopted Natural Wine as the umbrella that organic and biodynamic sit nicely under. This starts with the ideas that grapes are grown naturally and leaves room for growth in the definition as the consumers get more involved and informed.
The best definition of natural wines I’ve found comes from Dan Lillie, co-founder of Chambers Street Wines in New York
“A Natural Wine is a traditional view of wine as an expression of specific terroir and grape varieties, with minimal intervention by the winemaker.”
Organic, biodynamic, sustainable…all fit under a approach to making wine that is organic in intent, respects natural processes and is focused on taste and terroir.
As I write, taste and talk with friends about wine, this language to describe ‘what’ is working well. The community has its own wisdom as proven by many other industries moving to the social web. People trust their own tastes and understand wine as connected to natural and organic farming. It’s a great start.
This perfect confluence of factors is at the tipping point of fast change. I believe it is all starting to gel.
The social web by definition creates a global sense of local and flattens time and space. It has democratized business after business and industry after industry from travel to automotive to books and music. My post “Social media…Few rules. Powerful tools. Endless opportunities.” talks about this from the industry perspective.
Wine is next…in fact it is already happening.
There are holes and challenges a plenty. Winemakers need to find a way to participate in social media that is easy and time efficient. Wine shops, both terrestrial and online need to be bold and market the small winery with limited production. And bloggers and educators need to find language to communicate their passions for this great and true approach to winemaking.
Many are starting to do this.
Rowan Gormley and Naked Wines in the UK have a great model to fund and deliver artisanal wines at a competitive price. Companies like AVIN, led by Andre Ribeirinho, are trying to sort this out from a database layer. Wine travel groups like Per Karlsson’s BKWine and Wink Lorch’s WineTravelGuides are doing a great job at natural wine tours. And the EWBC organization, founded by Gabriella and Ryan Opaz and Robert MacIntosh have created a dynamic forum for social and wine communications. And or course, chefs and restaurateurs are putting in the resources to pair natural wines with fresh and local foods.
But this is just a beginning.
It’s been a slow warm-up period but this marathon of change will be run like an Olympic sprint. Everyone from the producer to the consumer and the entrepreneurs who connect them will benefit.
