Vin du Terroir vs Vin du Technologie

There is a war going on. A dirty, clandestine war. A war that will ultimately determine the future of wine in the 21st century.

Just as the first world consumer is being conditioned to care about things like organic agricultural practices and fresh, pesticide free, synthetic additive-free products, and just as she has become more than willing to pay a little bit more for them...a wolf in sheep's clothing creeps in among her, attempting to make a dime or two manipulating her good intentions. This wolf has many forms, but in the world of commercial wine production, it goes by the name Vin du Technologie.

These wolves are a clever bunch, and they band together...protecting their lies. They pay writers to spin beautiful stories about the history of their wines, how it is all a family affair, which appears on the back of their labels. And on the front, they print rustic scenes, or flowers, or otherwise disarming graphics, to give the impression that the wine in the bottle comes from the earth and is natural.

And you'd be surprised to learn who these wolves are. They're not just the Mondavi's, the Gallo's; they're also those small boutique wineries in Napa, and those famous and expensive imports.

Vins du Terroir are wines from producers that commit to making an authentic product, a true expression of soil and vintage. They do not always produce great wines, and sometimes their wines are not even good. But they are always honest, always sustainable, always real wine.

This war is part of a larger modern dilemma. This dilemma poses the question: if we can use technology to make a thing "better", ought we always do it? This is the most important question a winegrower must answer every year come harvest time, and indeed, throughout the year as the grapes mature on the vine. And to answer yes to the question is very, very tempting (and potentially incredibly lucrative).

Wine is the result of a naturally occurring chemical reaction called fermentation. Grapes crushed in a vessel will ferment and become wine whether or not there is a human being there to manage it. Wine makes itself, and the human element simply shepherds this natural product into its best finished state.


‘We believe in natural winegrowing and winemaking, and I must admit that this has led us to have serious debates with scientists spanning three generations’, responds Beaucastel’s Marc Perrin. ‘In the mid-1950s, for instance, our grandfather, Jacques Perrin, decided to stop using chemical pesticides or herbicides on the vineyard. At that time, when scientists were recommending the use of such chemicals for productivity or lobby reasons, that seemed crazy and impossible. Now, it seems that people have changed their mind and more and more vineyards are turning organic. I could quote many more examples of opposition between a scientific vision of wine and our traditional/terroir oriented philosophy of wine, and the subject of Brettanomyces is just one more’, he explained. ‘There are certainly some Brettanomyces in every natural wine, because Brettanomyces is not a spoilage yeast (as many people think) but one of the yeasts that exist in winemaking. Some grapes, like Mourvèdre, are richer in 4-ethyl-phenol 'precursors' than others and we have a high percentage of these grapes in our vineyard. Of course, you can kill all natural yeasts, then use industrial yeast to start the fermentation, saturate the wine with SO2 and then strongly filtrate your wine. There will then be no remaining yeasts, but also no taste and no typicity. That is the difference between natural wine and industrial wine, between craftsmanship and mass-market product.’

The presence of Brettanomyces in the Beaucastel wines is just one example of what would be lost if wines were no longer produced naturally. Tasting wines professionally, it is my job to decide whether a wine has a flaw...before I give it to my customer. But therein lies the predicament. What should I really be looking for? Correctness? More often than not, the technological wines are the most correct wines, the more polished wines. They are the wines that frequently get the big scores (there are a great many exceptions, however, Beaucastel included) and garner the superlative press.

Ultimately, this post is rhetorical. I am siding with the natural wines, warts and all. But I do think about this state of the industry, and what will ultimately be the resolution. I have found the best producers are cautiously experimenting with wine technology...asking the question, "if I do this will I harm the character and typicity of the wine?" Some have elected to use these new tools and techniques, others not. As a buyer, I guess I am committed to the same approach.