INTRODUCTION

Some nine thousand years ago, someone made a lucky discovery: that grapes contained within themselves the constituents to make a satisfying, mood-enhancing, food-compatible, and usefully long-lived drink—wine. So universally appreciated was this near-magical liquid that it soon became a cornerstone of the shared lives of many societies. Wild grapes proved amenable to cultivation; vineyards were a sign of settling, evidence that people who had previously been nomadic were here to stay. In addition to its social role, wine also became infused with religious symbolism.

Remarkably, wine has survived various social upheavals, the end of dynasties and empires, and industrial "progress" and remains with us today. Of course, many of the wines we currently consume, dominated by bold, sweet fruit flavours, would be unrecognizable to drinkers of just a century ago. Yet there are still plenty of wines around that taste much as they would have hundreds of years ago. This is because, here and there, wines are still made in ways that would be familiar to a winegrower from past times. Still others are helped a little by cellar technology but manage to retain a sense of place that connects with history. Thus wine carries with it an important tradition. In New World regions where there is a relatively brief tradition of quality wine production, there exist both wines that reflect the personality of the place they come from and those that could have been made almost anywhere.

WHAT IS NATURAL? WHAT IS AUTHENTIC?

One of the keys to wine's enduring appeal is the belief that it is a "natural" product. But how do we define natural? We can start by agreeing that in its most basic form, all wine is natural in that it is not a synthetically produced beverage. Instead, grapes contain—within and without—all that is needed to make wine. One could therefore argue that the more manipulations or additions a wine undergoes, the less natural the resulting product, although this is an overly simplistic view.

In truth, there is no such thing as natural or unnatural wine; rather, the "naturalness" of a wine is most usefully measured on a continuum from least to most natural and takes in many aspects of the cultivation, harvesting, and processing of the raw ingredient: the grape.

To illustrate this point, let's consider the analogy of a garden. If a garden is totally "natural," it is untended, and the only plants growing there will be those that establish themselves. The result will not be completely devoid of appeal, but it won't be a garden in the traditional sense. After several generations it will likely become woodland or scrubland. The term garden implies some sort of human intervention by selecting which plants to grow, tending them, and keeping a degree of order. Of course, the gardener does not make anything grow herself or himself; she or he acts merely as a facilitator of this growth. But part of the appeal of a garden is that it allows us to enjoy space that is dominated by plants and nature, even if it is nature at its tamest and most controlled.

The analogy with wine isn't perfect, but it's a useful one. Consider the winemaker (or winegrower, if, like some, you have a natural aversion to the term winemaker) as the gardener. A gardener could be said to be taking a natural approach if he or she eschews the worst-offending chemicals and doesn't introduce anything nonliving into the garden—the extreme example would be planting artificial flowers. But you could also raise questions about degrees of naturalness, as you can with wine. Does a garden gnome, or a water feature, or a bench make the garden unnatural? There are all sorts of gardens, from formal Regency-style English gardens to botanic gardens and more functional vegetable gardens. In a way all of these are natural, but some are more natural than others.

If we adhere to a strict concept of naturalness, then there is no such thing as natural wine. But if we accept the idea of a continuum of naturalness, and if we recognize that it is useful to establish just how natural some wines are when compared with others, then a range of choices become available in the vineyard and winery that will shift the wine in one direction or the other along the naturalness continuum. We must draw a line somewhere along the continuum from least natural to most natural, because otherwise anything goes—and in winemaking "anything goes" translates into a huge problem, as we'll discuss in later chapters.

However, perceived naturalness is not the only factor that has maintained wine's appeal over the ages. Another important ingredient has been the link to provenance: the power of wine to tell the story of its origin. This idea of terroir is intrinsic to wine, but is at great risk of erosion in today's marketplace. Winemakers need to listen to the vineyard and do their best to express it in the final wine. A key part of this is managing vineyards in an effective and sustainable manner. An even more important part of this is picking early enough to retain freshness and definition and avoid high alcohol and the obscure fruit qualities that over-ripeness brings. Linked to terroir is the issue of faults in wine. As controversial as they are misdiagnosed, winemaking faults are often guilty of masking terroir and, in some cases, becoming so entrenched that they become part of it! But it is no longer acceptable just to make fault-free wine that expresses its place; considerations of micro and macro environment are crucial in an age where concerns about global warming have become the domain of many consumers. A wine made with consideration for all of these factors is—in our definition—an authentic wine. We acknowledge that, like naturalness, the concept of authenticity is a shifting paradigm, and that there are limits to its application for individuals and businesses. Larger more hierarchical businesses have greater limitations, but that doesn't mean they shouldn't try to make more authentic wines.

THE FORK IN THE ROAD

The issue of naturalness and authenticity is one of the key current debates in the world of wine, and it is likely to become more heated over the next few years. Why? Because wine is now at a metaphorical fork in the road, and from here it can go one of two ways. The first is to continue down the road taken by New World branded wines: huge volumes, a reliance on technology and marketing, reliability at the cost of individuality, an emphasis on sweet fruit flavours, and a loss of terroir (the possession by wines of a sense of place). The destination? Wine would gradually become indistinguishable from other drinks, and...