The Natural Wine Movement (and my Back-Label Dilemma)

As I'm sure you all know, there's no such thing as the "Natural Wine Movement", except in the sociological sense, ie in the same way that there's a "Risky Sports Movement", a "Recycling Movement", a "Real Ale Movement", etc.

There's not really a Secret Inner Ruling Council (even though I leaked the agenda from the last meeting here!), no membership cards, no statutes, no articles of association, no head-quarters, no offices, no rules, no nothing.

What there is, is quite a few associations of natural wine producers, mostly in France and Italy. They actually do have rules and criteria for membership, and if a winemaker agrees with them, then he or she can join the association. Here's a list of the ones that I know about:

- Association des Vins Naturels
- La Renaissance des Apellations 
- Productores de Vinos Naturales
- VinNatur
- Simbiosa 
- Vini Veri

What there also is, is a whole lot of people who share an interest! People of all sorts, from all over the world, and from all walks of life. These people include:

- Producers (associated or not). There must be a few thousand, producing an average of say 5 to 10,000 bottles a year. Mostly artisans, tiny part-timers with no webpage, selling only locally to friends and neighbours; some small viable businesses, with proper labels, distribution and sales networks; and even some bigger ones bordering on industrial style wineries. And there's a whole grey area of traditional long-standing producers of fine wines who may or may not be 'natural' depending on your deifnition!

- Traders (importers, distributors, wholesalers). Difficult to work out how many there are, as some carry both natural wines, organic wines and conventinal wines in their portfolios.

- Retailers (winestores, restaurants, winebars). Again difficult to work out how many there are for the same reason, though I believe that more and more such places are opening up. Seems to be the only sector growing this days in the midst of a recession!

- Writers, journalists, bloggers. I don't think many actually focus exclusively on natural wines, though recently over the last year or so, more and more conventional wine writers have started mentioning natural wines - usually negatively and/or focussing on side issues.

- And lastly, consumers, with every kind of day-job under the sun, but who at night come out and indulge in their passion for natural wines. The most inportant category of all, because without consumers, the rest of us would have nothing to do! There must be thousands of them, and increasing in numbers every day.

All these people have one thing in common: we all love to drink, enjoy and talk about natural wines. We all know what kind of wine we're talking about, don't we, even though there's no legal or official definition. Maybe some of us would like to have an official definition, and maybe some of us like it the way it is now, and maybe some of us don't care one way or the other. I personally don't! Life is short! Let's just all get on with it and stop fretting. I mean, seriously, who's got the time and resources to actively attempt to get some
legislation passed on this? I think talking about this issue over a glass or two of natural wine is about the only effort I'm going to make in that direction! Cheers!

No Pedantic Definitions

It would be far too boring (both for me and for the readers of this post) to draw up my own list of forbidden substances and processes, in yet another personal definition of natural wine! Instead, I've decided to abide by Joe Dressner's 14-Point Manifesto, which you can read here (on Cory Cartwright's Saignée blog).

It's anything but boring! In addition I've added a 15th Point:

"I have the right to delete, add to or modify any of the above-mentioned 14 Points, based on how I happen to be feeling at any given time. So there!".

Also, I've decided to publish the information on the wines that I produce, with details of what I do and don't do to each wine. On this blog (and on my future webpage), on printouts, and on the back-labels. That way, the consumers can all decide for themselves of the wine in question is natural or not, or just how natural it is on the scale of naturalness.

Which brings me to the main point of this post.

Below is a draft of the back-label that I've been working on. It would be great if you could give me some feedback on it. I'd be especially interested in your thoughts on the inclusion what the wine DOESN'T contain and what HASN'T been done to it. Is this legitimate? Is it disrespectful or denigrating? Is it legal?! Is it a good idea? Does the consumer have the right to know both what's in a product and also what's NOT in it? Whatever! Any thoughts would be greatly appreciated.

- - - - - - - - -
I consider this bottle of wine to be natural wine because of the Ingredients.

It contains the following:

• Fermented organic grape juice

And it doesn't contain the following:

• Traces of pesticides, insecticides, herbicides and fungicides
• Industrial enzymes
• Industrial bacteria
• Industrial yeasts
• Colourants
• Preservatives
• Flavour enhancers
• Acids
• Sugar, fruit juice, fruit extracts
• Added water
• Wood chips
• Tannin powder
• Sulphites or other chemicals

I also consider this bottle of wine to be natural wine because of the Processing.

I did these things to it:

• Crushed the grapes
• Pressed the grapes
• Racked the wine from one tank to another

And I didn't do these things to it:

• Heat up the wine
• Cool down the wine
• Filter the wine
• Clarify the wine
• Use reverse osmisis
• Use spinning cones
• Use cryo-extraction
• Use sterile filtration
• Use any other agressive techniques

I believe that all the above information is legitimate and relevant, and that the potential consumers have the right to know about the ingredients and processing of the product they are about to buy.

Signed
(Fabio, grapegrower, winemaker and marketer)
 

Final Harvest and Post-Harvest Report 2010

Well, basically our harvesting is over, though there's still a lot of work to do in the bodega, and some loose ends to tie up (of which more below). It's been an exhausting 3 weeks (and maybe we bit off more than we could chew) but it's also been very productive, creative and great fun, even if a bit stressful at times. But I'm not complaining! This is what I love to do; and it does keep me off the streets, and prevents me from watching TV, getting bored, etc :)

The reason we harvested so many grapes this year is that it's part of our yearly expansion plan. We want to move up from the level we've been at the last few years (ie, glorified home-winemakers running an expensive, time-consuming, family-destroying hobby!) to at least maybe 'garagiste' level this year; and after that to 'small, viable wine business' level ('world domination' can wait a bit longer!).

This year we're in a 'real' bodega; it's a proper building with a roof that doesn't leak and walls that insulate from the heat and cold, a barrel room with AC and humidity control, and equipment that can handle larger quantities of wine. Now, it's not a chateau, so don't get any ideas, and the views are not spectacular either; it is in fact located in the industrial zone of Morata de Tajuña; it's, shall we say, 'functional' :) I'll post photos in another post, though some have appeared already in previous posts.

Apart from our own grapes which we grow ourselves in our vineyard in Carabaña, this year we also bought in and harvested more grapes from some neighbouring grapegrowers who farm organically. This is what we have fermenting in the bodega at the moment: Tempranillo 1, Tempranillo 2, Garnacha, Shiraz and Airén for a total of about 6000 l. One of the loose ends to be tied up is another possible 1000 kg of Shiraz, which should be confirmed or not this week sometime.

With these 5 (or 6) lots of wine, we have to decide what types of wine to make. One day Juan and I will sit down and work it out; the result could be an interesting and complex flow-diagram! We already know that some will be for young wine, best drunk within a year, and some will be barrel aged, assuming our barrel-sponsoring scheme works out).

We already have a few experiments in the pipeline:

EXPERIMENT 1: Sparkling wine, in collaboration with fellow natural winemaker Alfredo Maestro. Some of the Airén will be set aside for this, and in Nov/Dec we'll take it to his bodega, where he has the space, equipment (and knowledge) required. We've left some Airén grapes in the vineyard to be picked in Oct/Nov when they're super-ripe and have a high sugar content; these grapes will be fermented separately and then added to the sparkling wine, as 'liquor de expedición' (what's that called in English?)

EXPERIMENT 2: We're going to ferment some of the Airén grapes by 'carbonic maceration' to see how it turns out. This is done by putting whole uncrushed clusters in a fermentation tank and sealing the lid hermetically. See this previous post. We did it this way last year with Garnacha and the year before with Tempranillo.

EXPERIMENT 3:We're also going to let a lot of Airén grapes macerate in their own skins for a day or two, as if they were red grapes, again just to se how it turns out.

That's enough experiments for one year I think! With the red wines, we'll do three 100% varietals (Tempranillo, Garnacha and Shiraz), and also try all the possible coupage combinations, and based on tastings and advice, decide what to actually bottle.

Marketing

Then there's the question of what do with all this wine! Well, obviously we have to sell it so that people far and wide can drink it and enjoy it, and so we can make more and better wines in the years to come! So in a week or so when things have calmed down in the bodega, I'll be putting our Marketing Plan down on paper. I remember reading a funny comment to a post about a year ago, on the definition of Spanish marketing: "Make wine; wait for phone to ring." Well, it's not really funny of course, more like sad, as I image a lot of winemakers really do do that. But we're not going down that route. Probably the ONLY thing that's been clear to me since I started 7 years ago and still is clear, is that there are, and always will be, three equally important, and inter-connected, parts to our Vinos Ambiz project:

1) Grow (or buy in) quality grapes

2) Make quality wine

3) Sell it!

Pretty simple and obvious really. 1) If you don't have quality grapes, you can't make quality wine; 2) To make quality wine you have to be really careful not to do anything wrong/stupid/hasty/etc in the bodega, and if you have quality grapes to work with and you keep your machinery/equipment/everything scrupulously clean and hygienic, over half the battle is won; 3) and the part that many winemakers forget about but which I believe is equally essential, is that you have to sell it, otherwise you can't carry on making wine: I mean, even Juan and I and all our friends put together can't drink that much wine!!!

Other Items of Interest

- New Vineyard. This year we've taken on another vineyard in addition to the one we've tended in Carabaña for the last 7 years. The new one is just up the road in the next village (Villarejo). It's 1 hectare in area (2.4 acres), white Malvar variety, 30-40 year old vines. The first year we'll be working with the man (now retired) who used to tend it, as we convert it to organic. Should be interesting!

- Grafting/Planting. We've been meaning to do this for the last 7 years, but finally this Spring, it looks like we might actually really do it! In our vineyard in Carabaña, there are about 200 empty spaces where a vine used to live (it died, dried up, got knocked over by a tractor over the years) and another 50 or so vines that have gone 'wild' (ie the varietal grafted on top didn't take, or died, and the rootstock is sprouting directly). So in the spaces, we have to dig a hole and plant a rootstock+varietal and on the wild vines we have to graft on a varietal. We've finally met a neighbouring grapegrower who both knows how to do this and is willing to do it for us (we'll provide the unskilled manual labour, and look and learn).

- Webpage. I really need to get a good webpage up and running. Yes, I've been saying that for about 7 years too, but now it's becoming embarrassing! Dare I say that I'll have one up for before Christmas?

- Another thing I'd like to do is follow up on the 65 cases of Vinos Ambiz Airén 2009 that shipped to the USA a few months ago. I haven't been able to do that so far, what with the Summer holidays, harvesting and crushing etc. I've heard through the grapevine and from a few posts/comments/tweets that it's going down well, which is really encouraging. I heard that it was presented during the JPS Wine Tour at events in S.F., L.A. and N.Y.

That's about it. Thanks for reading. Any comments, thoughts, questions most welcome. In fact it would make me really happy!

The Best Laid Plans of Mice and Men …

I’ve been meaning to post this post for months, but one thing after another kept cropping up and I just couldn’t find the time to write it up.

These ‘things’ included a number of wine tastings/events (which I’ve posted on below), and I’ve also been busy organizing our first ever shipment of wine to the US, which involved 1) finding a box-manufacturer willing to supply us with just 100 boxes (minimum orders are usually around 2000 boxes!). We did find one in the end (and will probably favour him with our orders in the future for making the effort) 2) accumulating, sterilizing and reusing 400 wine-bottles (our regular local consumers responded well and returned all their bottles and more) 3) working with our label designer on a new front label for white wine and a back-label (I think/hope they’re at the printer’s as I write! I try not to call them too many times a day for the latest news!) 4) and dealing with the horrendous paperwork required by the bureaucrats of Spain and the US, who seem to have made a special effort to make things as difficult and time-consuming as possible for us producers and other people who actually do something useful during the day [end of rant].

As if the above weren’t enough, I’ve also been involved in an initiative between local organic producers and consumers (not just of wine, but of many other products too) in and around Madrid aimed at co-ordinating and optimizing transport and distribution of our products. This involved going to a number of meetings which were frustratingly unproductive (apparently) though things seem to be moving in the right direction (slowly). I’ve been to meetings with just consumers and also with just producers, and the difference in ‘procedure’ is incredible: at the consumers meeting, they pick a moderator, who keeps an ordered list of people who have signalled that they want to speak. The producers all shout at the same time and if anything at all is decided it’s whatever the person shouting loudest and longest was shouting!

Anyway, time to get to the main point of this post: basically, our best laid plans for the coming year were utterly trashed by ‘circumstances’ about two months ago, but happily a number of ‘events’ occurred (at the same time that all of the above was happening) which has resulted in everything working out just fine. A ver:

• The winery where we were planning on making our wine this October (by renting some of their space, vats and machinery) called to say that we couldn’t do it. The reason: due to the recession, they had fired some workers and so couldn’t provide this service anymore!

•  The owner of our current ‘winery’ in Ambite refused to pay for the costs of fixing the roof or to reduce our rent. We fixed a bit of it by ourselves some time back, but we can’t afford to have it fixed, and we don’t have the time to fix it all by ourselves

•  The owner of vineyard we’ve been renting from for the last 6 years, finally gave us his reply to our request to sign a written contract. And his answer was “No!” We needed a written contract so we can apply for organic certification and for the ‘Vinos de Madrid’ Denominación de Origen label

So after all this, I was getting pretty depressed (and stressed!), but talk about finding solutions right under your nose!!!

1.  First, the winery: on the way back to Madrid one day last week I dropped in on a neighbour and fellow organic wine-maker in a village just down the road (to exchange bottles of wine as we’d been attempting to do for months). I just blurted out “Er, could we share your winery this year, until we find a place of our own?” and he said, “Sure! That would be great!” Just like that – 1 major problem solved!
2. Then a few days later, I was in the centre of Madrid, in a neighbourhood that I hadn’t been back to for about five years. I decided to go for lunch to this restaurant that I used to go to and where I knew the owner. As I walk in, the owner recognises me and says “Fabio, how are you? You still making wine? You wouldn’t be looking for a new vineyard, would you? Because I have one that I’m trying to rent!” Incredible, but true! Another problem solved!
3. Next I went to see the owner of our current vineyard, to tell him that we’d keep on renting anyway and that we weren’t so bothered about the contract anymore (we like the vineyard and know it and grow good grapes in it, after all). He said OK, and then offered us the use of his tractor this spring/summer for free!

So there you have it. I’m now trying to relax and get on with things in a more regular sort of way, ie with not so many emotional and/or economic ups and downs!

My plans for the coming months (ie up to grape harvest in September) are based on focussing on the long-term ‘important’ things, and not worrying about ‘urgent’ things that may (and inevitably do) crop up and which just distract and cause stress!!!

- Be on the lookout for a new winery (for harvest 2011)

- Define my long-term marketing plan properly and on paper (it’s just in my head and on the backs of envelopes at the moment!)

- Everything else is secondary!

This was not one of my usual ‘normal’ posts (ie, diary of day-to-day vinous activities), but I thought I’d spit it all out anyway, seeing as all the above events have had a big impact on the Vinos Ambiz project.

Well, if you’ve read this far, thank you and I hope you found it interesting. If you have any comments, I’d love to hear them.