A Different Take on Natural Wines


Posted March 5, 2014 in Food & Drink

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In recent times the wine scene has been awash with discussions about everything from natural wines and Systembolaget’s monopoly to the question of the fair (or maybe not-so-fair) trade of mainstream bulk wines.

I thought it would be interesting to present another voice, and as an avid follower of Twitter and Instagram, I came across the hash tag #vinutanskit (wine without shit). I was particularly taken by the opinions of the user OB_WINE_KENOBI, whose forceful yet relaxed arguments struck a chord.
Olly Bartlett has been working with organic, biodynamic and natural wines for seven years, both in restaurants and as an importer in London. Now working for one of the market leaders in this field in Sweden, we met and discussed the seemingly divisive topic of natural wines.

One of the flashpoints of the current debate centers around a blog post by Swedish sommelier Arvid Rosengren, who recently won the 2013 title of ASI Meilleur Sommelier d’Europé – the best sommelier in Europe 2013. Rosengren’s famous (or perhaps that should be infamous) blog ‘My Thoughts On Natural Wine’ has been re-blogged, loved, hated and caused a severe storm in the surprisingly tempestuous world of wine blogging.

As I expected, Olly had a few choice words of his own on this topic.

“In the second paragraph Arvid Rosengren states ‘Frankly, I am bored to tears with the whole thing, and in a way torn as to whether or not I should delete this whole tirade and ignore the topic, instead of adding fuel to anyone’s fire’. I completely agree: if I had one Swedish krona for every time I had to debate the topic with a sceptical member of the conventional wine trade or indeed a fundamentalist natural wine advocate, for whom even a pinch of sulphur is a crime punishable by stoning, I would be a billionaire,” says Bartlett.

I knew I was hitting the right spot and I wanted to pick the mind of this Jedi master of wine a little more.

“For those not in the know, natural wines are wines made without additives of any kind; unfiltered, unstabilised, most often with organic or biodynamic methods. Even among wine geek circles, there is often debate about the actual parameters, which doesn’t help the consumer and gives easy ammo to the conventional, larger scale winemakers, whose territory is threatened by this ‘new’ phenomenon. The Natural Wine Fair in London split comically after the first year, creating two fairs the following year – The Real Wine Fair and The Real Artisanal Wine Fair – in a move that echoed the Judean People’s Front/Peoples Front of Judea in the ‘Life of Brian.’”

Olly, who has moved back to Sweden from England with his Swedish wife and young family, is now working for Wine Trade, a Swedish wine importer that makes great efforts to find producers of high-quality wines in close consensus with their specific local nature, culture and tradition.

Wine Trade import some of the great wines I have praised earlier in these pages, such as Foillard, Lapierre, Trevallon, C.O.S and Arianna Occhipinti.

”Some natural wines are not great; out of balance, faulty, or just too funky,” says Olly honestly, “But, to answer the conventional sniping, this is normally never down to laziness, cynical marketing ploys (these are small farmers) or bandwagon-jumping. It’s just not great wine making. “They are at least trying to make wines with terroir, a sense of place.”

On the other side of this debate, we have the criticism of the great monopolistic player that is Systembolaget. Recently there has been a lot of attention in the media about pesticides in wine production and a lot of focus on authenticity. Systembolaget’s responsibility in regard to what they actually put on their shelves, including the vast and increasing amounts of bag-in-box wines, has also been a topic of debate. “Of course, for those not in the trade and being rightly alarmed by TV programmes such as Kalla Fakta: The Poison in your Glass recently, the question is always ‘How can I tell which wines are natural or contain minimal additives at Systembolaget?’ The fact that two thirds of the organic wines tested by Systembolaget in 2012 were shown to have unacceptable traces of pesticides in them adds to the confusion.”

And there is no shortage of that. There are a few large wine importers in Sweden with a lot of power and mainstream wine journos are supporting them by constantly recommending the same Petit Chablis, Côtes du Rhône and Ripasso with generic food parings.

“In truth, the fact is that monopoly buyers have little understanding of the nature of the issue and are bound by out-of-date purchasing techniques. This means that they are acting like supermarket buyers in the UK. You would never look for a natural wine in a UK supermarket. You would go to a specialist independent wine merchant, which of course are not allowed here… yet.”

When I ask Olly about the wines on display at Systembolaget and what he would recommend to our readers, he is severely reluctant about the off-the-shelf selection from Systembolaget.

“Honestly, I struggle to recommend natural wine from the monopoly. In truth, the only way to be assured of the provenance of a wine is to do some research, contact one of the leading importers, such as Wine Trade (for whom I work I should add) or Vin & Natur and get their list of wines available for private import. Systembolaget should make this much easier if they want to reverse the trend of Internet/online wine businesses which they are, yet again, trying to stop the courts.”

To close, I ask Olly to share his future ideas and ideals. “I look forward to the day when an adult in Sweden can walk into a specialist wine merchant and have an informed chat with an educated expert, and come away with a couple of interesting bottles to share with his friends.”

And who knows, didn’t we just read about these very ideas and ideologies in the last issue of Totally Stockholm, in the interviews and future visions of Stockholm in 2039?

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Arvid Rosengren – My Thoughts on Natural Wine

Kalla Fakta – Gift i Glaset

Wine Trade

Vin & Natur

Instagram and Twitter: #vinutanskit
Follow Olly Bartlett: @OB_WINE_KENOBI

Words by Pär Strömberg

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