We sit down to talk to Pamela Busch, founder of The Vinguard and it’s annual event, WINeFare — initiatives driven by women and gender-nonconforming individuals that are committed to social justice, environmental protection, and shared mentorship in the world of wine, with a focus on natural wine.
It is imperative, now more than ever, that we dig into the human side of our favorite wines, and ask how our favorite producers create sustainable work environments, not just vineyards. We wanted to know what an alternative to the existing labor system could look like for wine producers and for workers, so we took a deeper look at Stolpman Vineyards.
So, you’re planning a trip to Napa or Sonoma and want the bucolic wine country experience. But now, you’re fully aware of the difference between conventional and natural wine, so you can’t just head up Highway 29 and wing it like in the old days, before you KNEW. A quandary, for sure, as most of Napa isn’t farmed organically. And generally winemaking there is very formulaic, the following of a recipe to achieve a consistent product that gets the scores and justifies the price tag. In other words, the opposite of natural. Because, let’s be honest, most visitors are coming for the Disneyland wine country experience — the perfectly groomed vineyards, the cult Cabernets, the fancy shit.
You’ve probably heard the term “volcanic wine” thrown around lately. As in, “I only drink volcanic wines these days,” from your hipster friend, or “I heard about this volcanic wine from Etna called Susucaru from Action Bronson, but I can’t find it anywhere,” from about a million followers of Action’s Vice show, F**ck That’s Delicious.
There’s a ton of excellent natural wine out there, one just needs to know how to find it. But without ingredient labels to guide you, you might be asking yourself: “how do I find such wines if my wine shop/restaurant server/local Whole Foods doesn’t know anything about how the wine is made?” Answer: acquaint yourselves with the importers who specialize in low-intervention wines! information alone will provide important clues about the style and constitution of the juice, and help guide you when choosing blindly.
I love finding new California winemakers who are making clean, delicious and extremely interesting wines that are actually affordable. The Living Wines Collective, a band of four young winemakers based in Orinda, California, are doing just that, with several edgy brands under their umbrella (among them, Populis, Elizia and Les Lunes).
Jair Tellez, chef/owner of the progressive Laja Restaurant in Valle de Guadalupe (Mexico’s wine country), is the guy behind Tecate-based Bichi, the only known natural winery in Mexico. A few years ago, he decided to make the kind of wine he wanted to pair with his food, and began resurrecting old vines in Baja to make delicious, authentically-made wine from grapes suited to Mexico’s hot, dry climate – with awesome label art (bonus!).
Those lovely, inexpensive summer rosés that go down like water? Most are industrial products, with conventional farming, high sulfur levels and who knows what else. Not these. Super clean, from smaller, family-owned estates or even smaller mom & pop shops. They’re all practicing (or certified) organic, with a few taking it one step further to biodynamics, […]
So here’s the thing. I love wine, and it makes me happy opening up people’s eyes to great bottles, something I’ve been doing professionally for the past 10 years. But something changed for me in the last few years: I learned about natural wine, essentially just fermented grape juice, and was shocked that all wine wasn’t made that way. So I started researching, learning how different producers were working, and discovering a whole range of delicious natural wines that I wanted to drink.
This is classic, clean Chianti from a small family producer near Panzano in Chianti. I’ve had the pleasure of getting to know the proprietor, Jacopo di Battista, over the past two years, and stay with them for a few days last summer. His family has farmed the small hilltop estate organically since inception in 1998, and has been certified since 2012. They’re equally low-intervention in the cellar…
