NATURAL WINES

WHAT ARE NATURAL WINES

Many people wonder if all wines are, in fact, natural.
The simplest answer would be that, in principle, any wine that comes from the alcoholic fermentation of grape must can be considered a natural wine.

However, if we analyze the historical evolution of vine cultivation and winemaking, we will see that at a certain point, the mechanization of the fields and the introduction of the chemical synthesis industry were prioritized. The main objective became to obtain larger grape bunches and increase the production of kilos of grapes, leaving fruit quality in the background.

In this way, many of the traditional and artisanal practices that our grandparents had maintained for generations, with a focus on minimal intervention, were abandoned, giving way to increasingly industrialized and manipulated wines.

Some of the practices that began to be applied, both in the vineyard and in the winery, are the following (all of them totally legal and accepted in the global wine industry):

• Intensive irrigation in the vineyard to increase production.
• Use of pesticides and herbicides in the vineyard.
• Use of selected or industrial yeasts to control fermentation.
• Artificial correction of wine acidity.
• Adjustment of alcohol content.
• Artificial increase of sugar level.
• Application of reverse osmosis.
• Aggressive techniques for extracting tannins and phenols from grape skins.
• Homogenization of wine through excessive use of barrels.
• Filtration, fining and pasteurization.
• Addition of sulfur dioxide.

For all these reasons, a wine is considered more natural the fewer interferences it has received during its cultivation and production process. In other words, the more respectful it is of the grape and its environment, the more authentic the wine will be.

A natural wine has the ability to convey much more to us: it speaks of the land where the vines have grown and fed, of the climate that accompanied that year, of the rains, of the cold, of the drought... Each bottle we open and enjoy will be different from the last, because minimally-intervened wine is a living, changing product that evolves and expresses the uniqueness of its origin.

Jordi Pujol
Sommelier, Celler Castañé