What Does "Natural" Mean to You? with Importer Zev Rovine

Class transcript:

What Does "Natural" Mean to You? with Importer Zev Rovine.m4a

Welcome, welcome one and all to a year in wine school. This is our 52nd Sunday doing this. We are thrilled to have you all with us wherever you happen to be joining us from. We are honored as always to have one Zoe Nystrom joining us from blocks away. And also Mr. Zeb Robine, one of the most passionate advocates and sellers of natural wine stateside. Zeb, where are you joining us from, sir? I'm in my office in Brooklyn, New York. Brooklyn, what neighborhood are you holding it down for in Brooklyn? Bushwick. Oh, nice. Bushwick feels very apropos for natural wine business. But you were there before it became like super hip, right? I've been here for 19 years. There you go.

Yeah, a little while. Yeah, that's like that's even before what was I'm trying to think. There were like no restaurants out there when or at least not. The first one that was like really a cool place and that was in like 2007. And since then, it's been, you know, to the moon. Yeah. And now, you know, Hollywood starlets looking to, you know, yeah, like burnish their street cred are moving your way. Awesome. So I just for everyone's sake at home, you know, I'm thrilled. This feels like a very fitting way to spend our 52nd Sunday and assessment of sorts of natural wine, asking all the big questions about, you know, where wine exists as and how it exists as a natural product versus a manmade one. And I can't think of anyone.

I can't think of anyone. I can't think of anyone. I can't think of anyone. I can't think of anyone better to explore that, you know, topic of conversation with than Zev. We've got eight of his wines in effect here, and we're going to kind of move through them methodically. We have some themes that we're going to touch on for the sake of each of these duos, and we're going to kick it off with a pair of kind of unlikely Sancerres. One of them is actually more likely, one of them definitely like, you know, pretty classic for the sake of its profile, and the other one definitely Sanceres through the looking glass. And we're going to consider, you know, what it means to use sulfur in wine and, you know, think about whether there's a place for it in natural wine.

Then we're going to tackle a couple of skin contact offerings from, you know, kind of central and eastern Europe. These, you know, historic borderlands that, you know, make amazing wine and do so in a biodynamic manner. And it's a big part of Zev's book, Biodynamic Producers. And, you know, certainly I want to touch on for the sake of, you know, the role that that, you know, kind of movement has had within, you know, the natural wine world. And then we're going to close out with a couple, just matter of factly, delicious wine and some bubbles. So just a stupidly good Burgundy, a stunningly sophisticated Burgundy that, you know, just happens to be natural. Yeah, from a lesser well-known village, Le Doit. You know, certainly not a commune that, you know, people throw out to impress their Burgundy-loving friends.

You know, it's a bit of an also-ran, but they turn out some awesome wine there. And it's just like, just off of some of Burgundy's most famous real estate. And then have a little pet nap to bring things full circle, to toast a year in wine. Big up to both rookies and veterans joining us, especially all of you who are wine school completists, who have, you know, either lived or through our YouTube channel. So we have a YouTube channel, if you want to catch us in syndication, watched all 52 lessons. You know, that's a lot of hours of me talking at a Zoom lesson, but thank you all for continuing to join us. And big ups to Janice Carnival for helping me put that together. Big ups.

And thank you for everyone's patience with our new ordering platform. We are now on Toast. My colleagues, James and Shauna, made that happen. We've got a blind tasting series happening in person. It's Wednesday. If you haven't bought tickets, they are live online. That's all I got. We're going to kick things off, as we always do, with a bit of verse. We love poetry. And this is from Turn of the Century Welsh Poets. Very fitting for a natural wine lesson called Amends to Nature. I have loved colours and not flowers, their motion not the swallow's wings, and wasted more than half my hours without the comradeship of things. How is it now? How is it now that I can see with love and wonder and delight the children of the hedge and tree, the little lords of day and night?

How is it that I see the roads no longer with usurping eyes, a twilight meeting place for toads, a midday march for butterflies? I feel in every midge that hums life, fugitive and infinite, and suddenly the world becomes a part of me and I of it. So, you know, beautiful poem. I love the, you know, way it kind of blurs the lines between nature and ourselves. We, you know, certainly products of the natural world. So, you know, at what point do our creations, you know, cross over into some, you know, kind of, you know, more sinister sphere? That's what we're going to ask today. Mr. Zeprovine, just for the folks that weren't with us, where are you joining us from? We said, you know, Bushwick, and, you know, have you always had a base in Brooklyn?

Well, I've lived here for a while, for almost 20 years. Our company, the import company, is 13 years old now. And we've been, you know, here in Brooklyn, basically Bushwick, East Williamsburg, for the whole time. That's awesome. But you span the country now for the sake of the wines that you distribute? We sell wine in 40 states, something like that. And we have our own distribution company in California and New York, and then we kind of sell through a distribution network in, you know, all the other states. Oh, brilliant. And how many different countries do you represent for the sake of your wines? You know, it's funny, I just counted it the other day for the first time in a long time, and 20 is the answer. Wow.

And, you know, when you, you know, kind of started out, you know, on this journey, could you ever imagined, you know, carrying that many wines? Do you get a chance to visit all your producers prior to bringing them in? I never considered that we'd be carrying as many wines as we did when, you know, when I started the company. It was just me, and I started on a really small budget, and so I kind of thought I was only going to sell French wine. That's, like, where my wine knowledge, you know, was most strong and where I could speak and, you know, kind of work. And, you know, through the years, I have kind of blanketed my business. There was no leadership, but, you know, and, you know, through the years, I have kind of blanketed my business.

I've been at the front desk all this time, but I don't see the following of natural wine, really; it takes you to a lot of different places. And so it really broadened, you know, the genre that I chose can be made anywhere, pretty much. So it sort of takes you everywhere. That's awesome. And it becomes a lingua franca. So, you know, you know, it becomes this, you know, shared vocabulary and shared passion for the people that you meet. And, you know, it is very international that way, even though the movement, you know, certainly has its roots in France. So without further ado, I just want to talk over this whole natural wine thing. And, you know, I think it begs the question, you know, wine will make itself in, you know, nature.

There are all sorts of, you know, scientific studies of drunk baboons, drunk elephants, my favorite, like ransacking villages. But, you know, fruit wants to ferment. There are native yeast that exists on the skins of grapes that overwinter in the guts of pollinators. And they will make grapes. Juice grape must into wine naturally, if left to their own devices. So wine has always been with us even before, you know, we acknowledged it as such and spiffed it up and celebrated it and bottled it. Wine has predated us, you know, as a natural product. So I think, you know, when we consider the natural wine movement, a better question to ask is when was this natural thing perverted in the first place? And, you know, I think we can really trace that to the beginning of the 20th century.

And, you know, look at the, you know, kind of initial creation of chemical fertilizer. So it was this huge debate in the 19th and 20th century as the world population boomed. You know, agronomists realized that nitrogen and fertilizer, nitrogen and fertilizer is really important to boosting crop yields, but they were worried they wouldn't be able to boost them enough to feed the world's growing population. And in 1909, Fritz Haber, a German agronomist, developed a process for essentially, you know, the beginning of the 20th century. And he was able to do that. And he was able to do that by essentially isolating chemical fertilizer, and he ultimately won a Nobel Prize for it. But that led to this, you know, booming business for the sake of chemical fertilizer.

But it came, you know, as a bit of this monkey's paw. So, you know, it increased yields and continues to do so to this day. But it also stripped the soil of its life. And as early as the 20s, a lot of Eastern European farmers began to realize this, and they petitioned one of the heroes of our story. I'm an odd hero, though. Rudolf Steiner, who is a philosopher synonymous with the anthroposophy movement. And according to Wikipedia, Steiner's philosophy postulates the existence of an objective, intellectually comprehensible spiritual world accessible to human experience. But for the sake of the Biden-Amex story, I think more significantly, these Polish farmers actually approached him. Poland then part of, you know, kind of like the larger Germanic empire. But they approached him and said, you know, our soils are denuded.

Europe, how do we find our way back? How do we find our way to sustainability and Steiner gives a series of lectures eight lectures in 1924, that through the ages of an organization called Demeter become caught up by in this larger Biden-Amex movements, even after he, you know, passes away, invited in X postulates, you know, you know, the farm as this closed system. And it considers all Earth life seemed futile. Necessarily, the life within that closed system. And it tries to promote the self-sufficiency and health of that, you know, kind of farm organism. Well, flash forward, post-World War II, a lot of the same technologies that made the war so destructive get applied on the land for the sake of fungicides, herbicides, sterile filtration is actually an outgrowth of the nuclear industry.

So you can, you know, increasingly manipulate wine, both in the vineyard and in the cellar, but in ways that degrade the land. And, you know, you, over time, you know, have a lot of French farmers who realized that, you know, they can work a lot more easily on the land than their forefathers do. And they take the easy way out to the extent that in the 60s and 70s, even in the most hallowed corners of France, in Burgundy, you know, in Bordeaux, you know, in, you know, the, you know, most sanctified corners of the Loire Valley, you know, people are applying herbicides freely. Well, you have other figures who start to react against this kind of modernization in France. And the gentleman on the left, Jules Chabet, his disciple, Marcel Lapierre, they are at work in Beaujolais.

Equally important, there are other figures at work in the Loire Valley. And they are reacting against this modernization project. And they are asking what has been lost. And they're looking back to the lines of their forefathers. Figures like Jules Chabet are establishing, you know, scientific, you know, basis for kind of reducing additives to wine and reducing sulfur usage and fermenting with native yeast and finding different ways to make a stable product. And winemakers like Marcel Lapierre and his gang of four are pushing that even further. In the Loire Valley, you have a whole bunch of figures. Nicolas Jolie is an early biodynamic proponent. Jules Pétain, you know, is, you know, making wine in a kind of minimal intervention style. And then Christian Chassard, really a important, hugely important figure behind the pet nat, you know, kind of movement in the Loire.

But this should be understood not as a codified movement. You know, there's no organizational infrastructure for natural wine. There's no even definition for what it means to be natural. The French government, just last year actually, just released certification for 'natural wine'. But it is a word that is deployed in a lot of different ways. And because, you know, of that, you know, has become, you know, by its own admittance, you know, somewhat controversial. But this movement really emerges in Parisian wine bars through a bunch of like-minded growers. And, you know, like Zev, you know, alluded to earlier, you know, it's hard to, you know, visit one winemaker who is working this way without learning about others.

And, you know, I think because of that, it lends itself to this, you know, kind of like wonderfully, democratic, organic, you know, explosion across the wine world and addresses these deficiencies. And it makes the wine world more democratic. And it has made it open to, you know, a more diverse array of people, more diverse array of flavors, and hopefully, you know, has made the product itself, you know, healthier for the rest of us. The last thing I'm going to share, you know, before we get back to Zev, but I think the easiest way to understand natural wine is, you know, just to think about the additives for the sake of most wines. So conventional wine, you know, you can use all sorts of non-native yeast.

You can add all sorts of things to the bottle in addition to the juice. And the sulfur levels can be very high. It gets progressively lower until you hit natural wine, in which case, typically, the only addition is small amounts of sulfur at bottling. But there's no one way to be natural. A lot of different ways to work in this milieu. And, you know, a lot of different ways, certainly, to make natural wine. Zev, you kind of reflected on the growth of your business over time. You know, where did you first catch this bug? Where did you first decide to make a career out of bringing in natural wine? Well, to be frank, when I started the company, natural wine wasn't even really all that available in the U.S.

There were a couple of companies that were doing it already. Louis Dresner Selections and Jenny and François were basically the two. And a few producers in the Kermit Lynch portfolio. And, you know, I had kind of learned wine a little bit more classically. And just when I was in France out looking for wine, like you mentioned, I went to bistros in Paris, you know, and I found kind of the small ones and started tasting what they had, which was natural wine. And it blew me away. I mean, I guess also, you know, being here in Brooklyn is a place where natural wine has been strong for a really long time. So, you know, my exposure to it, when I started the company, I also worked at a retail store on Bedford Avenue called Uva Wines.

And there was a wine buyer there, Justin, who had been buying natural wines for a while. And so it was a combination of him and really going to Paris with him and going to kind of the cool natural wine spots and sort of just seeing that the culture around it was different. The people in it were having more fun. The style of the wines were, you know, drastically different than anything I had ever tasted before. They had given up on like the label conventions and were being really creative. And the labels were designed, you know, more with art than by like classical wine standards. And so just the whole culture around it was much more attractive to me.

And, you know, part of it was also that I was, you know, like I mentioned before, didn't start with a lot of money or a lot of resources. And these are small producers. And so, you know, I could go and try to buy a pallet of wine from them. And that was a huge purchase, a huge sale for them. Whereas if, you know, I tried to go and, you know, battle on the grounds of like the great estates of Europe, you know, I have no real shot in that environment too. So some of it was circumstantial. You know, I think I'm attracted to the artisan and to artisanship. And so, you know, in a lot of ways, I think natural wine was the reality of what I thought wine was made like.

When I, you know, I learned a lot about wine. I spent years learning about wine before I went to Europe to visit the winery. And, you know, so your mental image is just very different than, you know, what the truth is sometimes. And so, you know, my idea of wine were people, you know, working the land to the best of their ability and, you know, making wine by hand and care in the winery. And the truth is, is that, you know, most wine is very industrially made, very commercially made. And even the, you know, big famous names that we know just aren't made the way that you think that it's made. And there's stuff in there that you didn't think was in there.

And so natural wine turned out to be the thing that I thought wine was in the first place, you know. So it's sort of like, you know, brought more fire to my appreciation. It's really cool. And I think it's a fitting kind of segue into these first two wines because, you know, Sancerre, you know, Sébastien Ruffaut is the winemaker here. I'm going to share a picture of him. I like this picture because that's your head in the background. That's the back of your head, isn't it, Seth? Very exciting. So this is Sébastien Ruffaut, seventh or eighth generation grower. And, you know, he talks about Sancerre as much as, you know, it's a successful brand, as much as it is a wine.

And I think he's very much someone that wants to kind of return it to its artisanal roots of being a wine. And he furthermore wants to kind of like broaden the scope of what, you know, Sancerre can be. And this particular flight is super cool because, you know, I think we have one Sancerre in the Côte Rhône that corresponds to what most of us think of as Sancerre. And then, you know, this, you know, wild skin-contact Savvy Bee with a Lithuanian name. That is totally, you know, wild. What should we know about Sébastien, Seth? Well, I think that he is sort of the type of person that really likes questioning the conventions, you know. Like you say, he grew up in Sancerre. He's the, you know, whatever number generation of a winery that was there.

And I guess he questions the conventions. And I think that's a really good question. Why does Sancerre taste the way that it does? There's a lot of things about Sancerre that you might not realize. You know, part of why our mental image of the taste of Sancerre is this really tropical fruit sort of a vibe is sort of multifold. One, over the years, people have started to harvest earlier and earlier in Sancerre. And along with that, they manipulated the laws, to allow you to add more and more sugar. So just real quick, when you make wine, you have a certain amount of sugar density in the grapes. And that has a direct proportion to the amount of alcohol, right? Because the amount of sugar that's in there, ferments into an amount of alcohol.

So you have a percentage based on based on that, you can add sugar to it and artificially increase the sugar density and then artificially increase, the alcohol. So let's say, you know, we've always thought 13% was the right amount to have. In Sancerre over the years, they would harvest earlier and earlier and earlier. The reasons are, you avoid any issues with, with over ripeness, that can be an issue in the area, you avoid botrytis, which is a thing that happens to Sauvignon Blanc when you harvest it in October, which is when you need to do it in order to get a natural amount of 13%. And so, you know, it became this really tropical fruity, really light, acidic wine, not because that's the nature of the climate in the region, but because that was the easiest way to, you know, make the largest amount of sense there in the, you know, least expensive way.

And so the, the terroir as we think of it, the style of terroir of wine, as it ended up being, is really, it's the most expensive wine in the world. And so, the terroir of wine, as it is more a product of market forces and making financial decisions as it is you know the nature of the land, and so we've kind of been like told this thing that isn't necessarily true. And so I think when you ask what it's about him that we should know, it's that he's the type of guy that really questions that and says well, is that the right way to make it? And he tried to go back as far as he could, talk to the old people in town, you know, try to revert to older technology to be able to make wine sans serre the way it was made, you know, before the second world war basically.

And that means harvesting in October, so you... you mentioned that these are skin contact wines. They're not the the difference here is just that I apologize, no, it's no problem, everybody thinks it but the they get that extra color because when you harvest with botrytis and you press with botrytis, it gets a really rich golden tone to it, that looks like a skin contact wine, but it's Pressed directly, that our normal image of sans serre almost looks like water because it's harvested in August, yeah. And then you know, sugar added to them. But he does make a skin contact version of another one of these two bays, just not the Acme Nina. You're right about that, makes it the barrel or so of the that's wild!

Thank you for correcting me on the man, I think you know the other... I tease a shot of this is the epic sulfur shot for those of you at home. This is elemental sulfur, the fifth most common element on the surface of the earth, very controversial. Sulfur and elemental sulfur, most controversial as sulfites so sulfites. Are sulfur dioxide, so sulfites occur in the air. Sulfur is you know this yellow stuff on Vancouver docks, it's actually a byproduct of the of the like petroleum refinement oil refinement process which sounds horrifying but you know petroleum itself you know if you think about it is just you know you know kind of peat bogs you know plus a few million years of time.

But at any rate it is a hugely important antioxidant and antimicrobial uh for the sake of wine, and it is added to all commercial wines but not all natural wines. And I think for the sake of this exercise really interesting because uh sulfites have been added in very um judicious amounts to uh the quarter on uh but not to um the acme and you know I think that's um you know also a factor that you know kind of contributes to the different flavor profiles of of these wines how do you feel about you know um you know sulfur in you know as uh Sebastian's using it here uh Zev and then um you know for the sake of your portfolio in natural wine um sulfur is definitely a a hot button topic in natural wine um you know it's

it's it kind of creates some camps even within natural wine there's people who won't drink any wine or don't want to participate wine with any sulfur added whatsoever um and then there's A big group of people that think that that leads to a lot of a lot of wines flaws is the common word, but wines, the mouse, the mouse, vinegar, and the volatile acidity, and all stuff that comes along with that. And so you know it to me it's a little bit of a matter of taste about sulfur um, but I also think it's a thing that's a bit overblown. You know, commercial wine I think has way too much sulfur added to it, I think 250-150 milligrams is an unnecessary amount um, and a volume that's probably not good for our health, but definitely changes the profile and the taste of the wine um, and definitely changes its ability to evolve um, it's an antioxidant.

it eats oxygen um so it really slows the evolution of a wine um and I think part of the criticism against it would be that it really kills all of the you know microbiology that's still alive in a wine had you not put it in there if you put it in in large quantities um you know the quarter roll that you have there has about 10 milligrams of sulfur added uh and just at bottling and then the acmenine has zero and so this is an interesting thing to kind of see some of the effects that it has you know I I guess I would just stress that natural wine is so much bigger and more important than sulfur um you know the things that really matter in Natural wine, that's what we're not filling the soil with, you know, herbicides and pesticides and chemical fertilizers.

Um, you know, and that we're creating biodiversity in our vineyards. Um, and treating the earth a little bit better. And, you know, sulfur is this one little thing I'm not saying it doesn't matter at all, but people talk about it a lot in natural wine. Um, and I think you're missing a lot of like the human stories to the wines by like focusing on zero-zero which is what like the natural wine community calls it. Yeah, it feels like we're in this like uh, you know, period, sometimes at like the height of the French Revolution. When people are like quibbling about, like, really esoteric, you know, um, Jacobin level, um, you know, kind of natural

wine disputes and missing the forest for the trees, um, you know, you know, and I'm also, you know, I, I love Riesling, I love German wines, and you know, historically Germans throw a shit ton of sulfur um at their wine and you know, work that they've done on the Mosel for all these years, yeah, yeah, but I will say that for like, for a grape like Riesling, you know, a lot of the things I love about it get lost if you don't add sulfur, you know? A lot of Clemens Bush's wines, but they don't taste like, you know, um, you know some of the delicate floral muscles, you know valley wines that I, I do love.

And equally for this wine, I think it's kind of fascinating because the court around tastes like Sancerre to me or tastes like what I think of as sunset, you know the Acmenine doesn't. I'm almost like shocked that the French agreed to, you know, slap Sancerre on it. Usually they're much more like, you know, litigious about that and they're like, about that. Yeah, yeah, I think it's pretty remarkable because, you know, I can think of a lot of other producers that would have to release this as Vonda pie, uh, uh. But you know, I think you know a big part of what Sebastian is after is wanting. People tend to kind of like broaden their horizons for the sake of what sounds there can be um and I'm, I'm all for you know horizon broadening, but I think these are both delicious and you know like you said, I think if we're arguing about you know 10 parts you know um you know per million sulfur then like you know there are things that we could be arguing about and you know I think these are both delicious creatures. And the courtroom couldn't be what it is in the glass in my restaurant as a stable product if it didn't add that sulfur absolutely right, so you know when thinking about sulfur you know you really want to think also about the the color of the wine you know red wine has quite a lot more antioxidant naturally in it i think it's a lot easier to make a no sulfur red wine than it is a white wine and you know if you just look at the color between these two you know that's that right there is is sort of proof of what sulfur can do to protect a wine from oxidation so you know part of the color that deep color is that there's just more interchange with the oxygen that happens in the moment at the sulfur and you know to me these are very different tasting wines and um i really like them both for what they are and you're right there's a practical reality to it if you Tried to serve back many in your restaurant, you know it might taste great for two or three hours, but if you know you don't pour the whole bottle out that night, you know the glasses you serve the next day are going to be unservable. So it really does change. You know there's a practicality to it.

You know we don't we don't have to be so dogmatic that um we prevent people from enjoying wines or fool people into thinking that they should be drinking them. You know even if they don't taste well because they're because they're natural. You know just being natural also doesn't make your wine good. Yeah, yeah, I mean there's a there's a lot of sanctimony around the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the uh uh yeah but i mean that exists in any line of work uh totally uh zo what do you think of these i love sebastian rufo i do have a very serious question though is is what you've already highlighted which is exactly how was sebastian able to have it under the sunser aoc with their tasting panel and i'm just is it like due to his family and the generations that they've put in is it because of like how he's been holding the organic uh movement in the area i don't know if i'm in the area i just i'm just so one i'm just so curious um i don't know that i should answer that it sounds like the answer is really interesting i feel like that one oh come on i grew up in italy so the answer that i think is just that there was money exchange yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah i don't i i wouldn't i wouldn't expect it right now i don't think seb i also don't think there are enough people participating that you know you're going to be implicated at all uh for the sake of any you know relevant french uh well you know governmental maybe he doesn't always represent the exact line so the tasting panel you know they're yeah what they don't know uh you know yeah yeah understood understood understood um yeah that that is always that is always right you know the the the the sancerre wines that are not the courts in rome would get would get uh denied every single time and and that's like kind of a shame you know that's there's a long fight between the natural wine world and the conventional wine world in france because because of these appellation systems and that they have a tasting panel and that they require you to basically uniform to you know your village in order to you know have the right to use the name of your region on it and if your region is doing a shitty Job and they're you know spraying everything with chemicals and significantly altering the wines in a way that you don't think is right, you know it's a shame to have to be forced to conform to that in order to you know use the name of the village, despite the fact that you grow your wine from the village, you know you make it by all but any standard regulations so you know that people either cheat um the system a little bit and don't necessarily like submit the right wines or they get rid of the appellation altogether.

It's a big thing in in natural wine; the wines that are invented, false, that would be in uh you know, that would otherwise Have an appellation, and you know the truth of it in the end is that the appellations are less interesting now because all of the producers that are like most famous in the world and a lot of these places choose not to use the name of the appellation um because they don't want to deal with the you know the board that they don't agree with so you know that's it's a whatever change is change is hard, yeah. And I mean, you have the Olivier Coussons of the work who you know poke you know the bear in the eye and you know um yeah exactly exactly and you know the the relevant French bureaucrats you know like bureaucrats everywhere you know.

Don’t have much of a sense of humor um about about any of it uh, so do you have any questions for for ZeP? Yeah, I’m wondering a little bit about the economics behind natural wine making um i i and there can be some differences of course between organic natural and obviously biodynamic winemaking and if you could speak to that um but because there’s less additives and less commercialization is it actually less expensive but then more risk and then also are more natural wines or other wines like that marked up in different ways due to the way that they’re exported and because of that risk um okay so first uh, I don’t think that it's true that uh the fact that you use less chemicals and additives you need to less expensive or is a more expensive process yeah i will say i will say too so i feel like the natural wine world emerged in a lot of corners of france where land was undervalued you know you're not gonna you know take these risks you know in terms of you know working against you know the codified system of industrial french agriculture if there's not some incentive so you know if you're you know minting money in the cellar in bordeaux in burgundy you know there's less incentive there but if you're in a historically important but down on slug Region like you know, Touraine, you know, Beaujolais, you know, um, you're more likely there's more opportunity to buy land for sure in those types of places but you know I would just say that like the use of fertilizers, chemical fertilizers, um, herbicides and pesticides are for saving money, you know.

When there's like an interesting thing that I read one time it says in a conventional winery, you know, an actual individual gets near a vine two or three times in a season, um, in an organic winery, an individual goes by a vine you know 10 or 12 and in biodynamic season uh they'll go by about 25 or 30 times. So just think about it the labor. cost um that you have to go 10 vines in a way that's much much more labor intensive you know you spray um herbicide on the ground you don't have to cut the grass you know um that's it that's an enormous uh financial saving you use chemical fertilizer in a year when your yields might normally and naturally only give you 35 hectolitre per hectare but you don't have to cut the grass you get it up to the appellation limit of 70 you've doubled your production by using the chemical so from a from a uh financing point of view which is always what i think you were asking about earlier um i am a thousand percent sure that making wine in a natural wine way is much more expensive um per bottle than making wine in a more conventional way and then i think you also asked something at the end for forgive me if i get this wrong about whether or not like the import you know world marks it up more because it's rare or because it's natural wine as opposed to conventional wine um i don't think so um i think again the other way is true like take something like whispering angel for example um you know i don't know i think that's like it's pretty expensive right it's like 40 bucks a bottle retail or something like that um i don't know i think that's like it's pretty that that Is you know conventional, you know big production, Provence rosé that's about the easiest place to grow grapes in the world. They're getting you know 150 hectolitres per hectare; they're getting a very large yield of it and it's rosé, so it's a quick maceration goes only in the stainless steel tank. They sell it in the the vintage year after. There's probably no wine less expensive to make in the world than Whispering Angel. And because of the marketing money by the way, I'm not sure if I'm with Whispering Angel; it sells for whatever price that it sells for. So you know, in the natural wine world, you know we're very...I think, I mean I Could speak to the margins that we use, which are standard and I think pretty small.

But you know, we don't really have that many opportunities to like, you know, get one over on the market, um, you know, we've all always natural wine has always been the little guy getting sort of beat up by the other one, so we're trying to come in with the most competitive prices that we can, you know, to say that like, look, you can drink really exciting wine for $23 on the shelf, and for $40, you're going to get historic, great wine, and natural wine, you know, and that's not really the way conventional. I was always under the impression that you got Into this game to get rich anyway, I thought that was oh yeah, um, uh, that's, you know, talking about the little guy.

I think it's a great segue for the sake of uh our orange wine. So, these are wines from Midway made from white grapes, um, rested on the skins. Uh, I misidentified an orange wine earlier, but our non-orange wine is orange. But these are honestly, got orange wines, um, uh, from uh, Austria and uh, then from uh, the Italian Slovenian border. Um, you have mine clang; they are uh, I affectionately referred to them earlier as the cartridge family of uh, you know, kind of uh, the Austrian biodynamic movement. Uh, there is this kind of uh, ideal of um the austrian farm rudolf steiner uh the founder of biodynamics uh himself was austro-hungarian and there's this idea of this mixed-use farm uh and i can't think of a family that embodies that more purely um uh than the family behind mine clang they have like 200 plus hectares and they do a little bit of everything um but sorry are they how many three thousand oh holy i totally undersold them wow um that's a lot that's a lot of hectares um uh hectares uh for those of you playing along at home is about 2.4 acres um uh but uh they are all in on the biodynamic program uh mine clang means my sound and refers to the Sound of the Earth, um, they raise all sorts of livestock, including the happy dancing cows, um, that adorn their label, um, their website is adorable, um, in addition to you know lovely Austrian uh, you know kind of uh, family uh, farming pictures, uh, they have some like really high-minded pros about uh, biodynamics, but I'm just a brief spiel here where they say the noblest form of agriculture is one that maintains its own fertility and therefore also becomes self-sufficient; this is a high idea and a life task which must be considered on every level when one manages to take individual areas and form an interdependent entity from. them when the simple sparse pastures are as important on the farm as the lovingly looked after vineyards when the smell of a cow pat receives the same recognition as the aromas of wine when hay making is placed on the same priority level of harvesting grain when the same loving care as the animals then the result is an organism carried by creative people whose work constitutes their life um you know how can you not want to drink this wine especially when it comes to you you know around like man 20 bucks you know uh you know resale you know these are you know lovely people making honest products and you know i think it really Transmits in the glass and this particular wine that we're drinking from them is a blend of Um Velchry Sling, which is one of my first against Pinot Green Terminator, um about a week on the skins and then Dario Prince doesn't get uh the love he deserves, uh as you know, along with Yosko Grovner, along with Stanco Radikon, really like one of the people driving uh the kind of modern renaissance of orange wines, uh his is 22 days on the skins.

Shard Savi be Pinot Gris. What would you like people to know about these wines and the importance of vieled and mimics to your books Zev um oh boy well first that was a lot that was a lot I'm sorry yeah no. It's fine, I was reading through the chat and there are all sorts of great questions and comments and stuff in there, so I want to make sure that like you know we can answer anything anybody wants, I you know i see some like cidery comments about the acmenine, I'm sorry it's okay, are we going back a little bit, yeah yeah you said this is this is your house okay they're good questions and comments and stuff so that you know that cidery thing that is sort of what I was talking about before um about what oxidation does to wine um you know that definitely gets it into uh um that uh gets it into that cidery sort of state and yeah that's very.

Atypical, um, for Soncerre it's that big question to what extent do you think that that cidery state that oxidative streak erodes varietal character and erodes a sense of place versus enhancing it, um, I think I think that um that's an interesting question, I i think that it can it can erode it and it can enhance it depending, you know, there's a lot of gray here, you know, there's not one easy answer to that. I think when a wine has a lot of volatile acidity and you know and a lot of oxidation, you could really, really lose you know any sort of varietal or regional characteristic um, and then you're making something that's more of a natural. Wine, you know, style as opposed to something, it's the one look, it's the it's like the natural wine one look, yeah, you know.

And the other side of the coin of that is that in conventional wine, uh, you know, let's take red wine for example. Basically everybody around the world has tried to emulate Bordeaux or Napa Cab and put oak and alcohol and tan in deep redness to it. And so to what point does that process erode varietal character? I think it does very much, so you know. I would say that in natural wine people are not endeavoring in general to make wines with those oxidative characteristics, those are like things gone a little bit wrong. You know, and I guess I think of it a little bit like the vaccine. You know, it's gonna you know have a negative effect on a few people, but I think it's going to have a negative effect on a few people, but overall, you know, we're going to be a healthier society, so it's a utility, utilitarian argument.

For you know, there's a couple things that go wrong, but you know, okay, yeah, yeah, exactly, exactly, yeah, so, yeah, so one guy makes shitty wine; he calls it natural, don't take that out on the rest of us, right? Yeah, i guess, yes, that's what I'm trying to say, yeah, yeah, no, I dig that. Um, okay, to the two wines behind you, uh, I think we picked this and I think this Is one of the really interesting things about natural wine is that uh, in the natural wine world people really are have been trying to be creative for a long time, and orange wine is sort of one of these creative uh outputs from the natural wine world.

So you know, for those who aren't sure of the process of orange wine, normally when you uh harvest red grapes for red wine, you crush them and you let the skins macerate with the juice and that's how you get the the pigment to come out of the wine out of the skins and make the actual juice red. The juice in there is white wine, you harvest the grapes and classically we've Pressed the grapes and removed the skins from the juice immediately, and then fermented the juice separately, because what we're told we're supposed to be drinking with white wine is this clear, not cloudy, white thing, um, that gets closer to water you can see the color of the wine client in in your picture there; it gets that like dark rich color.

So basically all orange wine is is white wine made the way you would make red wine. So, you press the grapes and you let the skins macerate. It's a dangerous proposition because as we talked about before, um, white grapes don't have the same kind of antioxidants the red grapes do, so um, you know you can have a lot more vinegary characteristics you can have wines having you know a lot more flaws um when you're doing white macerations because especially with maceration there's a lot of oxygen particles that get around and get trapped you know in the grape skins and everything and the more oxygen you expose white wine to the more risk of a bacterial infection um so it's really it's hard to make orange wine uh well let's say um and orange wine has a wonderful history you know it goes back you know many beta data back to the georgia origins who've been making uh skin macerated wines um for a thousand years and maybe A few thousand years, in fact, yeah, they would say eight thousands of I don't know, the verdicts out, yeah, they would say, yeah, yeah, exactly, um. But they kind of actually lost the history of their orange wines for a long time, um, as you know that region industrialized and the Dario prince behind you is this guy who's in this village um with with Radikon and yeah here we go it's the man and they and you mentioned these guys before in this little area called uh Collio which is right at the border of Slovenia and uh Italy and they brought orange wine into the modern uh world by macerating and and they basically started This, in the 90s, uh, by looking back into their old history um, and doing skin macerations with Rubola Gialla and with Pinot Grigio, and a lot of these grape varieties, and they were just enthralled by the color of the wine made uh, by the texture and the density to it, and it's become a hallmark of the natural wine world, you know, almost I don't want to say everybody but you know, geez, these days most natural wineries make an orange wine um, as part of the repertoire, and uh, it's exciting, it's a brand new color like when was the first time that wine spit out a new color, wine, you know, a long time this wine was more like red, white, rose, sparkling. Yeah, yeah, sparkling rose and now we have this new thing, orange wine, and it's great, it's delicious, and people love it.

Um, but that producer, along with four or five others in that region, um, were the the nexus of the of the new movement of orange wine. So, it's an exciting category, yeah, I feel equally excited about it. There are a lot of people that, you know, are orange wine, you know, skeptics and haters. Uh, it does tend to, you know, kind of veer into a more cider-like, you know, savory place than a traditional white, but you know orange wine can do a lot of different things, and you know not unlike, you know, rosé, there are more white wine like orange wines i think you know these are two kind of fitting examples like the mind clang is super it's beautiful um you know the the quality acid is just like bright and zippy and it's full of this like you know kind of you know slightly under right pair and like you know nectarine and you know right or citrus it's just gorgeous and then you know the uh printrix wine it is more robust there is a tannic um you know kind of presence there it is more structured it's a little more red one like and you know uh orange wine you know does everything in between and you know that's what i like about it as a category and i think It's, it's super interesting and I think it's super fluid on the table, um, you know that is one thing I will give the Georgians is that, like, the way they eat, it's just this like, um, you know war of attrition and they throw everything at you all at once and it's just like a million different flavors and the food is like stupidly good but you know there's no French cuisine sense of oh I really gotta dial in this pairing I really gotta find the right sounds there for my oysters you know, the Georgians, the Georgians don't do that you know they just want something that's like super versatile and orange wine is not that way. Yeah, I mean, I think pairings are kind of in general, you know, give me a good wine with a good food over, like some, you know, perfect, like you know it's just it's not you know how many plates do you have where it's just an oyster is one, you know that's one flavor for sure and that goes nice with certain wine maybe, but almost everything else you have is like a complex flavor of foods right, it's cooked prepared food and you know you're maybe not having just one food throughout your drinking the wine, you know. Give me the best wine you have um you know with your tasty food and I'll be happy yeah uh like, I develop parents for a living um no. I, but I appreciate that hot take, and I think you know I think the fun thing is to see is to experience how wine and food play with each other and you know to live in that mystery and you know to be less you know invested in the right pairing and just you know more invested in the journey of it all and you know to have have more fun with you know what is actually happening you know in the glass and on the plate uh Zoe, what do you have for us? What do you like about these wines? I've always loved the MIND clones um, just all their wines. I've always been just so astounded and they're so um approachable to everyone um, I feel like we've been Slinging them for at least four years with the goat and, like it's been absolutely phenomenal every time um I I haven't tasted the Bianco yet but I'll do so in a little bit um I do have a few other questions just about like um giving some more context to organic and natural and biodynamic wines um but let's start at the beginning I guess which is what are those other additives um that are in commercial wines from like the powdered tannins to the acidification if they're if you could briefly go over that for us, easy; I feel like you got into this not to go over that sam i feel like that was no no no I'm happy to talk about that that i Think, I mean, first thing that's in your wine that's not in natural wine is herbicides and pesticides, you know?

You can do a lab analysis of wine and find out whether or not it's organic without knowing anything before because that shit gets on the grapes and it gets into the tanks and it's in the wine and then you drink it so maybe that's not an additive per se in the way that you normally think of it but it's in your wine when you didn't want it there in the first place. I'd say, um, that's one thing. Other things you mentioned it well, I think the first additives that people really added to wine were things That would make the wine balance in some way, so if there was not enough sugar density, you would add sugar in a process called capitalization; um, if your sugar density was too much, if your grapes are overripe, uh, like in California, they do this a lot, especially with like Napa Cab, they harvest it to like 20 potential alcohol and then they do a process called water back and acidification, so you just put the garden hose in it and you which is which is technically illegal but everybody does anyway; everybody does it, and so you, you harvest overripe and then you reduce the alcohol volume by just adding water, and at that point, you've Harvested so late that there's no acidity, so you have to add um acid to it to make it taste okay. So, those are a couple things um, you know most red wines on the common market now have uh something called Mega Purple in them, which is a colorant um, to get a more vibrant red color to it.

You know, a lot of times these days in more commercial wines um, if they want a really oaky flavor, they're putting oak chips into the wine um, one of the things that the natural wine philosophy is really against um, is the addition of yeasts and enzymes and this is kind of one of those additions that I kind of think is an aesthetic question um, part of the reason. That common sans serre tastes really tropical is because there's a yeast flavor that you can add to it, that ferments it in such a way that it's really tropical and it's really tropical, that yields a tropical fruit flavor to it. And when you have the your supplier if you're a winemaker and you have your supplier of your...you know stuff coming to you to sell you stuff, you know they tell you all the different yeasts and you choose the flavors and the profiles and the you know all these kinds of things in order to make your wine taste a certain way.

So you know there are certain things that are done to um, speed up the process, improve Your yields, uh, do a lot of things, and then there's a lot of things that are added to change the wine aesthetically, change the way it looks, to change the way it tastes, to change the way it feels, and so you know I think that draws back to the root of the lie of the idea of terroir, you know. This idea that like all these regions have these really like specific you know tastes to them not once you've added all this to it you know not once you've changed the characteristic of it so drastically that it is not like that anymore um you know I think that you're you're turning terroir into a lie by adding all that stuff and I think a big part of you know the reason of the you know natural wine movement uh originated where it did is because you know particularly in the loire valley but elsewhere in france winemakers saw that you know these appellation um you know regulations these laws you know they were created for these larger producers that were you know manipulating their wines more heavily uh they weren't made for the artisans who were truly concerned with terroir and you know people reacted against that and you know i think um you know stateside we always just you know we get this like really unique snapshot of um you know french wine we you know most Of us, the juice we get, you know, comes from, you know, artisans.

You know, a lot of it comes from artisans, and it's not the shitty French grocery store wine, but there is more and more and more and more and more and more and more shitty French grocery store wine than there is artisanal wine out there, and you know that ultimately was a big part of what you know. Yeah, yeah, you know, that's a big part of what you know. These, you know, individual iconoclasts were were moving against, yeah, um, yeah. And natural wine sort of saved the soul of wine in a lot of ways. You know, there was this like existential crisis in France that, like, the youth were drinking. cocktails and that you know i don't know if you remembered like 10 years ago and that french you know consumption was going to you know going away and that you know french wine's path was you know in question and natural wine is like brought it to pop culture has the the way to bring it to young people was to make it natural not to uh make it more exclusive and more expensive and more branded uh which is the direction that the convention going what was going uh zoe we will circle back to you in a minute and then we'll get back to you in a minute and then we'll get back to you in a minute and then we'll get back for questions i want to hit for questions i want to hit these red wines uh very quickly and i think that's a great segues because uh we're dealing with um two products here that couldn't be more quintessentially french so um uh there's burgundy you guys know it you love it uh at this point um uh we are at the northern end of the coach of bone uh if you remember that is the southern of the uh two uh great spears of the code door um and uh this is um and a proper aristocrat francois nicolet uh he uh in his wife helm domain uh chandon de uh braille and my french is totally terrible zev i apologize um uh it's been in the family since 1834.

Um, and this is his negocio arm uh, and he converted his estate to biodynamics in the early aughts and he only works with biodynamic producers for the sake of his negocio arm um. And this is just stupidly good Burgundy, I'm gonna pull up a map of the particular vineyard because I love you know that Burgundy is such a map um. This particular vineyard it's one of the best vineyards in the world, it's one of the best vineyards in the world. It's not formally a limestone quarry um and that's always what you want out of your Burgundy um uh. And then the other one comes from minor walk um uh, that is uh for those of you playing only home named after the goddess of wisdom.

Um, which is this like great Roman uh village um but uh this loveable iconic class of Benjamin uh Tayander who studied under Charlemont差kum and moved to his appellation or moved his his family winery in a very different direction um Minerva famous for these like fuller bodied you know tannic um you know you can see the wines that take a while to relax in the bottle. And he is after something entirely different, something entirely more refreshing and drinkable. And Zeb talked about putting the natural in natural wine and moving away from these additives. But I think equally, the natural wine movement has done other things. I think it's made wine fun again, not only for the sake of labeling. This is like a pretty classic, that could be a classic French domain label.

That's not very fun. But we're playing with Vinny, Vinny, Vinny, Vinny, for the sake of Italian Dairs labels. And certainly a lot of these others are a little more whimsical. And I think that democratization for the sake of price and for the sake of aesthetic is something really important that natural wine, the movement at least in as much as it is a movement has brought to the fore as well. And these are two of my favorite wines in Zeb's book. And what I love about them is the way that they stand on their own two feet. You know, they could be presented to somebody just kind of prima facie, you know, drink this, you're gonna love it without any qualification. And you'd be hard pressed not to like either of them.

You know, maybe, you know, if you wanted a big fucking red wine, you know, maybe this, you know, riff on Minervois isn't for you. Maybe, you know, if you like Burgundy that sees, you know, more New Oak, this Burgundy isn’t for you, but it's impossible to deny that they're wildly elegant and delicious wines because they’re wildly elegant and timeless. And sophisticated, you know, really beautiful. What would you tell us about these two, you know, producers and how they fit in your book, Zeb? Well, that was a great introduction to them. You know, I think we chose these wines for today because we wanted to show that natural wine doesn't have to be weird, you know, and that like a lot of that, you know, some of that is just stylizing.

Some of that is just how long you do your macerations. You know, there's, you know, you can have just a red wine with a little bit of tan in the case of the, you know, the Taillandier wine and, you know, and you can have classical style Burgundy that is like very undeniably Burgundian in the case of the Francé de Nicolet. And so it's like you can make skin macerated wines or petnats or whatever and really be in the natural wine style. But you can also farm beautifully ferment with natural, you know, yeast, not add sulfur to the wine, you know, age it in old oak, you know, not filter it and make a classical style natural wine that is, you know, you don't necessarily need to tell somebody like a whole natural wine song and dance, right?

You can just sell this as like a nice classical wine. And I like both styles. I think that's part of like the beauty and the diversity of the tapestry of natural wine. So these two are also kind of an interesting juxtaposition because they represent, you know, two different cultures of it. The Burgundy, right? This is, like you said, this comes from the, this is the son of the estate of Chandon-le-Griard. They've had vines in Corton and Savigny-le-Bun since the 14th century. You know, these people are as like, you know, family entrenched in the history of wine as is possible. And yet, you know, his mother in the 80s stopped using the chemicals because she saw that they were wrong. And that created a revolution in the family.

And he took it to a next level and really diverged and from the way the Burgundy was going, which is to a very conventional, very commercial style, which is the way it is now. How did you come about, you know, his portfolio? How did you come to represent him? Well, um, you know every story of how it took somebody up is is like an individual thing and for him it was um, you know I've known Chandelier for you know my whole wine life as just a famous great domain before I knew about natural wine. I loved Chandon because I thought it was just great burgundy, um, and to find out later that it's like, you know, has this great history of of bringing natural wine up in the region is uh, was very nice to me.

And I have some other Burgundy producers who, um, Étienne de Beru and Chablis and some others that are friends with him, and so uh, I just hung out with him at some parties and we like got to know each other and we became friends, um, and then when you know it turned out that he was thinking about you know having a different import or whatever, I was somebody that came to mind. How many of your, you know, portfolio acquisition stories start with 'we were just hanging out with you know' at this natural wine party or uh, a lot of them a lot of them and more now, you know, but like the the the opposite is the case for the other wine in front.

Of you, Benjamin Taillon D8, I picked him up in 2009 when I was pretty young in the business; I didn't know anybody in order to get invited to the parties, um, and I met him at a trade show, you know. I also go to, you know, 30 trade tastings per year, uh, around Europe, and you know, try to diligently go to every table, taste all the wines, and you know, see the ones I think are really good, and talk to people a little bit, and I found him in a convention center in Montpellier. That's awesome! You never know, yeah, um, yeah, that's super cool, um, and you know, he was probably very good friends but yeah, he was probably taking a chance on me as much.

As you were taking a chance on him at that point, he started his domain in 07; you know I started my wine company in 07, so we were like, 'Oh, that's awesome. Super young and we're the same age; we're both super young in our endeavors.' And so it was like, it was a nice match, that's super cool. Uh, so what do you have from uh, the uh comment board for the sake of questions um about any of the ones that uh, we've tasted so far in terms of talking about um, like these smaller wineries and larger wineries? Are there natural wineries that are larger that are um, heidi put it beautifully um, fans of warren buffett um, they're doing well financially um, as as Our and in comparison to like our little guys that we love so much, yeah.

Well, my client, who we talked about earlier, I think is probably the largest natural winery in the world, um, when you know, when I say they have 3,000 hectares uh, that's the entire farm, only 90 of that is vines, um, still a 90-hectare domain of vines is the largest natural winery in the world as far as I know, like the largest like reputable natural winery in the world, um, you know, and on they have a thousand head of cattle and you know 500 pigs and a whole thing and 3,000 hectares of land uh, you know, and they make grain and they make beer out of it and they they they are as Warren. Buffett as you could get in the natural wine world, um, but you know they also, um, completely fund the Steiner school in their village so that every single kid in the village goes to Steiner school, um, you know, which is a big upgrade from like the normal schooling that they get in like Country Austria and you know, they reinvest a lot of their resources into the community and everything because they've, you know, done well off of it, um, so yeah I think they, I think that they're really important because uh, they show the world that you can make a natural winery and make it a financial success, you know, simultaneously. You know, most of the wineries we deal with have between four and 20 hectares. You know, not really making like generational money or anything, yeah, well, yeah, no, I mean, I think the natural wine is still very much at this point of you know, insurgency um, and you know, it's it's gonna come for it, like yeah, yeah, kid ourselves, yeah, it's it's gonna happen, um.

But I think that you know, some big giant winery is going to you know, rend themselves a winery and you know, not do the job that we consider like the standard quality for it, and that's just gonna happen, what are you gonna do with it, what else you got, so um, I'm thinking of the best way to Ask this question because I think it's it's too complicated, but um, in terms of aging wine that is natural versus commercial, um, maybe let's use the Ledoix as a specific example, um, but if it were made without any sulfites or if it were made with very minimal ppm, how long could it age as opposed to something that had sulfites? Great question!

Um, first off, I don't think wines that have a lot of sulfur aged all that well, and that's like a taste thing for me. When you have like an old Bordeaux that's got a bunch of sulfur in it, um, and it's pretty conventionally made; they basically have like taken a photograph of the wine at this particular Moment and it's like in a state of slow degradation, um, in my experience with natural wine, they go up and down when you age them over the years, um, and they're always kind of finding these dynamic states where you're like, 'Wow, I can't believe it tastes so young.' Wow, you know it's a wine that I thought was sort of going over the hill a little bit ago.

I've had natural wines that are really good, um, and you know if you're aged, you know 30, 40, 50 years, that are amazing. I've had Beaujolais from Jules Chauvet, who you spoke about earlier, you know that he made himself in the late 70s, you know in this Beaujolais region that's not famous for aging, so I think that you know first off I think people sort of overage wine in general when you're aging wine, I don't think you need to age wines for 30, 40 years for them to be incredible, you know I think that a lot of wines are best at like 10 or 12, but wines without sulfur age very well if they're made well in the first place. I think that's true of wine period, I think if wine is made well in the first place it ages well.

Yeah, you know I equally; I will echo that: you know natural wine is very much a dynamic living thing and I will say that I think that's true of wine period. I think if wine is made well in the first place it ages well, say like the I think for wines that are made in a more conventional style even like wines that are fermented with native yeast and just have like a little more sulfur added; like the the aging curve is a little more predictable, you know, especially with like microbiological bad actors, you know, I you know there's a problem mousiness in unsulfured wine; mousiness is like retronasal pernicious fault that if you're sensitive to it just really like ruins the roost when you're tasting wine but it can go through phases in bottles in ways that I you know wasn't you know fully attuned to.

Amazing. It's crazy yeah I and Zeb like I had talked up all of these Scandinavian psalms when you know we were in Georgia and I thought they were full of shit when they said that just because you know I thought Scandinavian psalms you know were just part you know we're just kind of like full of shit but they were totally right you know and and so I had this experience in pandemic of you know this one Georgian wine that we carried prior to pandemic and I was like I don't know I don't know I don't know you know just being mousy is all get out when I first brought it in and you know so I just kind of like set it there and literally forgot about it you know and came back to it you Know eight months later, and it it's gorgeous; you know, it's a beautiful wine now.

And, like, yes, if you give it like two plus days open, you know, and then come back to it, you know, there's a flutter of mouse, but like, it's not bad, and, and that was, like, you know, I have to apologize to all my Scandinavian psalm friends now. Yeah, it's a natural; it's amazing. It really does evolve uh in a very, um, unpredictable way, and it's, that's kind of the exciting thing about it. Uh, great! So, I want to just quickly address so we had two awesome pet nats. Pet Nat is like kind of like the bon vivant of the uh, natty wine world. This is a case of like hipster rebranding. Of something that always existed, um, you know they, origin stories, honestly, like you had all these lower valley winemakers working without sulfur and, you know, inevitably when you work without sulfur, uh, if you bottle a little early then you're going to get gas when you come back to, uh, your wine, you know, in a few months, and um, I think it's a little bit of like a lemonade at a lemon situation where you know, 'fuck it,' let's come up with a good brand name and, you know, send it out in the world. But the cool thing about pet nat, I think is that uh, it equally democratizes bubbles um so you know laying wine down making it champagne-like is pretty Labor intensive, whereas you know you can bottle a wine early and if you hit it right for the sake of you know um residual sugar make something as stupidly delicious um you know uh much easier um and I think you know um Pét Nat is a bit of a natural wine it girl um uh for you know certainly for that for that reason and you know is that you quite a few in your book um uh you know what do you love about the style um the thing I love, what do I love? That stuff that there's a bunch of things you know. We have this like very zealous attachment to natural yeast fermentations in the natural wine world and so it always struck me weird that like people.

Will drink champagne anyway, because champagne, in fact, has to have yeast added to it. Um, method champagnois regulates that it's there um and that a liquor de dosage that that you know it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's you know sugar and other things are added to it so it you know the the the style of method champagnois is not very natural if you're going to like go by the standards that we go by still wines for um and so pet nat is sort of a reaction to that, it's like okay, we're not going to be able to get six bars of of atmospheric pressure the way that you do in champagne. We might get two, we might get one, we might get three.

and it's going to be different every year and that's just sort of fun, you know, and like the, this, like obsession with fine bubbles or them being like a certain amount of pressure to me it's just silly, like it's not that important, and what's more important to me is that we're harvesting grapes at the ripest, most delicious moment, and the way that you make champagne is that you harvest it at nine percent potential alcohol and you get it up to 12 through the secondary fermentation by adding sugar, you know, and so you're, you're, you're, you're, you're, you're, you're, you're, you're, you're, you're not getting The phenolic ripeness that comes uh with more time of the grape on the vine and so what I love about Pet Nat is that it's sparkling wine made with phenolically ripe grapes, um, and I think that sort of sets it apart, that makes it taste different, it makes it taste um just richer and more dynamic and have more fruit to it, that's awesome man.

Uh, I just want to say thank you so much for your time and I'll see you next time uh Zev, I think so we might have a few more questions for you but I want to raise a glass to you, we always uh toast things out, I'm honored that you joined us for our 52nd uh less than 52nd Sunday year um in uh wine school, um, I loved. your original point about um you know kind of uh creating the wine world that you wanted and you know living into the ideal of wine uh that you initially had that you know only natural wine you know um and i think that's a really good point you know kind of uh struck a chord for um you know uh and in in terms of you know your um you know deeper dives uh for the sake of this industry and you know i hope you know wherever we go from here you know we are trying to make the wine industry um that you know we we hope for and you know trying to uh make you know the wines that we want to drink in a way that you know contributes to you know um everyone's uh you know good cheer and you know uh sustainability for the sake of you know the plant that we have so cheers man uh thank you for joining us alone together uh salute honored to be had it's great to talk to you guys and happy to answer all the questions anybody wants if you guys don't feel like uh so what do you got i'm really interesting what you said about um it's easier to make natural red wine versus white wine and some of us have noticed that there's more natural white wine or more um organic white wine um is that true is is that perhaps what we've been seeing in our own market i don't know that that's true but like i don't know There's actually more natural white wine than red wine, um it is definitely true that the natural wine style is all about lightness and freshness, you know, and so you know another category that I think the natural wine world really came up with or or maybe they didn't come up with it but they they really expanded it was this really light red wine style, you know, that see-through, blue-ish to glue-blue, blue-red wine, yeah, um, and that was sort of a riff on Pulsar from the Jura, uh, light red wines, and so if you just do small macerations, you know, somewhere in between rosé and red, you can kind of achieve that in a lot of different Places and so like I think that maybe if you're noticing a lot of white and like lighter style things, that is definitely part of the natural wine philosophy. It's like easy to drink, you know, lower alcohol lots of bottles. I think that was a reaction to like the Parkerization of wine, which was the 14 and a half percent alcohol thick deep red wine. Um, that's a style that's not very popular in natural wine.

Uh, from a production standpoint, I think I think also you know um natural white wines, especially Sémillon white wines are easy to spot, whereas you know um you know whether you're working in a gluten-free environment or you're working In a gluten-free style, or you know you're making something a little more robust, you know uh red wine because you know it is a little more shelf stable, um uh with minimal additions of sulfur you know is a little harder to recognize as such so you might not know you might not yeah yeah I think I think that could yeah I think that could increase that increase that perception for people yeah awesome uh could you give a little more context um into the the science behind mousiness and another like issues that happen can we smell it can we smell mousiness that's my favorite question ah uh okay so um the science is sort of complicated.

On the mouse, um, and it's thought that it's caused by a particular amino acid, and they've identified what they think are five different types of mouse, actually, um, so when you're talking mice, it's mice not mouse, you're all these mice that's mises when you were talking about earlier that there was like some that would go away, you know, not all of them will, you know, fascinating in some holes oh so the Scandinavians are still full of is what you're yeah um I don't think you can so I'm going to just say it you cannot smell mousiness um, that said you can smell other things that are often poorly yeah yeah yeah so a lot of wines with a lot.

Of volatile, volatile acidity also have mousiness or or Bertanomyces will often have mouse, but it's not necessarily and so you just can't smell right, you just can't. You can smell things that make you think it might be there and it might be there and it might not be there um, but you can't smell it. And if you want to like if you have not identified what a mousiness is or you've never experienced it, you can't smell it, you can't taste it. Um, first you get it in a lot of kombucha uh, a lot of like tons of kombuchas, mousy but basically once you taste a thing uh, if you exhale through your nose uh, a few seconds later it'll start.

to like really overwhelm your navel basically um zeb is it so you're auditioning new producers and you try you know a flight of wines you know is it a non-starter for you if they're going to be there or do you stock do you like throw you know do you kind of like stock a few bottles and revisit you know after a month if you like the wine there's a lot of wineries out there and i can't necessarily like you know stock and recheck every wine i taste you know to like think about it again if i happen to be at a place and i've never heard of this winery and i taste their wines and they're all mousy then i'm like ah something's going on you know if i taste their wines and five of them are great and one of them is mousy you know i'm like oh that's just the the you know the vagaries of natural wine happens um you know so it's not like uh i don't personally like the mousy taste here's another thing a lot of people really like the mousy taste supposedly uh this is this is wild but all the a lot of the georgian producers i said you know they said that when they had like uh you know a batch that was mousy they sent it to japan supposedly most japanese are like less um averse to mous well there's a lot more vinegar in japanese food than there is in western food yeah that's fair yeah the palate is a lot more uh you know open to volatile acidity which is just what turns wine into vinegar by the way um so you know there there's more of that palette in their uh diet in general um you know they'll also tell you that they'll send the mousy wine to scandinavia oh there you go yeah guys there don't give a shit you know you could also say you could sell a lot of it in brooklyn that's fair that's fair yeah yeah it's just yeah we should yeah i should be i should be careful about my gross generalizations about you know markets for natural for mousy wine yeah you know look a lot of times and i'll say this uh for myself also The first time I had mouse, I didn't know what it was and I thought it was really cool. Like, I thought it was really something I never tasted anything like it. I was all about it; I thought it was great.

The second time I had it, you know, because I thought it was like the terroir something this guy was doing and the second time I had it was with a different winery, and I was like, 'Oh, shit! This is something else.' Um, so let's also not just like, you know, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know. Assume that we don't like the taste; you know, we've trained ourselves to dislike it because we know that it's something that's raw. But, like, uh, a lot of consumers for myself, the first times I had it, like I liked it. There's nothing inherently you know evil about it; there's nothing inherently evil about it, the way there is something inherently evil about all the chemicals, yeah, absolutely.

Uh, so one more question, um, your hot take on organic certifications? I think they're great, I love them. Um, and I was, I was surprised when I first heard this hot take from you, I thought you would be, like, iconoclastic, zeb, like, 'fuck this shit,' you know? It doesn't matter, but I, I find your hot take very interesting, I know, well, I think that people are always questioning the transparency And natural wine, saying that oh this guy says he's organic means not or whatever, and you know there's there's all this kind of thing and you know the organic certification does not necessarily make you a natural winery right like all it means is that you're farming without certain chemicals, and that's already pretty good, you know.

Like if if you farmed with chemicals and then or I'm sorry if you farmed without chemicals and then you brought all the grapes in and you put sulfur and yeast and enzymes filtration and all this stuff to it stylize the wine in a certain way, you've done the work of improving the farming, not. Filling the earth with you know chemicals that have a 50 million year half-life, you know, that was basically what we're trying to achieve in natural wine. Is including improving the quality of you know vine farming around the world. So if all of the big conventional wineries in the world switch to organic, it would be a huge win for the earth. Um, I love that man. Uh, let's, uh, let's go and we'll see you next time.

Uh, exactly, let's close it out there. I, uh, Zev often, uh, talked to um, you know, my buyers and the staff about uh, the wine list as this party, and you know, I think about the list as a guest list, you know, so like, who do I want at this party? And, you know, maybe you don't want to hear all these iconic classic potentially mousy voices, but maybe a few be interested and you want your conventionally delicious um, but I just want to raise a glass to you again because I know that you know whatever party I'm hosting, uh, I'm sure you all have a taste of what I have here. Always wanting zebra bean, uh, you know, in the mix, uh, you know, drinking wine serving wine for people. So thank you so much; it's great to see you again and absolutely meet all you guys and help y'all out.