Natural Intervention

(…Is Not An Oxymoron)

There is a pervasive modern misconception that keeping humans, and our tools, out of nature is good, because humans only harm nature. “Untouched by human hands” is equated with the highest and best state of nature.

I say “modern misconception” because it has only been for a short amount of time – a few hundred years – that some humans saw themselves as separate from nature in the first place. Prior to modern times, we could not keep humans out of nature because we were nature.

Since we began seeing ourselves as separate, we have drastically reduced biodiversity, decimated the health of the environment of the entire earth, changed the climate, and caused the extinction of innumerable species.

One might begin to wonder if the idea of our separateness from nature might ironically be the cause of the problems that now inspire us to think it a good thing for us to stay out of nature.

A problem we have today is a lack of positive examples of humans benefiting nature. We look around and see ample evidence of the ugly impacts we can have – trash in the gutters, brown waters in the streams, smog-filled air, farms that lack diversity of any kind.

We created Centralas to be a good example of humans making something beautiful that benefits nature, in cooperation with nature, as part of nature. We created the Organic Wine Podcast to highlight other humans who are working in nature as part of nature, doing beautiful things that benefit all nature.

And if we re-learn the story of our past, we’ll begin to realize that the idea that ‘Europeans arrived in the Americas to discover an abundant wilderness landscape untouched by humans’ is a dangerous myth. When we realize the Americas were inhabited for thousands of years by millions of humans who just had a different perspective that allowed them to live in balance with nature, we begin to realize how much we have to re-learn.

How does this apply to wine?

I’ve begun to think that the “natural wine” movement has grown out of that original misconception about human intervention in nature being a bad thing, because it relies on the fundamental flaw of thinking that we are separate from nature in the first place.

I am a natural wine maker. However, I don’t have a dogmatic commitment to laisez faire wine making.

Because there is nothing hands-off about wine making.

We plant vineyards in very specific ways. We cultivate the vines in very careful ways for years. We protect grapes from spoilage, theft, consumption, and damage as best we can until the appointed time for their harvest. Then we plan and execute the harvest of the grapes for very specific and intentional reasons.

We have made careful practical, legal, and business plans for the leasing, building, licensing, and furnishing of our winery. We have purchased or rented many pieces of equipment that burn fuel, or run on electricity made by burning mined fossil fuels or technology-harnessed forces.

An entire supply chain of industries, businesses, and crafts supports our efforts at every step as we tend, grow, harvest, vinify and sell our wines. Let’s not forget the infrastructure that allows us to turn on irrigation systems and get water, or turn on our hose to clean a barrel.

Then there’s plastic – that most natural of materials. I’m pretty sure you picked into plastic picking bins, maybe even fermented in them. Do you use any plastic funnels or pitch forks or just plastic wrap to cover your fermentations?

And of course you’re using some kind of storage vessel. Steel tank, plastic, glass, cement, wood barrel, clay amphora… they all involve serious human intervention to come into being. Not to mention cleaning them.

Did you make any winemaking decisions? Maybe decided to make a rose? Co-ferment somethings? Bottle during fermentation for a pet-nat? Skin contact or pressed? Of course you did. Let’s add that to the “human intervention in winemaking” column.

Bottling. You have to. Are you going to make people just dive into a pool of your wine and guzzle as they swim? Bottling is yet another form of pretty intense intervention.

I could go on, but you get the picture.

An immense amount of “unnatural” work – aka intervention – goes into making a bottle of wine.

At every stage we are thoughtful, intentional, and careful. We want to ensure that all of that work – all of that investment of human time, energy, intelligence, and resources – isn’t wasted. We want to perform the magic trick of distilling a place and time in nature into something that we can drink with pleasure.

It is a labor of love. Only in that sense is it natural.

So why, oh why, oh why has so much thought been wasted on whether someone makes a 40 ppm sulfur add? I honestly can’t imagine a more absurd preoccupation, and yet entire festivals, distribution chains, and brand identities are built around whether and how much sulfur a winemaker adds to her wine.

You see there’s intervention, and then there’s natural intervention.

Intervention - or “conventional” winemaking - is just like strict “natural” winemaking in that they both see the human as separate from nature. Conventional intervention just sees humans as separately superior, attempting to remove the taint of nature from the wine, while natural winemaking sees humans as separately inferior, attempting to remove the taint of human from the wine.

Our separateness from nature is an illusion we need to rid ourselves from at both ends of the spectrum in wine.

I believe there is an inherent beauty to nature, of which we humans are part, and I want to reveal a version of it in each of my wines.

There is a difference between revealing and concocting.

Both involve human intervention, but revealing comes from observing nature and trusting the deep well of knowledge that we have inherited as natural beings. Revealing is about knowing when to deftly steer a natural process – not toward an idea of good, but away from problems that eliminate the possibility of discovering inherent beauty.

I’d define beauty in wine as uniqueness, which is another way of saying terroir. It is the singular expression that a specific fruit can become when grown in a specific ecosystem, over a specific time, and vinified in a specific way.

Uniqueness is destroyed by sameness. Sameness can result from allowing spoilage microbes to dominate a wine, as much as by following a recipe.

Revealing does not follow a recipe, but it is informed by science and intimate knowledge of specific grapes (and other fruit), and their microbes, grown in specific ecosystems.

Revealing involves humans in protecting the health of the wine ecosystem. We shepherd the wine making process all the way from the soil into the bottle. We don’t stop protecting that health when the grapes cross the winery threshold.

That’s nuanced, and a bit subjective. That’s hard to judge without deep understanding and some expertise.

That’s natural intervention.