of the New York Times invite derision with every positive nod.
And though Mike Steinberger of Slate deplores natural wines’
“sloganeering”, Robert Parker, non-ironically, calls natural wine
“one of the major scams foisted on wine consumers”, natural wine
is retail giant Whole Foods’ fastest growing segment. Marketing, it
seems, is the only prism through which to view the issue.
Parkerized
When Jancis Robinson writes that industrialization has
homogenized 90% of the world’s wine, she singles out the oenology
schools, chemists and consultants used to attract the attention of
wine journalists. Though responsible for dramatic improvements in
the conditions of vineyards and cellars everywhere, this cadre’s blind
obsession for the worldwide market at the expense of loyal, native
drinkers pushes for ever more sanitizing and extracting techniques
regardless of tradition. The term to describe wines that have lost
their nativist character in favor of polish and extraction
is “Parkerized”.
Robert Parker’s 100-point scoring system, oft derided (or even
compromised as the scandalous departure of his very own Wine
Advocate “pay for play” write Jay Miller uncovered) yet nonetheless
obeyed, and its legion of copycats attempt to rate wine along a
single axis of worthiness determined by that one drinker’s esteemed
palate. To many, this is an absurd distillation of the 6,000 wine
growing appellations around the globe and the 1,238 different
vinifera grapes that are grown in them.
44
The story of Ma and Pa Dubois sending little Marcel out to wine
school in Bordeaux, or wherever, only to return to tell his dear
parents that everything their family had done for generations was
flawed, has been repeated in every ancient wine growing nook with
resplendent effect. As Jean-Marie Fourrier of Domaine Fourrier
says, “...after the Army everyone goes to Beaune (for school).”
“When winemakers insist that the
clarity of their wine comes without
the encumberance of modern
technology, it can be seductive,
indeed.”
Oenology curricula prefer controlled fermentations and chemical
improvements where the vineyard may have failed. Reverse osmosis,
micro-oxygenation, acid correction, designer yeasts, high-powered
sterilizers like Valcorin, Ultra-Purple for color improvement,
herbicides and pesticides, were like nails to a carpenter who just
discovered a hammer, and dramatically transformed winemaking.
Bolstered with brash and iconoclastic wine critics keen on making
a name for themselves, winemakers in emerging new world settings
plucked ever more brix laden grapes to be honed by chemists into
a windfall brand. Where nature is the enemy of consistency, well
informed wine consultants can bludgeon the same pronounced