Au Naturel
We don’t always choose the things we love. Sometimes, through serendipity or sheer coincidence, they choose us. An article or passage we read years ago emerges from the mind’s recesses, jumping out amid the vast compendium of knowledge, reminding one of its existence. Which is how I came to natural wine.
Considering my means are modest, natural wine seems like an extravagant passion. Yet having forced down several glasses of Apothic Red and spit out the occasional swig of Culito, I knew something better existed than mass-market bottles. What I didn’t yet understand was that drinking for value doesn’t mean buying the cheapest wine, but the best you can afford, even if the best means enjoying a glass or two (or three) several nights a week, instead of every day. I know my liver is happier by subscribing to this philosophy of drinking, and I’m sure it’s glad, too, that it’s not barraged with sulfites and additives.
Natural wine is often biodynamic and not always organic, these differences being subtle yet significant. Organic has the most dubious meaning of the three, and is a blanket term for any wine made with organic grapes. The three-buck chuck you buy at Trader Joe’s is considered organic, but it’s mass-produced, devoid of distinction, and may contain copious amounts of sulfites. Natural wine relies less on sulfites — which do help preserve wine, though conventional winemakers go overboard in the name of killing yeast — and some are sulfite free. Biodynamic wine takes natural wine a step further, focusing on terroir (the land’s unique characteristics and conditions) and the interdependence of each organism involved, no matter how minutely, in the winemaking process. Some biodynamic methods verge on spiritual, not in a quackish manner, but in communion with the Earth.
My discovery of natural wine happened years before I took a conscious interest. As a teenager and young man, I was an acolyte of A Continuous Lean. I awaited each new post, and savored the clothing and lifestyle advice that Michael Williams and his writers liberally dispensed. Considered a workwear blog in its earliest days, it was moreso a compendium of refinement, a teacher of quality and discernment without pretense. Through ACL, I learned about Kermit Lynch, the Berkeley importer instrumental in bringing French and Italian natural wines to the United States, beginning in the 1970s. I remembered reading that wines from Lynch’s portfolio were available at two stores in New York. Certainly they are available at more, though ACL encouraged readers to find these bottles at Chambers Street Wines and Thirst Merchants. While I was intrigued by their offerings based on a quick web search, they meant nothing to me until I moved to New York, not far away from Thirst, in fact.
Kermit Lynch, the father of the natural wine movement (Photo: Luca Locatelli, The New York Times).
But it was Chambers Street that I sauntered into first, fearing judgment as a wine novice. Jim Harrison had passed away the year before, and I read his posthumous collection, A Really Big Lunch, during my first week in Brooklyn. Many of Harrison’s essays were first published in Kermit Lynch’s anticipated monthly newsletter. When I saw Lynch’s name in A Really Big Lunch, a light went on in my head. I mined the archives of ACL, searching for the post that was a speck in my memory. Once I found it, I planned my pilgrimage. Off I marched for an education in wine.
As I walked through the aisles of Chambers Street, I was scared one of the refined winesellers would spot me, a neophyte, and consider my patronage unworthy. This almost happened at a later date, when I dropped a bottle of wine on a subway platform, tried exchanging it, and was told that was against policy. I hustled out of the store, and my momentary embarrassment almost prevented me from returning. Yet good wine beckoned and the staff didn’t remember the incident. By the time I left New York, I was buying wine from Chambers Street several times a week. I wasn’t a big customer, but a curious one.
That first time, though, I was on the quest for Gigondas, a robust, woodsy wine from the southern Rhône Valley and a favorite of Harrison’s. The woman who assisted me was kind and appreciated my curiosity. I may have helped my case by mentioning Harrison, who patronized the restaurant in Key West where she was wine director for many years, but my later experiences informed me that every customer was treated with the same respect, whether a novice or a longtime aficionado. I left that day with a delicious Gigondas and a vow to myself that I would return soon and often.
My first time shopping at Thirst was less fraught. The clientele skewed younger, the environment more casual, more Brooklyn. I can’t remember what bottle I bought that day, though a look back through my phone’s camera roll reveals it was a Cinsault from Martin Texier of Domaine de L’Amandier, a rising star in the natural wine world. Many times thereafter, I remember walking from Bed-Stuy to Fort Greene for the sole purpose of purchasing some glou-glou (drinkable, unpretentious) goodness meant for immediate gratification, with or without food.
Chambers Street Wines (Photo: Melissa Hom, New York).
The staff at both stores were as much of a draw as the wines. One of my favorite salesmen at Chambers Street mistook me for an industry professional, since I would go to Dirty Bird, a small fried chicken joint in Chelsea, on Friday date nights, when he tended bar there. After sharing an inexpensive bottle, as much as I could afford, our hero, tipsy himself, would keep our glasses filled, on the house. Sometimes he mixed two different wines together for a unique pour, including the time he combined a red with Prosecco, which stands out, to this day, as a refreshing, delightful treat. His colleague at Chambers Street was as much a character, a tall, lanky, bearded man, well versed in the relationship between terroir and taste. He upsold me without fail, without trying, and without inducing regret. The owners of Thirst were as congenial as their Chambers Street cohorts, and I remember lingering in their garden level shop near close while they rang up my purchases. We talked of men’s clothing and our favorite bodega food finds with no concern for time. These are the places I miss in New York, more than almost any other.
Minneapolis isn’t the natural wine hotspot that New York is, which was one of the hardest things about moving back. We have great selections, though, at two places, at least. Hidden on an industrial stretch of Glenwood Avenue is Henry & Son, Minneapolis’s first natural wine shop. When I noticed they carried my beloved Vignetto Saetti Lambrusco, I knew everything would be ok. Since moving near the Walker Art Center, I’ve stopped through several times to buy old favorites and new bottles. They may soon get all my income that doesn’t go to bills, groceries, and life’s other necessities. That is, if I don’t spend all my money at Troubadour, a slip of a wine bar that offers a fantastic selection of generous pours by the glass, allowing for more experimentation (and less expenditure) than the average by-the-bottle joint. The staff is friendly and eager to help you learn, for wine is an education.
Wine is a marker of time, too, and I remember where I was and what I did over the last two years because of what wine was in my glass. I take photos of each bottle I drink because I want to preserve its taste in my memory. What I did not account for was what each picture, in reference to the frames surrounding it, told me about my life at that time. Scrolling through my photo library, reflecting on each wine, I noticed an absence of nostalgia. In its place was wonderment toward the life I had lived and the life I am living now, filled with good wine and company, no matter where I go. These are the deeper meanings behind natural wines, the tastes we cannot forget, flavors imprinted forever on our tongues and in our minds. Wine is not thought of as a mnemonic device, though it’s time to reconsider. And enjoy a bottle or two.