I always subscribed to the notion that low/no sulphur wines would be more invigorating, more digestible than more conventional added-sulphite wines. Despite this romantic feeling, I always reserved a portion of healthy scientific perspective. What if adding sulphites might benefit the wine in question? Were my preferences purely a matter of degree and totally a matter of taste?
Today, that relative open-mindedness was knocked for six. I opened a bottle of wine that hitherto I had revered and respected. Lowish (I thought) in sulphites. From an extraordinary place, a magical vineyard. A living liquid fragment of history. How eager I was to crack a bottle, and how predisposed I was to love the wine! The taste? It’s good. No more. Not exciting. Not as good as I remember. The wine lacks energy. Each sip begins to drag. I am now not enjoying it and forcing myself to drink. I feel the wine rasping, slowly burning on my tongue, making me flush. I feel profound disappointment. Was it always like this? Is my memory suddenly trying to cash cheques that reality cannot honour?
Yes, tastes change. Palates are reconfigured. And how!
I am not relating this anecdote as a confirmed no-sulphur nazi, but as someone who has always wanted to love every sup and gulp that he consumes. My passion is pleasure in whatever form it takes. Were a conventional wine to transport me with delight, I would be broadcasting its merits on all media channels. What I am tasting now is flavour that has been scalped. A wine irredeemably bruised by overly cautious intervention. As mentioned, the wine that is currently puckering my taste buds, might be considered at the low-to-moderate-end of the sulphite addition. I may be super-sensitive – the result of drinking no-lo for so long that my palate has been calibrated to reject even the slightest of sulphite-y nuances, or it may be that if others taste what I taste, then this is indeed an addition too much and too far.
I feel the wine rasping, slowly burning on my tongue, making me flush. I feel profound disappointment. Was it always like this?
It’s difficult to describe the joys of truly liberated wines. Words rarely wield the matter. The language of feeling is so personal to the taster in question. I can, however, describe the many ways in which wines fall short of my expectations, like a guy in a HM Bateman-style cartoon who points out the apparent deficiencies in a wine that everyone else is bowing down to. I may be the very odd-one-out in terms of taste. I am sure though that I am not the only one hyper-sensitive to superimposition.
It may be instructive to look at examples of responses to sulphur-added versus no-sulphite wine.
Those who attended the book launch of Jean-Pierre Frick’s Du Vin! De L’Air! at Terroirs nearly a decade ago, were treated to a blind tasting of two wines that were identical in every respect, other than one had had a homeopathic quantity of sulphites added and the other had none. Jean-Pierre asked us which we thought was the no-sulphur and which was the other, and which we preferred. We had no idea, other than what was in the glass. 45 people in the room voted unanimously for one wine – it was, as it happened, the no-sulphite wine and it was the one they preferred. This was not a scientific experiment, and I am aware that an anecdote does not count as data, but Jean-Pierre was surprised that each individual person was in accord in their relative responses to the wines. For me, this was a revelation – the flavour and texture gulf between the wines seemed enormous, yet the difference was down to a mere 20 parts per million added to one.
If we were solely informed by wine science, then deductively-speaking the cleaner, more precise of the two wines would surely be the one with added sulphites. Because sulphur is a preservative and a corrective. In fact, the opposite was the case in this demonstration, and following their instincts, all the tasters “felt” that one wine was evidently more resonant and more alive than the other. In fact, the presence of sulphites had had a deadening impact and affected our perception of the wine.
What I am tasting now is flavour that has been scalped. A wine irredeemably bruised by overly cautious intervention.
My chief (and simple) alimentary desire is for a wine to be digestible. Difficult to describe exactly what this constitutes other than to say that the wine that feels good to you, will taste nourishing and vital and sit easily on your stomach. In the Frick tasting, I opted for the wine that I wanted to drink and presumed (and hoped) it was the natural wine. It was.
Having consumed such a wine, you may also feel good about yourself. Take a little wine for thy stomach’s sake (1 Timothy 5:23), counsels the apostle Paul in the Bible. Whenever I select a wine to drink at a given moment, this quality (digestibility) will be the foremost consideration, and when I drink, if the wine is not slipping down naturally and effortlessly (and does feel like it is doing me good), then the bottle does not get finished. The opposite of digestibility is confection, dullness, and lack of inner balance. Although I would not claim to be a great taster, instinctively I recoil when confronted with wines that are marked by additives and winemaking tropes. The rejection is not an intellectual one, it is very much physical. The same applies to aversive reactions to food or other drinks which also contain a lot of additives.Â
Over time, one’s body becomes conditioned to reject what it perceives to be unhealthy. That may be down to individual tolerance – and I am at one end of the response-spectrum. One may speculate that many long-term health problems and modern illnesses arise from ingesting concentrations of chemicals in food (the result of bad farming practice) and from wine (and other beverages). As food and drink is processed, even more chemicals may be added. Such denatured products are neither nourishing for the soul nor good for the body. One argument goes that the homeopathic use of sulphites and other chemical additions to wine will not significantly affect our health. This ignores the pattern of consumption of wine and food and the resultant slow accumulation of these (toxic) substances. Not to mention the considerable reduction of the presence of those bacteria that help us to ward off chronic health conditions.
45 people in the room voted unanimously for one wine – it was, as it happened, the no-sulphite wine and it was the one they preferred.
Regardless of the health arguments, I am not, of course, saying that all natural wines are wonderful to drink. Each wine must be considered on its merits, always, and inferior examples of all types of wine will exist, be they conventional or natural. However, when you taste a sans sulphite wine that is in perfect condition, you seem to enter a different realm of flavour. Wine drinkers are rarely of a type. Whereas I find myself drinking within the narrowest spectrum of wine styles, others may possess more catholic taste and accept both conventional and natural wines without fear or favour, and yet others would not touch a natural wine (if they knew it to be one) with a bargepole.
Back to today, and to wines that I have tasted over the past year or two and am now reassessing. If I was ever previously shy about expressing my love of low-no-sulphite added wines, I am not anymore. There is a tipping point in every wine – and in every wine journey – wherein one feels that the balance of a wine is irrevocably disturbed by awkward intervention. I can’t say for certain that the wine I am tasting in this case would be better with no (or fewer) added sulphites, but I can assert that it has been deprived of a certain quality. Liveliness, energy, naturalness – these are absent (and these qualities are so important – to me). How a wine makes me feel is critical to my enjoyment and appreciation of it. If the wine lacks the aforementioned properties, I find it almost impossible to drink it. Having erred for years on the side of reasonableness, I should probably own my preference for no-sulphite added wine, which, doubtless, is the result of consuming thousands of wines over the years and ultimately recognising what agrees with me and coming to terms with it. Not that I am not imposing my choices on others…