To celebrate Natural Wine Week in Los Angeles, a number of restaurants, wine shop, importers, and wine bars are featuring natural wines. I'm at Silver Lake Wine right now drinking a nice bottle of Pfneiszl Kekfrankos Wine, a Hungarian wine that's just superb sipping in the afternoon.
Silver Lake Wine is featuring natural wines this during with their tastings, starting with Blue Monday tonight from 5-9PM. They'll have the Hungarian wine I just mentioned, along with Mistral Bianco 2007 from Sicily and Domaine Monpertuis "Cuvee Counoise" 2007 from France. The tasting is just $12 and you can also try some delicious charcuterie and cheese (which is included!).
Lou Wine Bar is also working with natural wine importer Savio Soares for his usual Monday night tastings. Starting tomorrow Bistro LQ will be doing natural wine tastings through Saturday. Palate Food + Wine is doing a special tasting of 5 wines for $10, starting at 6PM tomorrow. On Friday, Pourtal and El Vino Tasting Bar Wine Shop are doing natural wine tastings.
Saturday will be the big event, where DomaineLA puts together a natural wine shindig at Heath Ceramics on Beverly Blvd from 6-8PM. Later in the evening, the Eduardo Porto Carreiro will be hosting a natural wine pairing dinner using natural Gamay wines at Grace Restaurant. The dinner costs $95 and will be limited to 24 guests.
Sunday will host a natural wine symposium at LACE with Alice Feiring, Jonathan Gold, and real life winemakers Randall Grahm, Abe Schoener, Jared Brandt, and Hank Beckmeyer. You'll have the opportunity to taste natural wines and dialogue with natural winemakers. Cost to attend the symposium is $25.
Find out more information about Natural Wine Week here. Cheers!
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Below is a bit by Silver Lake Wine's George Cossette. I think it helps put natural wine in perspective.
When Lou Amdur asked me to get involved in a week devoted to natural wine I was struck by the fact that it was a particularly democratic (not in the partisan sense) idea. Even those of us who lurk sullenly at the shadowy edges of the vinosphere usually wait for some organization to initiate this type of event. To think that you could just call some guys (non-gender specific guys) and do it was kind of liberating. Also the fact that there is no one to answer to makes it a lot more fun than being hamstrung by The Man. The events are all around town and don’t require any particular affiliation or erudition. It just sounds like fun. Without having done any research whatsoever, I feel pretty confident saying that a solid 75% of wine drinkers do not know, or want to know, anything about natural wine.
This is healthy. We need a good amount of mainly disinterested parties out there to keep the Poindexters of wine culture from spinning out of control. After all, wine should be mainly about pleasure. I have spent too many years of my life trying to demolish the “old boys school of wine snobbery” to tell anyone what they should, or should not, be interested in. Also, for those of us committed to geekery, we need sub-groups who honor and covet very different wines and wine experiences, so that each of our sub-groups can snipe at the other and burrow even deeper into our own little faction. That said, this natural wine thing is gaining a good deal of interest. I know a lot of the folks who sell wine to restaurants and retailers are probably beginning to chafe a bit when they suddenly hear their buyers asking the question, “Does the producer inoculate, or do they use ambient yeast?” When wine reps chafe, you know there is a trend on the rise. Yeast is everywhere, and wine that uses the natural, ambient yeast, instead of commercial yeast, is more “of the place.” In other words, yeast is part of the terroir. Most of the bio-dynamic people are in the ambient yeast school, so this is nothing new, but the term “natural wine” is being used more often. So, what exactly is it?
As the week passes, I have in mind a few questions that I will be asking. I am not looking for a particular answer and have no axes to grind, so my questions are sincere. I expect to get a few opposing opinions, which is always fun.
Is wine “natural” if it is made from organic or bio-dynamic grapes, is harvested and racked and bottled by lunar cycles, but uses cultured yeasts?
Is it “natural” if it uses ambient yeasts and the élevage is non-interventionist, but is made from conventionally grown grapes?
Why do some “natural” wines have a slightly sour, yeasty taste and others don’t?
Sometimes I enjoy the taste mentioned above and in many cases I don’t. I know without a doubt 10 years ago I would have thought of this as a flawed wine. When is that taste a “flaw” and when it is the “right” taste.
What is a flaw? How relative is it?
Why should I care if my wine is natural?
These are a few things to think about. If you have more questions why not post them on the website to stir the pot. Hopefully we will all learn something.
4 comments:
all good questions Matt, and the great thing is that you'll meet people at this week's event that will have view points all across the board, so you'll get a good amount to further think about i'm sure. a good quick read is alice feiring's The Battle for Love and Wine, which outlines a few tenets of her philosophy and how she came to love natural wine, and some of the internal questions proponents deal with (many of which you've listed). have fun, i hope to run into you at some of the events.
Tricerapops: thanks, though I hope you know that it was George Cossette that offered those questions, not me. I do think that they are very good questions though, and I'm glad that George is helping to bring awareness to natural wine. I'll be on the lookout for that book. If I were to run into you at another wine event this it, it would probably be Silver Lake Wine's Thursday or Sunday tasting.
I've been wanting to try more Hungarian wine. I'll have to look into Silverlake Wine for that! Thanks for the Natural Wine Week head's up.
whoops - thought you added the questions at the end! ha.
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