Natural Wine or Just a Great Producer?

Natural wine has consistently been a galvanizing force for debate about the nature and purpose of wine. Commercial viability, faults, ideology, and ethics all come out to play when a natural wine hits the glass.

Often those in this debate can lose sight of a simple reality for all wine: it is producer more than philosophy or technique that makes great wine. Great grapes and terroir are also necessary, but it is the endless minute decisions made in the vineyard and the cellar that ultimately make a wine what it is. This means that in natural wine, just as with all wine, there will be those producers that make wines far and above what most others are doing. For me, Cos is one of those producers.

COS – So Hot Right Now

Founded in 1980 by three partners – Giambattista Cilia, Cirino Strano and Giusto Occhipinti, whose daughter has started her own much adored eponymous winery – COS set out to challenge what had become ‘conventional’ winemaking in Sicily’s only DO “Cerasuolo Di Vittoria” first by farming completely biodynamically, and second by steadily increasing the use of clay amphora for fermentation of their wines. The amphora fermented wines bear the name “Pithos”.

COS is located on the southeastern tip of Sicily and as such the climate is both hot and dry. Despite this, the wines bear a lightness and elegance that belies their origins in one of the hottest climates in Italy.

Perfect Italian Wine

Alas while we do not yet have access to the amphora fermented wines in the province, this wine, fermented completely in neutral concrete, is still an excellent introduction to the COS style and philosophy. Made from 18 year old Frappato and Nero D’Avola vines grown on limestone-silicaceous and clay soils, this wine is both enticingly aromatic and very fresh and juicy on the palate. Pretty red fruits and flowers flow easily from the glass, and it is this effortlessness that is the wine’s most striking quality.

This is also a wine with a substantial medium body that will balance kindly with a wide variety of food from cured meats to lightly spicy pastas and grilled meats. It also goes great with air, as my friend Sean is fond of saying. This is also the kind of wine I would lovingly buy by the case – so don’t go running out and snapping up the small allocation this province has!

Excellent and Highly Recommended Value
$35 at BCLDB

Manifestos and Obsession

The “natural wine” movement has several faces, including the famed Alice Feiring, who built her reputation by skewering American critic Robert Parker and the influence he’s had on wine around the world. Another camp has built out of the absolutely brilliant wine bar/store Terroir in San Francisco – a place that eschews everything typical about wine drinking and buying (see my review). I simply do not want to suggest anything negative about this place. However, it is a source and Mecca for many “natural wine” obsessives because of its die-hard approach to finding wines made without a banned cocktail of chemical additives both in the vineyard and in the cellar.

The “natural wine” winemakers can also be divided into several camps and perspectives. There are those who evangelize that grapes can only be grown without herbicides and wine only be made without sulfur. There are those who proudly display “Demeter” biodynamic classifications on their wines. There are also those who simply pay meticulous attention to their farming and vinification methods but do not promote or advertise what they are doing. If the wine is good, they say, then that is what they are aiming for. If there are those who wish to learn more, then that is good too. But there is no need to label or be evangelical about what one is doing.

If any theme is consistent across the “natural wine” and biodynamic wine freaks is a meticulous attention to detail. Allen Meadows provided another tidbit of wisdom on this front by suggesting that obsessively detailed types tend to make better wine, even if they are also obsessed with the cycles of the moon.

Losing the Immediate

There is another side to “natural wine” that makes me wary of writing about it on a regular basis. That is, it often seems to get too caught up in an abstracted approach to thinking about and drinking these fermented grapes that inspire both lust, hedonism, greed and also wonder, astonishment and beauty. These sorts of things don’t happen to us on an abstract or universal level. They happen on a base, immediate level. Beauty is as visceral as it is lofty. Wonder and astonishment produce immediate emotional responses, even as on reflection they engage intellectual curiosity. The two sides of immediacy and reflection play together, not apart.

So it is that “natural wine” to me somewhat misses the point even as it also sometimes gets it. Wine is far too complex a journey to be easily formalized into a list of qualities or deformed into a dogma. The particular choices of an individual producer meld with the land and the history of a place. But all these things also only gain meaning in the context in which we experience them – that is, in our modern world and immediate surroundings. To think of wines you love as a movement is akin to saying you only read “authentic literature”. Who sets the boundaries and why? Who are the gatekeepers?

A Taste of the Natural?

Adriana Occhipinti, at a very young 20 something years old, is producing something special in Sicily. The cliché used when talking about her wines is that most people think of Sicily as hot and therefore the wines as big and fruit forward. Occhipinti, however, is the opposite. To me, that isn’t a particularly useful way of thinking about these wines. Any region, whether warm or cold climate, is capable of producing a variety of wines and styles. Even “fruit bomb” Australia makes nuanced wines with low alcohol and incredible freshness. So, that contrast means little here.

What does matter is that Occhipinti is interested in producing an accessible ‘light’ wine with tremendous fruit and food friendliness while honouring both regional and family traditions. Yes, traditions do not only arise from popular perspective. Occhipinti’s uncle started the winery COS in Sicily and sees the tradition of Sicilian wines much more as blending indigenous grapes than mimicking international styles. He argued that the DOC rules were stifling the traditional methods of blending Nero d’Avola with Frappato. His efforts resulted in a revival of the style and a new DOCG designation for Cerasuolo di Vittoria, which also happens to be the only DOCG in Sicily.

Interestingly Giusto Occhipinti experimented but then ultimately rejected a so-called “California” style of using new oak to age the wines. With time and experience Occhipinti learned that, with age, the new oak obliterated what made his wines interesting.

Adriana Occhipinti took these lessons well. Her own SP68, also a blend of Frappato and Nero d’Avola, is a wonderfully expressive concoction that reminded me of festive tart cranberries, raspberries, and strawberries along with earth and brambles. This is fresh wine with deftness and precision – the acid strikes the tongue like freshly crushed berries.

That said, this steel-fermented wine is also made in a “lighter” style that, at least to me, can sometimes itself be tiring. There is no doubt that the wine is fresh and delicious – but, as with all wine, it is not a wine for every time or place.

Sometimes I feel the palate-jaded types take on natural wine and “lighter” styles as a messianic quest to reveal the true nature of great wine. To me this is not so. What is great about wines like the SP68 is that they are doing something unto themselves without the pretension of having to be everything to everyone. They are simply great wines being made simply. That this particular wine (and producer) has become trendy in natural wine circles means little. That the wine is intriguing and delicious. That means everything.

Very Good+
$27 at Pike and Western in Seattle

What I found particularly interesting when doing research for this post was the discovery that Sicily has very similar climate and soil conditions to Napa Valley. Nonetheless, Sicily hasn’t really had much of a reputation for good dry red wine, instead being much more famous for the dessert wine known as Marsala. I chose not to write about Marsala, however, because what is now exciting about Sicily is its increasing presence in the world of quality dry red wines. Particularly, critics’ eyes and praise have turned towards wines made from the nero d’avola grape over the last several years. While there are many versions of the grape that are pretty simple wines, there are also some very complex renditions of the grape available. And, even so the cheaper nero d’avolas usually offer good value for the money and make good house table wines. Plantings of modern international varieties such as chardonnay, merlot, and syrah are also beginning to populate the island, but in my mind it is what is going on with indigenous grapes that is most interesting. There are 19 DOCs in Sicily, and quite a few indigenous grapes beyond nero. If I have time in a future post I may discuss one of the DOCs that produces wine from pretty obscure grapes in more detail. For now, nero d’avola is king.

Modern wine making techniques have now engulfed Sicily. While not all producers use modern techniques, machine harvesting and commercial yeasts, etc. are becomming more and more common. The best producers, of course, will avoid such practices, but as a consumer one should be aware that they exist. However, there are still two distinct lines of attack when it comes to Sicilian nero d’avola: the traditional and the modern. Even wines made with modern techniques can be traditional in their approach to flavour and structure. Some of the big hot shot wineries, such as Planeta, which I review below, are pumping up the oak treatment and reducing yields considerably to produce more modern styled wines.

The first nero d’avola I tried was the Donnafugata Sedara Nero d’Avola IGT 2007, a wine made in a pretty traditional style (even with obvious modern techniques and cleanliness) by one of Sicily’s oldest producers (going on 150 years). The nose is classic for this variety with meat, black pepper, char, and blackberry. The palate is bright and soft up front with blackberry and red plum. The mid-palate is pretty simple and serves up a peppery side of game. The finish is soft and short and the wine has a very soft and sweet tannin structure. This is a pretty simple wine – it’s not going to wow anyone. And there are certainly much better nero d’avolas around for a bit more money. However, this still beats out a lot of $20 wines for drinkability and overall quality and it is made well, with all the components in balance. Grab this for the traditional pairings of a red meat pasta, pizza or side of game and you will probably be very happy. 

Good+
$20 at BCLDB

The second nero d’avola I tried was the modern styled Planeta Santa Cecilia IGT Nero d’Avola 2006. Planeta is a modern dynamo winery in Sicily, founded in the 1990′s by cousins Alessio, and Santi Planeta and their uncle Diego Planeta, who was already famous in Sicily’s wine scene. The story behind this particular wine is that the company founders and the wine maker wanted to find the best possible site in Sicily for nero d’avola and produce the highest quality wine from this variety possible. After years of searching they found a vineyard in the very southeasterly Noto region of Sicily that they felt was perfect for the grape.  This wine is 100% nero d’avola, is fermented in steel tanks and is aged for 12 months in 2-3 year old French oak. The vines for this nero d’avola are pretty low (although not miniscule) yielding, offering 8.5 tons per hectare.

This is a modern wine. But, it is also a very very good wine. With a nose that introduces many layers and types of earthy flavour, game, smoke, meat, and dark black fruits, this had great expressivity already. The palate was sparkling and incredibly unique – a plush dark fruit layer washes over the palate up front and then cascades into plums, a tangy blackcurrant, wildflowers, and manuka honey. There is greaty body and length to this absolutely killer bottle from Sicily. A hint of mocha tickles the palate on the finish as the smokey charred game fat rumbles forward to complete the wine, but the oak treatment, while noticeable, is very thoughtful and adds to rather than disrupts the fruit. This is nothing like Planeta’s wines made from the international varieties like syrah and chardonnay. This is very distinctive and very Sicilian even while being modern and unlike classic nero d’avola. One of the most exciting wines I’ve tasted in the last year or so and completely worth the pennies.

Excellent
$49 at BCLDB

Nero d’avola is clearly producing wines of great merit in Sicily and I would look out for both the simple bottles for a weekday meal and the slightly pricier and more interesting creations for a special occasion. Both are well priced for what you get. Southern Italy really is on a roll with the quality for value moniker that us wine geeks love to hate. I say, so far the wines of Southern Italy are hitting all the right places.