Remy Charest’s latest article on palate press was quite interesting to us as it brings together a lot of the sources we’ve been reading in recent weeks.

Among many other things, Remy talks about the different definitions of natural wine. And reading his article made us think about what we should define as natural wine in our documentary. In fact, it made us realize that we should not aim to define natural wine specifically. We quite like the idea from Jamie Goode where:

In one sense, all wines are natural. Yet there is also a continuum of naturalness, ranging from the most industrial of wines towards the most extreme of natural wines. Generally, the world’s most interesting wines are made by winegrowers looking to work more naturally.

Once we show that there is such a continuum, the documentary will attempt to showcase the extreme end of naturalness. This extreme bit at the end of the scale — so different from what most winemakers practice — is an interesting topic. Hopefully it’s even film-worthy. Also, maybe presenting natural wine in this fashion is a good way to eschew controversy.

Another theme in Remy’s article is pragmatism. And that is definitely something that we want to emphasize in the film. Given the choice between adding a little sulphur and losing the grapes, it feels like a little sulphur is the obvious way to go. Same thing for dry-farming. Dry-farming is great and more sustainable but if your grapes are turning into raisins, a little water seems right. We appreciate common sense and we think this kind of attitude can help convince the audience to give natural wines a try.