If you see a natural wine bar in your Kiez, your rent is going up. This should be reason enough to rail against this regrettable trend with no end. In my neighbourhood, new natural wine bars and shops pop up seemingly every week, and more and more people keep banging on about natural wine as if it’s their own personal discovery.
It’s like when people try drugs for the first time and then proceed to bore everyone around them about how incredible and life-changing they are, how techno suddenly makes sense and you just need to try it for yourself and see. By all means embrace and enjoy your new interest, just stop preaching your gospel to the rest of us like you’re some kind of visionary introducing philistines to the next big thing. It’s just a drink.
It’s not that I hate natural wine as a product, it’s more that I hate the idea of natural wine. And that’s all it is: an idea. As Vox once put it, “Natural wine is more of a concept than a well-defined category with agreed-upon characteristics.” This is exactly what I’m talking about – no one can even agree on what natural wine actually is, yet the natural wine lovers out there all agree that it is somehow superior to traditional wines.
Part of the appeal is driven by the spurious notion that “natural” automatically means “better”. Oh, there are additives in regular wine? How very terrible, I didn’t realise additives were so bad. Hold on while I empty the entire contents of my fridge and cupboards straight into the bloody bin.
If something doesn’t taste good right away, why even bother putting yourself through the trouble of acquiring it?
For many, drinking natural wine has become a sign that you are a sophisticate with elevated taste, hinting at higher social status. And it’s true that being a natural wine aficionado offers the general public some useful information about you: If someone lists natural wine as an interest on their dating app profile, you can just merrily swipe left on this rapidly fluttering red flag.
Drinking natural wine is not a hobby, and it is definitely not a personality. And you know what’s worse than listing ‘natural wine’ as an interest? Listing ‘natty wine’. Wine is meant to be for grown-ups. Calling it natty wine makes it sound like something you should be drinking from your little sippy cup.
Look, I’m not immune to jumping on a drink trend. I admit that during the peak of the craft beer craze I too believed that fancy, hoppy, ridiculously-named beers were somehow better. On reflection, a lot of it was like drinking a sourdough loaf. The implication was that craft beer was superior, more bespoke, more exclusive.
By drinking it, you were somehow in the club. And I think this is fundamentally my problem with natural wine. You need to be indoctrinated into the cult. You need to be brought on board. It’s the beverage equivalent of the emperor’s new clothes. In fact, someone is probably out there right now, creating a small batch of The Emperor’s Natural Wine.
I once randomly ended up at an event with a natural wine sommelier. They spent a lot of time telling everyone how different the taste was, and how you get used to it and acquire it. We’re all adults now, past the first teenage sips of beer or coffee; if something doesn’t taste good right away, why even bother putting yourself through the trouble of acquiring it? There are enough things that taste good instantly without having to waste your time talking your tongue into finding it palatable.
In my opinion, needing to acquire a taste is not always good. No kink shaming here, but you know the ‘piss golem’ from Berghain? The guy who waits by the urinals until someone will piss in his mouth? Do you think he woke up one day and said “I bet I would love the taste of piss, that’s how I’m going to spend my entire weekends – on my knees, drinking the delicious piss of strangers”? No, he did not. He acquired a taste for it. It might have taken him a while, but boy does he love drinking piss now. And you know what? I fucking bet he loves natural wine.
