acidity

Considering shrimp for dinner? Check out this Greek recipe

No result found, try new keyword!Dry white wine added acidity, and ouzo, the slightly sweet anise-flavored Greek liqueur, added welcome complexity. While the shrimp are typically layered with the tomato sauce and feta and baked ...

Natural Wine Is the Most Exhilarating Thing to Drink Right Now—and a Way to Rebel Against the Wine-Industrial Complex

On a Sunday morning last November, the natural wine world’s biggest party was kicking off in a yeast-scented Brooklyn warehouse, where hundreds of winemakers, industry types, fans of the art, and members of the drinking press were tasting and spitting as fast as they could.

Some of the wines were elegant, others earthy and rustic. Some popped with fruit; others tasted of smoke and savory spice. Some blazed with acidity, intensely aromatic and jumping with the fresh flavors of fermentation. Others were soft, honeyed, and subdued. Still others tasted like a wild animal had slept in the fermentation tanks (in a good way!).

The annual New York installation of the RAW Wine fair—a multi-city event showcasing several hundred producers whose wines must meet strict criteria—was a celebration of the intense, pastoral flavors that inhabit what has come to be called natural wine. 

One row of tables was particularly mobbed: a contingent of winemakers from The Republic of Georgia pouring glass after glass for giddy tasters. The Georgian wines were among the fair’s most unusual: enticingly savory to funky to searingly astringent. But their popularity illustrates the current rage for natural wine.

The production methods—unchanged for thousands of years—epitomize the sacred hands-off approach that has swept up a community of wine drinkers in a crusade against the industrial winemaking model. But it’s the way natural wines taste that has its most ardent supporters electrified.

Natural wines vary enormously from one another, but if you taste a natural wine next to your average grocery store booze bomb, the differences are immediately clear. Many conventional wines are chemically engineered to taste a certain way, usually an approximation of something popular that came before. Natural wines are untouched—the winemaker’s job is to maintain a healthy ecosystem for the grapes to grow and a nurturing facility in which to ferment. As a result, they taste like they’ve come in from an invigorating, refreshing, slightly sweaty day exploring nature’s bounty—alive and vigorously mutable, sip to sip, glass to glass, bottle by bottle.

“There’s so much bottle variation,” says Craig Heffley, owner of the Triangle’s two Wine Authorities shops. “Even if you are given the same thing over and over, it’s like a different wine.”

These qualities attract not just wine nerds looking for the next big thing, but people of all stripes who support sustainable food systems. Natural wine has been popular in France for a decade and a half, but it really began taking off among American oenophiles about five years ago—and not just in New York.

Restaurants, bars, and wine shops all over North Carolina are brimming with these wines, although whether they are identified as “natural” depends on who is making the lists.

At Durham’s Bar Brunello, which specializes in orange wine, owner Esteban Brunello says that because he works with small, independent producers—many of whom have been farming and making wines the same way for generations—most of the wines he pours could be considered natural. But they’re not designated as such on the menu.

“Orange wines are mostly natural anyway,” Brunello says. “To me, natural wines are just something I enjoy the flavor of. Sometimes they get weird, sometimes not.”

The term may have captured the zeitgeist, but there’s no set definition for what constitutes a natural wine. It’s generally agreed that the grapes must be organically or biodynamically farmed, hand harvested, and the wines must ferment spontaneously with no added yeast or additives. The use of sulfites is acceptable only in minuscule amounts, and the wines are not clarified and are usually unfiltered.

Within this framework, however, there is an enormous amount of variation, which can be confusing for the average drinker. Heffley estimates that nine out of ten customers who ask for natural wines are doing so out of curiosity rather than knowing what they’re looking for.

So far, defining natural wine has been up to a group of associations and certifiers, each with different criteria. Some require organic or biodynamic certification, while others rely on the producer’s word to ensure organic farming methods. New oak barrels are typically eschewed but not banned outright. Filtration is welcomed by some, taboo for others.

The use of sulfites as a preservative is another sticking point. Producers at the RAW Wine fair are allowed a total of 70 mg/L, but other organizations and certification groups permit as much as 100 mg or as little as 20 mg. These amounts are vanishingly small compared to conventionally made wine, but depending on whom you talk to, a few milligrams here or there can determine whether a wine is “natural.”

Like any artisan community with passionate practitioners and apostles, differences of opinion can lead to argument.

“It’s so politicized,” says Jay Murrie of Durham’s Piedmont Wine Imports. (Disclosure: The author’s wife works for Piedmont Wine Imports.) “In the Wine Nerd Universe, it’s hard to have these conversations because everyone has such staked-out opinions.”

Murrie prefers “a big-tent approach,” where bona fides aren’t determined by a rigid set of guidelines.

“[Even] the producers that I import who are the least ‘natural wine’ are exponentially better stewards of the land and making much healthier products than the agribusiness industrial producers who make the bulk majority of the wines that people encounter,” he says.

Heffley, who estimates that 5–10 percent of Wine Authorities’ wines adhere to the strictest natural-wine guidelines, agrees that there are other ways to reject the Wine Industrial Complex. In fact, it’s a core part of his philosophy.

“Wine Authorities is a reaction to industrial wine,” Heffley says. “[We work] only with small family farmers who control the entire process.”

But being a part of the natural wine community—and intentionally following the rules set by its most venerated practitioners—can carry meaning beyond a simple rejection of mass-produced wine. John Hale, who owns Asheville’s Crocodile Wine, chooses his selections according to the strict guidelines of his mentor, the celebrated sommelier Lee Campbell.

To Hale, making wine this way and selling the resulting products is as much an act of defiance as a hunt for a certain style.

“Choosing to farm this way is inherently political,” he says. “It’s a stance against chemicals and a stance against industrial agriculture. There is no way to make natural wine on a large industrial scale, so making it is taking a stance.”

“Natural wine seems to be a reaction from winemakers against these industrial people who are allowed to make ‘Frankenwines,’” Heffley adds. “It’s a reaction to something they found distasteful.”

Natural wine is nothing if not trendy, which has led to skepticism from some corners of the wine world. Without rules and a firm definition, Heffley is concerned that natural wine will be taken over by the same corporate interests absorbing the craft beer movement.

Murrie has already seen inferior “natural” wines in the market, skating by on buzzwords and hip labels.

But trends can also help a small community reach larger audiences.

“People need trends to move forward,” Brunello says. “Trends can expose people to a product and help them understand it.”

food@indyweek.com

Five Natural Wines to Seek Out on Local Shelves

Visintini, Rosato (Merlot)

Venezia Giulia, Italy, 2017

Hitting the glass in a splash of vivacious pink, this rosato (rosé) strikes a balance between juicy red fruit and herbal complexity. Bone-dry and full-bodied, this is an excellent pink wine for hearty winter meals. ($16)

Combel La Serre, Le Pur Fruit du Causse (Malbec)

Cahors, France, 2017

This is a Malbec from its ancestral home in Southwest France, and it bears little resemblance to its Argentine cousins outside of its gorgeous deep purple-black color. Fermented and aged in cement tanks, this is bright, minerally, and silky with blackberry fruit. ($19)

Morella, Mezzanotte (Primitivo)

Puglia, Italy, 2016

Lisa Gilbee of Morella is redefining Primitivo in suddenly fashionable Puglia, Italy’s boot heel. This is a big and powerful wine, but one that doesn’t overwhelm with jammy, warm fruit. Cherry and herb give way to notes of cocoa and licorice for a graceful finish. ($23)

Meinklang, Juhfark “J13”

Somló, Hungary, 2013

Meinklang maintains wild and wooly biodynamic vineyards on both sides of the Austria-Hungary border, and they stole the show at RAW Wine 2018. This is a decadent white, with rich flavors of pear and honeysuckle balanced by fiery acidity.  ($29)

Bichi, Listan Prieto

Baja California, Mexico, 2017

Listán Prieto (or Misión) is possibly the first vitis vinifera grape varietal to be planted in the New World. This wine comes from hundred-year-old dry-farmed vines in the mountains outside Tecate. Floral and spicy with threads of sunbaked earth, this is made for N.C. barbecue. Serve this red wine chilled. ($33)

‘Underwater forecast’ predicts temperature, acidity and more in Puget Sound

Environment  |  Research  |  Science

February 8, 2019

Most of us rely on the weather forecast to choose our outfit or make outdoor plans for the weekend. But conditions underwater can also be useful to know in advance, especially if you’re an oyster farmer, a fisher or even a recreational diver.

A new University of Washington computer model can predict conditions in Puget Sound and off the coast of Washington three days into the future. LiveOcean, completed this past summer, uses marine currents, river discharges and weather above the water to create the forecasts.

“It’s like a weather forecast of the ocean in our region,” said lead developer Parker MacCready, a UW professor of oceanography. The project is the culmination of about 15 years of work. “It started off small, modeling parts of Puget Sound, and went to modeling the Columbia River and the coastal ocean nearby, to modeling the whole region. We’re making the model bigger and more realistic all the time.”

Unlike existing marine forecasts that tell boaters the wind and waves out on the water, this model drops below the water’s surface to predict water temperature, salinity, oxygen, nitrogen, pH, chlorophyll — a sign of biological productivity — and aragonite saturation, the most important factor in shell formation, from the surface down to the seafloor.

The simulations are updated daily on the UW’s Hyak supercomputer with a resolution of 500 meters (about a third of a mile) throughout Puget Sound, and slightly more for the outer coast, from southern Oregon to near the tip of Vancouver Island. The model incorporates 45 river flows, uses a UW weather forecast for wind, rain and sunlight, and compares its predictions against dozens of marine testing sites.

LiveOcean was originally developed to predict the impacts of more acidic seawater on the local shellfish industry, and has support from the state-funded Washington Ocean Acidification Center as a tool for local shellfish growers. This will be the first spring that the tool is available for their use.

“If growers buy seed from a hatchery, when’s a good time to put those out in the water?” MacCready said. “Is there predicted to be a very corrosive ocean acidification event? If so, they should hold off until the water becomes less acidified.”

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration also funds the project. It uses the forecast in combination with human analysis to produce the joint UW-NOAA bulletin on harmful algal bloom forecasts, or “red tides,” that it shares with coastal managers.

The Puget Sound forecasts have other applications. Elizabeth Brasseale, a UW graduate student in oceanography, has used LiveOcean to predict where invasive green crab larvae might travel next, enabling Washington Sea Grant to pinpoint its green crab eradication efforts. The model can predict the three-day drift path for any object — spilled oil, wastewater overflow, trash or even an old-fashioned message in a bottle — released from a given point in Puget Sound.

The LiveOcean forecasts are now available on the UW-based Northwest Association of Networked Ocean Observing Systems website. To access the forecasts, click “Layers” at the top left, find “Models” and then scroll down to “LiveOcean” to view maps for temperature, salinity, oxygen, nitrogen, phytoplankton, pH as well as aragonite saturation. (Click the scale bar to make it bigger.)

LiveOcean is among a handful of seawater forecasts being developed for the Pacific Northwest. The SeaCast app, from Oregon State University, covers Oregon and Washington coasts. The SalishSeaCast from the University of British Columbia focuses on the Salish Sea, and the Salish Sea Model from the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory simulates the region’s water but does not issue forecasts.

MacCready compares the situation with global climate models, where models with different specialties give a better overall understanding of the system.

While the daily LiveOcean forecast is useful for making decisions today, the tool also has accumulated several years of historical simulations that allow people to analyze past events, like the unusually warm conditions off the Pacific Northwest coast that peaked in 2015.

“We know that our model is able to reproduce ‘the blob,’ and that it shows up really nicely,” MacCready said. “This new version will allow a much better exploration of what that event looked like inside the Salish Sea.”

LiveOcean builds on decades of experience with Puget Sound’s complex geography and intricate coastlines. In addition to helping managers, it’s intended to act as a teaching tool. MacCready has created documents on how tides work in Puget Sound, the long-term warming trend in Puget Sound and has written an accompanying primer on where Puget Sound’s water comes from.

“The big thing I try to explain to people is that we have this persistent current below the surface dragging deep, saline water into the Salish Sea, where it mixes with the freshwater and then flows out,” MacCready said. “That flow is 20 times bigger than all our rivers combined, and it brings in 95 percent of our nutrients. It’s really the biggest river in Puget Sound, but it’s actually coming uphill, from the deep ocean.”

As spring arrives in Puget Sound, the rains will let up, snow will melt and the rivers will begin to rise. Winds along the coast will soon reverse direction, which draws more nutrient-rich flow from the deep ocean. And residents of the Sound will be getting out on the water for activities of all kinds.

“Now that this makes daily forecasts and performs pretty well, I think it could be used for a lot more applications,” MacCready said. “I’d be delighted to hear from people with ideas.”

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For more information, contact MacCready at 206-685-9588 or pmacc@uw.edu.

Tag(s): College of the Environment • oceanography • Parker MacCready • Puget Sound