The Wild Bunch is a wine fair that celebrates natural wine made using practices like regenerative farming. The event will take place on Saturday. Dana Frank is the event’s founder and has worked in the wine industry for more than 15 years. She says she hopes the event can be an inclusive environment for wine drinkers to explore natural wine. Nathan Wood is the vineyard manager for Johan Vineyards, and Luke Wylde is an owner and winemaker for Statera Cellars. They join us with details of the event and what the beverage means for different natural winemakers.
This transcript was created by a computer and edited by a volunteer.
Dave Miller: This is Think Out Loud on OPB. I’m Dave Miller. “Let grapes be grapes.” That is the most boiled down version of the philosophy behind the Wild Bunch. It’s a natural wine fair being held in Portland this Saturday. Dana Frank is the founder of the Wild Bunch and the owner of Bar Norman. She joins us now along with two people who are taking part in the fair. Nathan Wood is the vineyard manager at Johan Vineyards in Rickreall. Luke Wylde is an owner and winemaker at Statera Cellars in Portland. Welcome to all three of you.
Dana Frank: Hi, thank you.
Luke Wylde: Hi, thanks for having us.
Nathan Wood: Thanks, Dave.
Miller: Dana Frank, first, your mission is to “celebrate and make accessible the dynamic world of natural wine, while also setting aside dogma and exclusivity.” I’m curious about each of those last two words. What’s the dogma that you want to set aside?
Frank: It’s interesting, natural wine at its foundation was meant to take a look at wine as a real agricultural product, for lack of a sexier word. To say this is fruit that’s grown out of the soil and made into wine, and that should be accessible to everyone. It shouldn’t be living at this price point where a lot of people can’t drink those wines, can’t afford to drink those wines, there’s so little of it made. So this was the heartbeat of natural wine, this is just wine for the table that everyone should be able to drink. And over the years it’s become more and more dogmatic that natural wines have to fit a very narrow scope as far as how they’re made, what they taste like. So something that was really meant for the people has become pretty exclusive, and an “if you know, you know” kind of thing.
And so we’re trying to just get rid of that, and say that these wines live on a very broad spectrum, and there’s a lot of versions and interpretations of what natural wine is.
Miller: Luke Wylde, what’s your version? What’s your definition of natural wine, if it is even a word that you apply to the wines that you produce?
Wylde: I think to add to Dana’s point, I think she and I are very aligned on this, that ultimately natural wine was and sort of still is created for the people. I believe that natural wine is one of those things that is sort of loosely defined, and everybody has their own description for it. I think for myself and my business partner, Meredith, at Statera [Cellars], we try to just make wines with authenticity, with grapes that are grown organically or biodynamically. And outside of that we try to make wines that can really stand up on their own and don’t have to be made with the excuse that they’re natural or that they’re something other than conventional wines. Ultimately, we just want our wines to be delicious and for everybody to be able to have access to them.
Miller: My understanding is that, going back to the question of rules or dogma that Dana was talking about, a lot of it has to do with what’s added to grapes before you get the final product, wine in a bottle, or what’s not added. How do you wrestle with that question of what to put in or what not to put in?
Wylde: Well, beyond a small amount of sulfur just to serve as a long term antioxidant in-bottle, and the amount of sulfur that we use is less than you’re going to find and dried apricots or bottled juices, our rule is just don’t add anything. Don’t mess with good grapes. Or apples also for me, because I work with both. Ultimately we trust our growers to provide us with an organic or biodynamically grown product that we can then sort of coax in the cellar to just naturally become its own thing.
Miller: What other stuff besides grapes or sulfur is commonly added to wines, especially in large-scale operations?
Wylde: That’s a really good question. In small to large scale operations, conventional winemakers and wineries are often adding enzymes and stabilizers and clarifiers. They use filtration, they’re using lab grown yeasts, they’re using lots of acid adds to adjust acidity, or using reverse osmosis to get rid of alcohol. There’s any number of additives and processes that you can take to move farther and farther away from what would have happened if you just allowed the grapes to do their thing and become the wine that they naturally would be from the vineyards that we work with.
Miller: Nathan Wood, one of the things that Luke just mentioned is sourcing either organic or biodynamic grapes to make their wines. You’re, as I noted, the vineyard manager at Johan Vineyards, which is a certified biodynamic winery. What does that mean?
Wood: Biodynamics is kind of a step beyond organics. One of the things we’re trying to do is to minimize off farm inputs as much as possible, so use natural products that come from the farm. And the other part of that is really taking a holistic approach to the entire property. Of course we’re trying to grow healthy grapevines, but we are also doing things like setting aside riparian zones, having native wildlife corridors and promoting insects and native wildlife. We also leave a fair amount of our land in natural oak and grasslands. And of course we’re trying to promote healthy soils, so we’ve got some techniques for that, and we’ve also started using some newer regenerative techniques recently.
Miller: Like what? What do you mean by regenerative techniques?
Wood: So regenerative techniques, we’re really talking about building and keeping healthy soils. A couple of things that we do is animal inclusion and no-till.
With animal inclusion, we have 26 sheep on the vineyard and are expecting about 20 baby lambs over the course of the next month. We use our sheep, and we move them rotationally around the vineyard. So they’re going around and they’re eating grass and naturally fertilizing for us.
As well, in no-till, we have stopped cultivating our land at all. This has a couple of really great benefits, one of which is that when you stop cultivating your land, you are allowing the natural microbiome, the bacteria and fungi associations in the soil, to remain there undisturbed over time, creating healthier and larger soils, and creating more organic matter. As well, our earth is the largest carbon sink that we have. So when we’re practicing no-till we’re allowing the plants that were growing on it to sequester carbon into the soil and keep it there.
Miller: How much of what you’re doing is new as opposed to a return to older ways of growing things?
Wood: I think for me particularly, I’m always looking at the things that we’re doing now and saying “well gosh, of course people were doing this 100 years ago.” So before the advent of a lot of industrial additions that you could use in agriculture, we only had a couple of ways, and really only one to start to create more healthy soils and fertilizer, and that’s animal manure. And so getting back to some of those systems that we obviously knew so well 100 years ago and for thousands of years before I think is important.
Miller: Dana Frank, my understanding of the Wild Bunch, this natural wine fair that you created and are putting on now for the second time this coming Saturday, is to showcase wines not just from Oregon, but from around the world. Where would you situate Oregon right now in terms of natural wine production?
Frank: It’s a really, really exciting time to be making natural wine in Oregon. I think that so many people look towards parts of Europe and the Caucuses, the Republic of Georgia, northeastern Italy, the Loire Valley in France, that’s where we place “the homes” of natural wine. But there are people that have been farming in this sort of manner, looking towards organics and looking towards biodynamics for quite a long time here in Oregon. And it’s a really, really exciting time if we just look at the lineup of who we have pouring from Oregon. I would say that as a state, we’re just positioned really, really well to sort of continue on this path of very conscious, very thoughtful farming, and more hands off winemaking, I would say Oregon is definitely in the mix with the rest of the world, for sure.
Miller: Luke Wylde, that phrase of more hands off wine making, it goes along with that phrase “letting grapes be grapes.” And what you had mentioned earlier, the word you used was “coaxing” grapes into what they want to be. Does this mean though that, since you’re adding less stuff, it’s really just the grapes, that with that style of winemaking you have less ability to shape a wine into what you want it to be?
Wylde: I think one could look at it that way. I think the ultimate point of myself and a lot of my colleagues when we are making wines in this way is to really showcase the vineyard, showcase the grape type. I think more often than not, when conventional winemakers are really trying to adjust acidity, they’re trying to use a certain kind of yeast to have a certain aromatic profile, that they’re moving farther and farther away from what individual vineyards’ expressions of flavor and aromatics really can look like.
And I think ultimately, we’re really just trying to have the material that we’re working with, whether it be grapes or apples, just taste like themselves. And so not adding acid and not really doing anything else to the wines and just allowing the natural yeast that’s already present either in the cellar or on the skins of these different materials, is really just what it’s about. We just want them to taste like themselves and to tell their own stories. The best stories are always those that are told organically and not forced, and that’s kind of what our point is for this.
Miller: What about the market side of this? And I’d love to get all of your thoughts on it, but Luke first. Where do you see consumers in questions about natural wine?
Wylde: I think this speaks to Dana’s point earlier that the origination of natural wine really was to be something for the people, and that its exclusivity in a way has taken us farther and farther away from being something that everybody has access to.
Miller: And so when you say exclusivity, are you talking about the price point? Or about the language or mystique around it?
Wylde: I think the language and mystique around wine culture in general is something that most producers need to work on, especially when it comes to removing sort of Western palate descriptions from the way that we’re talking about it, or de-centering white voices in this. And trying to make natural wine, something that truly is for everybody, is vital to the next steps for how we get this to be part of the zeitgeist, that everybody gets to participate and really feel like they belong at the table with natural wine.
I think ultimately, the price for natural wine is often less than some really highly sought after bottles. But at the same time, to farm these wines is more expensive than conventional farming. To make these wines is often more expensive because they’re often more labor intensive, even though you are doing less in the cellar. And so the wines can be priced outside of the range of what most people feel comfortable, especially when a six pack of beer is $10, and that looks a little different and better in a lot of cases than a $25 bottle of wine that somebody may not have the understanding of why it does cost that much.
Miller: Dana Frank, do you see a generational component to this movement in Oregon? I guess I’m just wondering if, in general, people who are making natural or biodynamic or organic wines are likely to be younger or older than conventional winemakers in Oregon?
Frank: I think it’s pretty mixed actually. Again, just looking at the kind of demographic of who is pouring at the Wild Bunch, we have a really great mix of people across different generations. I think that there are people that have really lived and worked with this natural philosophy for quite a long time. I do think it’s for sure picked up speed and interest in the last 5 to 10 years, and you certainly have a lot of younger drinkers and younger winemakers who are interested in natural wine. But I look to some pretty fantastic folks that are of my generation, Gen X and older, that have been farming this way and considering wine in this way for a lot longer.
Miller: Nathan Wood, can you give us a ballpark sense for just the percentage of wine produced in this country that’s made in ways that would broadly be called natural?
Wood: The amount of wine? I’m actually not sure. But I can speak to biodynamic and organic farming. As we all know, 20 years ago you had to go to the natural food store to find organic fruits and vegetables, and nowadays it’s in every grocery store that you can go to. And so I think that’s really where we’re headed with using organics and biodynamics in viticulture as well. As the public becomes more understanding of what we’re doing out in the field, we’ll see even more support.
Miller: Nathan Wood, Luke Wylde and Dana Frank, thanks very much. Nathan Wood is the vineyard manager for Johan Vineyards. Luke Wylde is an owner and winemaker at Statera Cellars. And Dana Frank is the owner of Bar Norman and the founder of The Wild Bunch, a natural wine fair that’s happening in Portland this Saturday.
Contact “Think Out Loud®”
If you’d like to comment on any of the topics in this show, or suggest a topic of your own, please get in touch with us on Facebook or Twitter, send an email to thinkoutloud@opb.org, or you can leave a voicemail for us at 503-293-1983. The call-in phone number during the noon hour is 888-665-5865.