Interesting topic George! I feel that authenticity is a slightly more broad-minded cousin of typicity. Both potentially insidious concepts in wine, often wielded to indeed gatekeep and slander otherwise interesting wines.
Always worth looking at a dictionary definition, I found the one from the American Heritage dictionary quite helpful:
The quality or condition of being authentic, trustworthy, or genuine.
The quality of being authentic or of established authority for truth and correctness.
Genuineness; the quality of being genuine or not corrupted from the original.
The point that natural fan champions, growers and so on are making is that a great deal of mass produced wine is divorced from wine making traditions and relies instead on intervention and manipulation.
So yes, trustworthiness and genuineness is important, as you suggest. Not being corrupted from the original is perhaps where the natural/low-intervention thing comes into play. If you chaptalise, acidify, add tannins, do a cold fermentation with aromatic yeasts, sterile filter and clarify, you have changed the original raw materials to an extent that the end result can no longer be called authentic.
I don’t really disagree, but I’m curious as to where it ends? Should we not use temperature control or intervene with the abundance of natural microbes present on equipment used in the cellar (sanitation)? They are after all naturally occurring. Or is it only a matter of not adding or removing anything from the juice itself, no matter what other controls are in place. Does that include barrels? As someone who drinks a lot of stylistically natural wines, it’s unclear to me where to draw the line between the artifice that is winemaking and whatever is considered natural. Is it a sliding scale from decomposing grapes in the field to industrial fermentation vats?
To me it is not black or white. It is an instinct when you taste a wine. Does it feel expressive, unconstrained, characterful, nuanced? Or does it feel "made", confected, monothematic? Of course there are many points on the curve, but I usually get a feel for a wine after just a couple of sips.
The more intervention, the more that was necessary to make up for substandard grapes, the more corners were cut, the less "authentic" it will taste - as per all the above adjectives.
It is fascinating for sure and I agree any cut corners end up showing up in the wine. It’s interesting though that the descriptors (expressive, unconstrained, characterful, nuanced) also apply to some of the most “conventional” wines out there, some classified growths come to mind.
I would hold that the wines you are talking about are generally made with lower intervention than the average supermarket wine. Not to mention far more care in the vineyard and with harvest/selection. Look at how many of the classified growths are now organic or even biodynamic. Chateau Palmer, for example, also stopped with selected yeasts in 2017 (if memory serves).
Very true, also across the pond you’ve got Ridge that are doing great work while being biodynamic certified. But they would likely still be sold as “classic” wines rather than natural.
Which doesn't bother me at all. As I've written numerous times, natural or low intervention wine for me is about what you do, not what you say or how the label looks.
Awesome piece! For me the definition of authenticity depends on who is talking and who is it being explained to. I’ll have some similar angles to your article, but will definitely attack the topic full on as well.
So, my concern with even your last paragraph here, Simon - how is, for example, a well considered chapitalization and clarification different from the liquer de tirage used in the traditionale method for sparkling wines? That's technically chapitalization and clarification, just rebranded as an accepted, even extra-authentic method of high-end sparkling. How is one inauthentic and the other exceptionally authentic?
Even cold fermentation with aromatic yeasts - this is winemaking, to be sure, but how is it inauthentic winemaking? When a chef serves me local, grass-fed beef and locally sourced vegetables, I still want them to flavor it as they think best services those local products. Now adding literal "flavorings" to wine would be an overstep, but where does "changing the raw materials" become "manipulation" vs. knowing your vineyard and terroir and making it the best presentation it can be through something like the choice selection of yeasts?
This is where most personal definitions of "authenticity" proves contradictory and overly dogmatic. One example fits the definition while another example doesn't, and the differences between them being uncomfortably biased to a specific "category" of wine. Which is hard to ignore.
As I said somewhere above, I don't see it as a binary thing. If we compare wine with food, for me authentic wine versus "inauthentic" aka mass produced commodity wine is the difference between cheap processed food that has been bulked out with numerous other ingredients, additives and preservatives versus top quality fresh produce that doesn't need any gussying up.
If I buy cheap pre-made burgers at the supermarket, not only are they made with inferior meat, they will most likely contain a whole host of cheaper ingredients to bulk out the meat, give the impression of flavour because the raw materials don't have any, and give it an artificially long shelf-life. What I'm tasting has little to do with the beef itself, and the final result will most likely only give me a vague, rather neutral impression of what a good burger should really taste like. Most of the flavour will be from salt, sugar and other flavour enhancers.
Compare that with going to a good butcher and buying freshly minced beef which you then form into burgers with no other addition than a pinch of salt and pepper. The resulting burger will speak a lot more to the quality and flavour of the main ingredient. I would hold it is therefore a more honest, genuine and thus authentic product.
If you accept that example, I think the parallels with wine are clear enough and fully in line with the accepted definition of the word authentic.
Again, this is not a pro/anti natural wine defence, merely an observation that wine made with as little processing (aka intervention) and additions as possible has a better chance of delivering something that is authentic, trustworthy, genuine and not corrupted from the original (to again quote the dictionary definition of the word).
I don't see what liqueur de tirage has to do with clarification, by the way. Although you are quite right that Champagne is a more interventionist style of wine. As a side-note it's interesting that many natural wine growers are now experimenting with the use of their own estate must in place of yeasts and sugars to stimulate the second fermentation.
Cold fermentation and aromatic yeasts, I would argue, is a different matter. This is a recipe used to produce a commodity: fresh, fruity white wine. I doubt you will find anyone trying to make a premium priced/serious terroir white wine who works like this, because these processes and additions obscure the character of the raw materials. Hence we can argue that they are not genuine and they are corrupted from the original.
"I don't see what liqueur de tirage has to do with clarification, by the way"
My WSET textbook says a clarifying agent is included in liquer de tirage. I only have book learning on this point, so maybe that's incorrect or an overstatement. Maybe that's an outdated thing, maybe it's only sometimes, but a book somewhere says it's so. :P
While we don't disagree in theory, in practice I think we are (and most people are) wildly different in where the lines are drawn, which is why the philosophy/theory on its own isn't really sufficient or as straight-forward and obvious as it sounds.
Taking your beef example - what about dry aged beef? A comparable to that in the wine world might be botrysized wine, the raw materials enhanced and changed dramatically by a mold. Why is botrytis acceptable but not aromatic yeasts?
There's a time and place, a mood for each kind of beef or wine. Some are closer to the "raw materials", certainly, but I would never call a carefully dry aged beef or botrysized wine "inauthentic", and I'd hesitate to call them "less authentic" because that's giving a bias to a wine or beef STYLE, rather than something objectively superior in quality or concept. Considering the distance to the "raw materials" simply doesn't suffice to draw "authenticity" lines, unless the bias is explicitly for a particular category and style. Not that I think this is what you're trying to do, just pointing out the inevitability of following that philosophy to its natural endpoint.
While extreme examples of big brands abusing these raw materials obviously exist and are easy to point a finger at, everything in-between becomes a casuality to an overly broad, poorly delineated philosophy that does cosumers and winemakers no favors, as they will not grasp the fine details, but only think that a wine is or is not this one thing, and that they should only be drinking one and never anything like the other.
This is a fascinating subject, and thank you, George, for such a thorough treatment. Your point on the role of privilege is particularly interesting; for me, authenticity is a sacrosanct concept in art, wine and life, and for that very reason, it's a phenomenally powerful one to weaponise. Some—the (English-speaking) West, the French (guardians of tradition), corporations, wealthy individuals, etc—have a lot more firepower when it comes to “owning” these concepts or bending them to their will.
The "natural vs conventional" idea is unhelpful precisely because both are loaded and utterly misleading terms. (I understand the frustration of would-be authentic family growers who naturally garden manageably sized plots to harvest healthy grapes, ferment and mature their fruit simply, make beautiful wine and get lumped in the conventional camp because they protected it with SO2 and slapped on a traditional-looking label.) Even terroir is an abused notion; it means nothing if the land or vine material aren’t up to much, if the growing and/or making are shoddy or distorting, or, to my mind, if the producer's judgment or motives don't pass muster.
Honesty and transparency are important; truth! But the question there is: Truth to what? To origin? To principle? It's one thing to imagine an unadulterated wine—but, as rightly pointed out in winemaking discussion (incisive comments, too), where do you draw the line on manipulation and adulteration? (Microbial adulterants occur naturally, but that’s not an authenticity flex for me.)
And beyond the idea of authenticity of product—its truth to origin—we're missing a lot if we don't consider the essence of the producer. Authenticity and commitment, as understood by the existentialists, are a really interesting way of weighing the intent, practices and output of producers. Truth to self, I suppose you'd say. This is something that tends to run through all the stories we really care about, and it’s what separates the authentic from the inauthentic, for me. Being so inherently individual, it also does justice to the intricacies of wine. It probably situates authenticity where it should be: not a buzzword tag to ascribe to your product but something to strive for and constantly, uniquely define. For the consumer, it’s something to consider when contemplating the quality, character and pleasure of the wine; how much you value it and want to pass it on.
(As an aside, the concept of authenticity—from a philosophical viewpoint—was discussed in my latest episode on the Vininspo! podcast, an interview with A. C. Grayling. We talked about wine's intersection with the ideas in his book, Philosophy and Life: Exploring the Great Questions of How to Live. Tune in on Substack, or wherever you get your...)
I’d echo something touched on by Ed, that authenticity is about true to self. For me, the use of the term authentic lies with the producer. They can use it as a way to communicate that they believe the wine has been made with integrity and purpose to reach a style and expression, regardless of method.
From that angle, you could describe it as marketing but that doesn’t need to be a dirty word. Describing a wine as “pale salmon” or “earthy” are also ways to communicate a style and intention, a form of marketing. As long as the winemakers use of the term “authentic” is authentic.
Sorry I can’t be a part of this month’s conversation. I love this conversation starter- so much to dive into. I personally despise the word authenticity- it seems to be the buzzword right now. It has no real meaning in the context of wine. Who gets to decide what is authentic and what is not. It is just another way to gate-keep and judge others. It always seems to be followed by pretentiousness and the droning on of natural wine bros. I absolutely don’t fall into the camp of only natural wines with zero intervention are authentic. That’s like saying the only authentic food is picked from the earth with no seasonings, no preparing, no cooking. So short sighted. So wish I had the time to dive further into this.
Interesting topic George! I feel that authenticity is a slightly more broad-minded cousin of typicity. Both potentially insidious concepts in wine, often wielded to indeed gatekeep and slander otherwise interesting wines.
Always worth looking at a dictionary definition, I found the one from the American Heritage dictionary quite helpful:
The quality or condition of being authentic, trustworthy, or genuine.
The quality of being authentic or of established authority for truth and correctness.
Genuineness; the quality of being genuine or not corrupted from the original.
The point that natural fan champions, growers and so on are making is that a great deal of mass produced wine is divorced from wine making traditions and relies instead on intervention and manipulation.
So yes, trustworthiness and genuineness is important, as you suggest. Not being corrupted from the original is perhaps where the natural/low-intervention thing comes into play. If you chaptalise, acidify, add tannins, do a cold fermentation with aromatic yeasts, sterile filter and clarify, you have changed the original raw materials to an extent that the end result can no longer be called authentic.
I don’t really disagree, but I’m curious as to where it ends? Should we not use temperature control or intervene with the abundance of natural microbes present on equipment used in the cellar (sanitation)? They are after all naturally occurring. Or is it only a matter of not adding or removing anything from the juice itself, no matter what other controls are in place. Does that include barrels? As someone who drinks a lot of stylistically natural wines, it’s unclear to me where to draw the line between the artifice that is winemaking and whatever is considered natural. Is it a sliding scale from decomposing grapes in the field to industrial fermentation vats?
To me it is not black or white. It is an instinct when you taste a wine. Does it feel expressive, unconstrained, characterful, nuanced? Or does it feel "made", confected, monothematic? Of course there are many points on the curve, but I usually get a feel for a wine after just a couple of sips.
The more intervention, the more that was necessary to make up for substandard grapes, the more corners were cut, the less "authentic" it will taste - as per all the above adjectives.
It is fascinating for sure and I agree any cut corners end up showing up in the wine. It’s interesting though that the descriptors (expressive, unconstrained, characterful, nuanced) also apply to some of the most “conventional” wines out there, some classified growths come to mind.
I would hold that the wines you are talking about are generally made with lower intervention than the average supermarket wine. Not to mention far more care in the vineyard and with harvest/selection. Look at how many of the classified growths are now organic or even biodynamic. Chateau Palmer, for example, also stopped with selected yeasts in 2017 (if memory serves).
Very true, also across the pond you’ve got Ridge that are doing great work while being biodynamic certified. But they would likely still be sold as “classic” wines rather than natural.
Which doesn't bother me at all. As I've written numerous times, natural or low intervention wine for me is about what you do, not what you say or how the label looks.
Awesome piece! For me the definition of authenticity depends on who is talking and who is it being explained to. I’ll have some similar angles to your article, but will definitely attack the topic full on as well.
Can’t wait to hear your take!
I like how this comment started a great chat between you guys. I follow you both and loved this.
So, my concern with even your last paragraph here, Simon - how is, for example, a well considered chapitalization and clarification different from the liquer de tirage used in the traditionale method for sparkling wines? That's technically chapitalization and clarification, just rebranded as an accepted, even extra-authentic method of high-end sparkling. How is one inauthentic and the other exceptionally authentic?
Even cold fermentation with aromatic yeasts - this is winemaking, to be sure, but how is it inauthentic winemaking? When a chef serves me local, grass-fed beef and locally sourced vegetables, I still want them to flavor it as they think best services those local products. Now adding literal "flavorings" to wine would be an overstep, but where does "changing the raw materials" become "manipulation" vs. knowing your vineyard and terroir and making it the best presentation it can be through something like the choice selection of yeasts?
This is where most personal definitions of "authenticity" proves contradictory and overly dogmatic. One example fits the definition while another example doesn't, and the differences between them being uncomfortably biased to a specific "category" of wine. Which is hard to ignore.
As I said somewhere above, I don't see it as a binary thing. If we compare wine with food, for me authentic wine versus "inauthentic" aka mass produced commodity wine is the difference between cheap processed food that has been bulked out with numerous other ingredients, additives and preservatives versus top quality fresh produce that doesn't need any gussying up.
If I buy cheap pre-made burgers at the supermarket, not only are they made with inferior meat, they will most likely contain a whole host of cheaper ingredients to bulk out the meat, give the impression of flavour because the raw materials don't have any, and give it an artificially long shelf-life. What I'm tasting has little to do with the beef itself, and the final result will most likely only give me a vague, rather neutral impression of what a good burger should really taste like. Most of the flavour will be from salt, sugar and other flavour enhancers.
Compare that with going to a good butcher and buying freshly minced beef which you then form into burgers with no other addition than a pinch of salt and pepper. The resulting burger will speak a lot more to the quality and flavour of the main ingredient. I would hold it is therefore a more honest, genuine and thus authentic product.
If you accept that example, I think the parallels with wine are clear enough and fully in line with the accepted definition of the word authentic.
Again, this is not a pro/anti natural wine defence, merely an observation that wine made with as little processing (aka intervention) and additions as possible has a better chance of delivering something that is authentic, trustworthy, genuine and not corrupted from the original (to again quote the dictionary definition of the word).
I don't see what liqueur de tirage has to do with clarification, by the way. Although you are quite right that Champagne is a more interventionist style of wine. As a side-note it's interesting that many natural wine growers are now experimenting with the use of their own estate must in place of yeasts and sugars to stimulate the second fermentation.
Cold fermentation and aromatic yeasts, I would argue, is a different matter. This is a recipe used to produce a commodity: fresh, fruity white wine. I doubt you will find anyone trying to make a premium priced/serious terroir white wine who works like this, because these processes and additions obscure the character of the raw materials. Hence we can argue that they are not genuine and they are corrupted from the original.
"I don't see what liqueur de tirage has to do with clarification, by the way"
My WSET textbook says a clarifying agent is included in liquer de tirage. I only have book learning on this point, so maybe that's incorrect or an overstatement. Maybe that's an outdated thing, maybe it's only sometimes, but a book somewhere says it's so. :P
While we don't disagree in theory, in practice I think we are (and most people are) wildly different in where the lines are drawn, which is why the philosophy/theory on its own isn't really sufficient or as straight-forward and obvious as it sounds.
Taking your beef example - what about dry aged beef? A comparable to that in the wine world might be botrysized wine, the raw materials enhanced and changed dramatically by a mold. Why is botrytis acceptable but not aromatic yeasts?
There's a time and place, a mood for each kind of beef or wine. Some are closer to the "raw materials", certainly, but I would never call a carefully dry aged beef or botrysized wine "inauthentic", and I'd hesitate to call them "less authentic" because that's giving a bias to a wine or beef STYLE, rather than something objectively superior in quality or concept. Considering the distance to the "raw materials" simply doesn't suffice to draw "authenticity" lines, unless the bias is explicitly for a particular category and style. Not that I think this is what you're trying to do, just pointing out the inevitability of following that philosophy to its natural endpoint.
While extreme examples of big brands abusing these raw materials obviously exist and are easy to point a finger at, everything in-between becomes a casuality to an overly broad, poorly delineated philosophy that does cosumers and winemakers no favors, as they will not grasp the fine details, but only think that a wine is or is not this one thing, and that they should only be drinking one and never anything like the other.
This is a fascinating subject, and thank you, George, for such a thorough treatment. Your point on the role of privilege is particularly interesting; for me, authenticity is a sacrosanct concept in art, wine and life, and for that very reason, it's a phenomenally powerful one to weaponise. Some—the (English-speaking) West, the French (guardians of tradition), corporations, wealthy individuals, etc—have a lot more firepower when it comes to “owning” these concepts or bending them to their will.
The "natural vs conventional" idea is unhelpful precisely because both are loaded and utterly misleading terms. (I understand the frustration of would-be authentic family growers who naturally garden manageably sized plots to harvest healthy grapes, ferment and mature their fruit simply, make beautiful wine and get lumped in the conventional camp because they protected it with SO2 and slapped on a traditional-looking label.) Even terroir is an abused notion; it means nothing if the land or vine material aren’t up to much, if the growing and/or making are shoddy or distorting, or, to my mind, if the producer's judgment or motives don't pass muster.
Honesty and transparency are important; truth! But the question there is: Truth to what? To origin? To principle? It's one thing to imagine an unadulterated wine—but, as rightly pointed out in winemaking discussion (incisive comments, too), where do you draw the line on manipulation and adulteration? (Microbial adulterants occur naturally, but that’s not an authenticity flex for me.)
And beyond the idea of authenticity of product—its truth to origin—we're missing a lot if we don't consider the essence of the producer. Authenticity and commitment, as understood by the existentialists, are a really interesting way of weighing the intent, practices and output of producers. Truth to self, I suppose you'd say. This is something that tends to run through all the stories we really care about, and it’s what separates the authentic from the inauthentic, for me. Being so inherently individual, it also does justice to the intricacies of wine. It probably situates authenticity where it should be: not a buzzword tag to ascribe to your product but something to strive for and constantly, uniquely define. For the consumer, it’s something to consider when contemplating the quality, character and pleasure of the wine; how much you value it and want to pass it on.
(As an aside, the concept of authenticity—from a philosophical viewpoint—was discussed in my latest episode on the Vininspo! podcast, an interview with A. C. Grayling. We talked about wine's intersection with the ideas in his book, Philosophy and Life: Exploring the Great Questions of How to Live. Tune in on Substack, or wherever you get your...)
Thanks for the article and following discussion.
I’d echo something touched on by Ed, that authenticity is about true to self. For me, the use of the term authentic lies with the producer. They can use it as a way to communicate that they believe the wine has been made with integrity and purpose to reach a style and expression, regardless of method.
From that angle, you could describe it as marketing but that doesn’t need to be a dirty word. Describing a wine as “pale salmon” or “earthy” are also ways to communicate a style and intention, a form of marketing. As long as the winemakers use of the term “authentic” is authentic.
Sorry I can’t be a part of this month’s conversation. I love this conversation starter- so much to dive into. I personally despise the word authenticity- it seems to be the buzzword right now. It has no real meaning in the context of wine. Who gets to decide what is authentic and what is not. It is just another way to gate-keep and judge others. It always seems to be followed by pretentiousness and the droning on of natural wine bros. I absolutely don’t fall into the camp of only natural wines with zero intervention are authentic. That’s like saying the only authentic food is picked from the earth with no seasonings, no preparing, no cooking. So short sighted. So wish I had the time to dive further into this.