Eddie’s Food Grievances: People Who Make a Big Deal About Natural Wine

Adeline (nickname: Eddie) loves food, lots of it and often, both at home and out. Usually, that goes well, but sometimes it doesn’t. In the series Eddie’s Food Grievances, you’ll read about the latter. This time, we need to talk about natural wine.

When you see people walking out of the supermarket with a carton of oat milk, you can be almost certain of one thing: they drink natural wine too. Suddenly, there it was. Chardonnay had never been good enough anyway, but with the arrival of natural wine in our capital-city scene, even a tasty Verdejo or smooth Sauvignon was immediately out of favor. And I have thoughts about that.

So snobby

Outside the ring road, people still drink wine in a perfectly ordinary way. Not so in Amsterdam, because there, people now drink exclusively this pure nectar of the gods. Sometimes the wine even comes with a whiff of manure, because that makes it extra authentic. Natural wine simply means that there is (and I quote) as little intervention as possible in the process through which grapes become wine. Feel free to read this as: minimal effort with maximum results, or taking the easy way out. You can decide for yourself. And that minimal intervention during vinification (that’s the fancy term for grapes becoming wine) is often visible too, because remnants of the grape are still floating around in your wine glass.

These days, everything has to be left-leaning, sugar-free and joyless—I’m aware of that. But why be so snobby about the good old wine? Can’t we just leave the drink that served us so well for years alone? And don’t start shouting that it’s better because this sulfite-free wine doesn’t give you a hangover. Every wine naturally contains sulfite, so if you drink enough of it, you’ll inevitably end up with a torturous headache.

Russian roulette

Honestly, nine times out of ten you’re simply consuming cloudy wine that is just not very tasty. That’s not my opinion, but a fact. Why would you glorify something like that? Because city dwellers suddenly took to this bottle en masse, it’s anyone’s guess what kind of stuff will be poured. Natural wine (logically) lacks the substance that makes every bottle of conventional wine taste the same. So it’s not only cloudy; it’s also simply Russian roulette. Nothing to brag about.

As befits a true millennial, I did drink my first glass of natural wine last week, of course. It was white and tasted like red, and for that reason alone I’ve been completely confused for days now.

Also read:

• Eddie’s Food Grievances: That Impossible Tableware to Eat From
• Too Bad for You: That Wakame Salad Isn’t Healthy at All
• Tips for the Best, Easiest Pasta Salad