Through a glass darkly
“Whoever knows he is deep, strives for clarity; whoever would like to appear deep to the crowd, strives for obscurity. For the crowd considers anything deep if only it cannot see to the bottom: the crowd is so timid and afraid of going into the water.”
Friedrich Nietzsche
“Your wines are obscure” was an accusation formerly levelled at us, as if we had wilfully sourced grape varieties that were off the map of human knowledge, and sought to promulgate exclusively recherché wines in order to bamboozle all and sundry. One of our growers even bottles his wines with the tag vigneron non conformé on the label. Oh, to be different etc. Well, a wine’s a wine for a’ that. Of course, the truth is quite the opposite: neither were the grape varieties obscure per se (many have a long and noble heritage), nor were the styles of “natural wine” difficult to comprehend, nor were the regions themselves whence the wines originated particularly outlandish, but to be sure knowledge about them was non-existent - or hazy to say the least. Until recently we were largely confronting closed minds and closed palates.
By some strange logic popularity used to be perceived as an imprimatur of quality (ergo, if a lot of people liked a wine it must be good). Similarly, if a lot of people had heard of a wine it must be good. It’s the argument widely used to justify the extension of brands and to pour money into marketing and label design. Perhaps the real reason why certain wines were popular and not others was because the public was only being exposed to a narrow range and these largely factory-produced vapid simulacra of wines had become, by default, the preferred common denominator of choice. This had nothing to do with democracy or responding to what the customer wanted. Reinforced by the unimaginative buying and vacuous promotional selling policy of supermarkets, wines survived and thrived in the market by a process of simple (un)natural selection: safety first and devil take the interesting grapes. Thus bland consistency (or consistent blandness) was the watchword and for a long period wines were made (or manufactured) to track the so-called palate of the general public.
Good taste may only flourish if there is real choice and a lot of education. We seek wines animated by their terroir. In our view the value of the unadorned (unadulterated) simplicity of the wine lies in its very nakedness. Obscure or pretentious wines disguise the essential transmission of flavour from the soil, the microclimate and the nature of the vintage to the vine and its grape variety; obscure wines are heavily manipulated in order to correct nature’s deficiencies and to create a homogenous product. Contrary to popular belief our wines strive for clarity. They achieve complexity through not being obscure: you can smell and taste every subtle inflection and nuance, rather than be bludgeoned by the winemaker’s attempts to layer flavour into the wine.
The more I taste our “obscure wines” with people (and explain the philosophy behind them) the more I feel that people are beginning to connect with the wines because they understand why they taste the way they do and thus appreciate them for what they are. That is not to say that they are easy wines. You only have to try a Valentini Trebbiano to understand that real wines are living wines – they taste different on almost every occasion.
Tastes change. Now we are praised for championing the cause of the small grower, for offering variety and for challenging the public. The map is being redrawn to reflect quality and interest; people want to be stimulated, to experiment and to discover wines which have a story. Trends are illusory and the notion of what will, and what should sell, is based on specious reasoning. Specialist wine companies can help to shift opinion and overcome the restraints of the commercial imperative by sticking to their guns and having faith in growers who make wines with a strong identity.