Disqus - Latest Comments for shelder

Re: Natural Wines: The Definition.

shelder — Thu, 27 Aug 2009 01:09:31 -0000

Thanks for your reply, Alice. I think I understand a little better the
Natural Wine origins.

I generally understand what grape clones are, but what is your definition of
sterile clone material versus non-sterile?

A couple more questions – 1) what do the Natural Wine folks do for mildew
and rot control, and 2) what is their view and practice regarding root stock
versus self-rooted vines?

Re: Natural Wines: The Definition.

shelder — Thu, 27 Aug 2009 01:02:14 -0000

Thanks for your reply, Alice. I think I understand a little better the
Natural Wine origins.

I generally understand what grape clones are, but what is your definition of
sterile clone material versus non-sterile?

A couple more questions – 1) what do the Natural Wine folks do for mildew
and rot control, and 2) what is their view and practice regarding root stock
versus self-rooted vines?

Re: Natural Wines: The Definition.

shelder — Mon, 24 Aug 2009 16:03:10 -0000

Dear Alice,

I read your book, “The Battle for Wine and Love”, very recently and have also been following your blog for the last year or two. I appreciate your passion and conviction. In fact I think it is more of a religion for you, because religion generally loves to boil everything down to a list of rights and wrongs. Life is never quite that easy.

To my surprise in your book, you said that fundamentally you don’t have a problem with “spoofalated” wines if the “spoofalation” made wine taste better. But you go on to say that you have never found a “spoofalated” wine that you liked. Honestly, I cannot imagine that you could taste in a wine that Roundup had been used to kill weeds in the vine strip. If your point about chemical use is an environmental one, then that’s a different topic and not one about wine flavors. And SO2, how many ppms is “softcore”, and why allow any SO2 use? SO2 has been used in winemaking for centuries if not millennia, and well before wine was bottled. And I don’t understand your general aversion to clones. The good monks of Europe painstakingly and rationally selected vines over hundreds of years to create in effect clones that we still grow today.

There are hundreds if not thousands of ways a wine can be “touched” by the human hand, both in the vineyard and in the winery. Farming by its very nature is an interventionist proposition, just as making wine is. At a high level I agree with many of the things that you believe in and promote, but I often find that hard and fast rules can end up looking arbitrary (or even artificial) and lacking a rational foundation.