Dear natural wine world, enough with the constant polemics. If you don’t want to self-ghettoise, self-criticism is needed

Unity is strength. Born from a divorce. There’s no worse quarrel than one between kin. Sibling rivalry. How many sayings and idioms could we throw at (or recommend to) the natural wine world which, although it has given us fascinating bottles over the past twenty years and, thankfully, a new narrative around wine—less austere and buttoned-up—has also just as effectively shown us its worst side, turning association into a patchwork of factions. Often quarrelsome, closed, and corporatist groups, in the sense of being exclusionary. Too quarrelsome. The debate stirred up by Arianna Occhipinti and Nino Barraco, both interviewed by Gambero Rosso, demonstrates clearly how there’s no dialogue within this small slice of the broader wine industry. A pity. We’ve known it for a while, but it still stings to witness (or should we say certify?) such short-sightedness.

The step towards Vinitaly (the enemy)

Both Sicilian winemakers have chosen to leave the “natural” groups to participate in Vinitaly, the major international fair of Italian wine. For the conventional wine world, an unmissable event in the yearly calendar (even if a few absences are noted), for the natural segment, it’s “the enemy” to be criticised and avoided. And those who do not condemn this enemy are banished—forever. Occhipinti and Barraco said they want to be at Vinitaly, they find it useful, that the artisanal fairs have become “too many” and “scattered” (says the former), and more generally, that “the world of natural wines is too heterogeneous” (according to the latter). Occhipinti later half-backtracked, a bit clumsily in my opinion (no one makes up headlines or interviews, dear Arianna).

Sibling rivalry

In any case, the result is that everyone got angry. More than the rest, Angiolino Maule, the respected producer behind the Veneto-based winery La Biancara and founder of VinNatur—an important association of winemakers born, funnily enough, from a split with ViniVeri. Nothing strange about that—debate is always healthy—but in this case, the discussion has taken on toxic tones. The interview he gave, also to our publication, is very harsh—perhaps too much at times. We respect the points raised, some of which are even valid, but it is lacking in one key aspect: there is never even a hint of self-criticism. If two major producers like Occhipinti and Barraco decide to take a different path, shouldn’t one ask if something has gone wrong? Yes, one may conclude that no, there is no fault—but an effort to understand it should at least be made.

Occhipinti, for instance, raises an important issue: the “natural” fairs are scattered. Numerous and small, noisy and fun, held in the basements of social centres as well as in hotels, full of undrinkable things and many other clever ones, more left-wing than right. But perhaps they are a bit too many? Isn’t it time to unite rather than divide? And when exactly are the Estates-General of natural wine going to be organised? After so many years spent spitting at each other over who’s more natural, what name to rally behind, how many tests are needed to be considered “pure”—isn’t it time to figure out how to grow? The venom that has surfaced in recent weeks, across Facebook walls and producers’ phone calls, is depressing. That’s what remains: the latest dispute is the clear representation of how a beautiful ideal can be endangered by the narrow-mindedness of a few. The natural wine world is beginning to resemble the far-left. And we all know how that ended.