Is there a single word that's caused more controversy and argument amongst wine connoisseurs/geeks/lovers than “natural”?
Alice Feiring defines natural wine as “nothing added, nothing taken away, a touch of sulfur if needed.” But why does sulfur get a pass?
So here I was, last spring, talking away with the recently-departed Marcel Lapierre, the Beaujolais vigneron who was one of the dominant figures of the natural wine movement in its strictest definition—organic in the vineyard, wine made with grape juice only, nothing added (not even sulfur), nothing taken out. And as we got into discussing the risks of wild fermentations without sulfur, I asked him what he recommended doing if a fermentation went off in the wrong direction, with undesirable microorganisms like Brettanomyces taking over the wine’s development.
The word "sulfur", in my mind, is inexorably linked back to Mr. Burcik's high school chemistry class