I'm looking forward to reading the interview with Giuseppe Mascoli in the February issue of Drinks Business just so I can see how demeaning he can be and to determine how far out of the intellectual fringe he can sit when talking about "Natural Wine".
In a story on Drinks Business that previewed the interview with Mr. Mascoli of Aubert & Mascoli we learn a number of things:
1. Non Natural wines will make you ill and cause you to form rashes on your body.
2.Natural Wines are like the works of Karl Marx, mean to be appreciated by folks with "sufficient level of knowledge
3. "Industrial Wine" (which goes undefined other than to make note of the use of cultivated rather than indigenous yeast) is for "children"
If it's not clear what this merchant and promoter of natural wines is saying, let me rephrase for you: Only the most sophisticated of wine drinkers, rather than all the other simpletons that drink something else, can appreciate "natural Wines", which won't make you ill like other wines.
Not too long ago I wrote a blog post here that drew attention to the proclivity of promoters of "Natural Wines" to denigrate wines that don't fall into the nebulous category of "Natural Wine". I highlighted a number of examples and suggested that "Denigration Marketing" ought to tell you a lot about what is being marketed. That post was met with a variety of responses, not a few of which poo-poo-ed my contention. That said, even many natural wine proponents that commented thought that denigrating non-natural wines would be a bad idea, even if they didn't see it happening.
Well, here it is happening again by a representative of natural wines in the UK. As I mentioned before, it is extraordinarily rare for any marketing to be based on the denigration of other products in your same category. Politics and beer and soda are about the only examples I can think of. And prior to the emergence of the Natural Wine supporters, I've never seen marketers in the wine industry actually come out and denigrate other wines—let alone suggest that these competitors will actually make you ill.
Some have pointed out that it's the marketers and not the producers who are involved in Denigration Marketing. What I'd like to see is some natural wine producers disavow this kind of thing. It's in their best interests to do so. the cacophony of denigration, spite, nastiness coming from many marketers and promoters of Natural Wine is getting awfully close to making all producers of natural wine look and smell like spoiled, oxidized wine. No one wants to drink that stuff.
