A little knowledge is a dangerous thing. Connoisseurs and professionals accumulate a great deal of baggage in the form of expectations about how wines should or shouldn’t taste. If these expectations are confounded, disappointment can result – or worse, an interesting bottle might be sidelined for its supposed sins: “atypical”, “faulty” or just downright “poor quality”. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the contentious sphere of natural and orange wines.
I recently gave a talk and tasting of natural wines at an event for baristas, in Athens. SCA Barista Camp’s youthful delegates come from around the globe, for three days of practical workshops, talks, ‘cuppings’ (coffee tastings) and socialising with their peers. They were especially excited to taste four Greek natural wines which rounded off the presentation. For some this was the first experience of a serious Greek wine, for others the first communion with natural wine, and for many the first realisation that such a thing as orange wine even existed.
Domaine Tatsis’s orange Malagouzia 2016 was certainly the most extreme of the wines I presented. Made with 35 days of skin contact, unfiltered and with zero added sulphites, it is a wild and idiosyncratic beast which nonetheless exudes varietal character.
In the glass, it exploded with aromatic, peachy aromas (which, for many delegates, resembled a hoppy IPA – an astute comparison), before almost strangling the tasters in a sour and tannic embrace. Perhaps it needed more oxygen, perhaps it was a root day: whatever the case, this wine had definitely got out of bed on the wrong side that morning. It lacked harmony – at least that was my opinion, based on expectations from previous tastings where I’d really loved it. Thank goodness there were no stuffy wine critics in the room – they’d have had a field day slagging off the high levels of volatile acids, the unbalanced, sour quality of the fruit and the rather gnarly tannins.
Yet the wine turned out to be the star turn of the day. Later that evening, I opened the leftover bottles from the tasting and offered them to delegates at a poolside drinks reception. A constant stream of delegates flocked like flies to a honeypot and asked if they could have a glass of “that orange wine”. For almost everyone it was the clear favourite – the most extreme, different and memorable. Several declared it “mind-blowing” as they had simply never tasted anything similar before.
For these open-minded fans of flavour and aroma, ‘different’ was not ‘bad’ – as it depressingly sometimes seems to be in the company of (supposed) wine experts. For this audience, ‘different’ meant exciting and challenging, and could also be a damn fine beverage to drink. The bottle was drained before anything else on the table.
Orange wines don’t have to be challenging and uncompromising, but then this holds true for wine in general. Every style has its easy going crowd-pleasers and its ‘difficulty level: advanced’ alternatives. Didactic statements pronouncing wine as simply good or bad, “correct” or “faulty” are often as dangerous as knowledge itself – especially in the more artistically liberated world of natural wine.
Consider this: Maybe Tatsis’s Malagouzia disappointed me in the tasting, but to an audience free from my preconceptions it provided enjoyment, refreshment andintellectual stimulation into the bargain.
Their enthusiasm was infectious – I enjoyed my second glass.
