Biodynamic Wine, Class, and the Future of the Rural
an intervention."
Franz Weninger is a third-generation winemaker from Austria who changed to a biodynamic growing method and makes natural wine.
I had learnt that, for hospitality and industry professionals, there is a need to at least once participate in this ritual to learn about wine, but - I felt - also to authenticate their knowledge and experience about natural wine.
Franz Weninger had been recommended to me as someone with a wide-ranging opinion on natural wine. He is well established within the world of natural wine.
What struck me about him is that, while he also has his face on some labels (as a cartoon) and does not shy away from Instagram, he appeared more comfortable with contradiction than many people I had met in the natural wine world.
"Nature would heal itself
by becoming a forest again."
Natural wine is frequently portrayed as a low- to non-intervention agricultural and winemaking practice. To discuss what that actually means, he took me a fews days after the harvest to a vineyard that had been left untouched for one year.
It looked abandoned. The vines had fallen off the guiding wooden posts, and some small grapes were starting to rot. It was important for Franz to note that agriculture and wine growing are always interventions.
The aim is to be sustainable, but what nature would need to heal the soil perfectly would be to reclaim it and become a forest again. As humans, we do agriculture; to live, we take. Engaging in agriculture is always extractive and always an intervention.
What is very important to note at this point is that the Institute of the Middle Classes proceeds in the spirit of "also" rather than "but." Two things can be true at the same time, even if they seemingly contradict one another.
"Two things can be
true at the same time."
It is also too much to ask of one person, argument, or position to offer a full solution. I am noting this because the observations of Franz do not invalidate a low-intervention method or its ethos; they merely add to it. Throughout the fieldwork, I found a lot of progressive, pro-environment, sometimes also pro-social justice language in the people I spoke to; this would so easily clash with the price of the product and also with who I identified as the clientele—i.e. a young aspirational bourgeoisie, even if sophisticated in their aspirational approach.
The hallmarks of gentrification and the millennial hipster—beards, checked shirts, and tattoos—were all too present.
“Wine occupies a privileged
cultural position“
I agree that a change in how we do agriculture is absolutely necessary, both in terms of environmental impact and in terms of access. Franz returned to the idea that wine occupies a privileged cultural position. People are willing to discuss it, spend time with it, and pay more for it. Precisely because of this, he sees natural wine as capable of opening a wider conversation about agriculture itself.
Quebecois sommelière Emily Campeau had travelled to Europe that autumn to take part in the harvest at Franz Weninger's winery. She is a figure in the natural wine world as the sommelier of a Montreal restaurant promoting natural wine. She would later speak at the RAW Wine Fair, publish articles, and, a short period after this fieldwork had been conducted, start her own natural winery in Germany together with her partner.
She had a keen interest in repeatedly bringing up the question of privilege and what biodynamics are connected to. At the same time, she would often refer to other figures in the natural wine world, thereby signalling her insider status (for example, joking that, on a steep vineyard, she needed Clemens Busch to hold her hand, the iconoclastic Riesling grower from the Mosel region).
After harvest, Emily, her partner, and Franz were engaging in the biodynamic ritual of burying manure-filled cow horns, an integral part of Steiner's approach to agriculture.
Rudolf Steiner is the founder of anthroposophy and laid the foundations for biodynamic farming. Closing the holes in the earth into which the horns had been lowered, Emily asked whether natural wine makes you taste what the human does in the winemaking process or whether it actually changes the grapes.
"The human is part
of the terroir."
Franz answered that, increasingly, he thinks it is mainly a mindset. But this mindset of the human—which Franz told me at another point he considers part of the "terroir"—changes how he treats the grapes and the wine, so it changes the product. The mindset is important for his winemaking and farming; the collective harvest is part of the culture.
"The question is not whether
change is necessary, but who
can afford it."
So what I find very important when we discuss and think about positive change—in this case in agriculture—is that we must keep in mind the system within which it operates.
A thoughtful production of agricultural goods means that the product has to be sold at a higher price in our current economic situation. Earlier, Franz mentioned subsidies, so there is, of course, a political element and a choice in what is being supported.
"Access is part of the product."
Capitalism is powerful and co-opts almost everything, and that goes beyond selling T-shirts with Che Guevara's face printed on them. Biodynamic practices, shopping for this produce, and preferring natural wine are used as class distinguishers; they are not universally accessible. This element, therefore, needs to be part of the discussion.
Touching on biodynamic principles and privilege again later, Emily discussed this with Franz and the American wine importer Stephen Bitterolf. Emily, too, does not have an answer to it; Even though looking at the prices of natural wine and biodynamic bottles (or even vegetables, let alone meat) does give an idea.
"Economics moves people;
ideas often follow."
However, for Stephen, it was slightly different. Coming from a New York City perspective, he described the city as a place for the super wealthy and for their staff; the middle tier—and precisely the tier the Institute of the Middle Classes was set out to study—would be attracted to moving to the countryside in order to afford a lifestyle that would otherwise be inaccessible.
Basically, a geographical shift made necessary by economics that is then accompanied by a philosophical and lifestyle change.
"New ideas also arrive
with new people."
As Franz points out, this is still positive, as he attributes to this generation of individuals from the city the capacity to bring new ideas with them to the countryside. A point that was not challenged is whether this could not be viewed as a form of cultural appropriation or rural displacement.
Given that Franz Weninger is a third-generation winemaker and welcomes the input from newcomers, this question would not concern his way of thinking. While this is a question at the heart of my thinking as an ethnographic researcher, for a person like Franz, who works daily and actively tries to affect positive change, this moral framework seems less important.
This connects to broader processes of rural gentrification and cultural distinction (taste regimes), where movement between city and countryside is not only economic but also aesthetic and symbolic, and where certain forms of consumption and knowledge become markers of belonging within specific class formations. A subject that is discussed in Film 4 of this study.
"Extremeley seductive
hedonism."
It is true that I, as a researcher, found the world extremely seductive. In a way, it felt like agreeable countryside living meeting the liberal urban lifestyle I am used to; including the permission for hedonistic excess and conversations about morals and, in this sense, politics—potentially antithetical to how "the countryside" is stereotyped.
At the same time, even within natural wine production itself—through pricing structures, labour arrangements during harvest, and the shift from subsidy-dependent agriculture to market-driven luxury pricing—the conditions of access and value are already structured before any individual choice as a consumer takes place.
What can be bought, who can participate in production, and what counts as "good" agriculture are therefore not primarily the result of personal preference, but of pre-existing economic and institutional frameworks.
This means that while we collectively have to change our production practices and consumption habits, this change cannot be thought of as a purely individual or ethical decision, but has to be understood as operating within, and being limited by, existing economic structures, beliefs, and shibboleths.
Natural Wine, Privilege, and the Pursuit of Cultural Authority
Natural Wine, Gentrification, and the Flight to Authenticity
Natural Wine, Belief, and the Production of Authenticity
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