Natural Wine, Belief, and the Production of Authenticity
are not destroyed by the knowledge of
their construction; reflexivity has almost
become a marker of authenticity itself.“
This segment of the research on natural wine focuses on the social production of belief among consumers. How is authenticity socially produced, circulated, and believed in natural wine culture?
I include four case studies in this, all based around New York State in the US:
Lil Deb’s in Hudson is an explicitly queer restaurant that views its menu as artistic practice, founded and mainly staffed by graduates of the prestigious Bard College nearby.
I did extensive research around Frank Cornelissen’s winery in Sicily, but single out the vineyard visit of a NYC couple that occurred when I was around.
Kingston, NY, is home to a natural wine shop, where I visited and interviewed the owner and shop assistant.
Finally, and this is a large part, I attended the RAW Wine Fair, which is central to the world of natural wine.
These are four classic places in which consumers encounter natural wine and where the belief in authenticity is actively produced through dialogue: the restaurant, the vineyard, the shop and the fair.
This is a multi-sited ethnographic observation through circuits of consumption, pilgrimage, discourse, and exchange.
"The wine is social
currency before taste
is even mentioned."
The first situation is a staff tasting of a new wine on the menu of the restaurant. Wheeler is their “wine guy” and introduces the wine to the rest, including a young person described as having poetry skills.
They write wine poems, which are an abstract way of explaining the taste of wine to their customers, beyond more traditional wine metaphors. It felt like it was a big part of the identity of the restaurant; a wine would be described as tasting like a sports car, and later, during the tasting at hand, Cornelissen’s Susukaru tasted like when you sit in an exam and you are just acing it.
These wine poems ultimately formulate their own vocabulary of distinction, exclusive to this grouping.
Wheeler describes the winemaker—Frank Cornelissen—as a rock star who is really blowing up right now, and that there are waiting lists for the wine, and so on.
This is classic Bourdieu: the wine is social currency before taste is even mentioned.
Rarity functions as proof of authenticity, which mirrors the logic of luxury products.
"Travel to the origin
produces intimacy with
authenticity."
We then go to one of Cornelissen’s vineyards in Sicily. An American couple that I read as affluent is being guided through the vineyard. They are told that they are on the slopes of the volcano, with basalt and clay soil, and are excited by the non-manicured nature of the bush vines.
We meet the same couple again later at RAW in New York City, where they reside.
Here in Sicily, the couple do not merely buy the wine; they travel to its source.
This links again to the focus of storytelling in the world of wine in general, but particularly in natural wine, where the antithesis of conventional winemaking and growing is presented (non-manicured vineyards, wild and authentic).
This is how it differs from visiting a classic or conventional winery (i.e. not explicitly natural): practices here are subtly perceived as iconoclastic and counter-cultural, even if the example of bush vines is how vines are traditionally grown on Mount Etna.
This is an example of reframing traditional agricultural practices as counter-cultural and links to the concept of artisanal capitalism.
Travel to the origin produces intimacy with authenticity; seeing the wild vineyard legitimises future consumption, as it creates a personal connection to the product.
It has elements of a religious pilgrimage; they are not wine experts, but are trained into the belief system of untouched vineyards and minimal-intervention winemaking by being introduced to technical terms mixed with mysticism and emotional or even moral connotations.
"Authenticity is
literally metabolised."
Back in New York State, the wine shop in Kingston is similar in that way; the two interviewees (owner and shop assistant) construct a moral binary of natural wine versus industrial wine.
It is framed as transparent, alive, healthy, probiotic, balanced, and so on.
“Large commercial wineries certainly are not open to disclosing what’s in there. So there’s an opaqueness... there’s not much of a story of who made the wine, what is their story? How did they come to the farm or winemaking?”
This statement begins talking about chemistry, but ends biographically, so again, it moves from fact to perceived authenticity that is then somehow linked to health.
“That unadulterated naked product is appealing in a world full of fillers and BS” is a moral statement, not a technical or biological one.
All of that culminates in “We have tons of customers who drink natural wine because they feel better after they drink it.”
There is a link to a general wellness discourse adjacent to organic foods; many customers feel better after drinking natural wine.
So the authenticity of the product is literally metabolised.
It is in this way that we are entering a belief system that mixes morals, biology, and health.
Not necessarily all of it incorrectly, but they come together almost like religious doctrine.
"It is a congregation."
The RAW Wine Fair in NYC, is in many ways the Mecca of natural wine.
It is held in a warehouse in Brooklyn and has a festival-type atmosphere, with food stalls and a large number of wine producers on stands crowded together with their clientele.
A lot of white men in their thirties with beards and moustaches can be seen both behind and in front of the tables.
Most people here care about their outfits.
Circles form around particular stands.
Many familiar faces from my case studies are all united here again in the space. While the fair happens in many places all over the world, it feels like it is coming home here. It is a congregation.
"Counter-cultural credentials."
At Cornelissen’s stall, we can see the hype and star power he retains, possibly particularly in the American market, being portrayed as an almost mythological figure on Mount Etna.
The mention that a big supermarket chain has slammed a cease-and-desist order over the naming of a particular wine of his seems to heighten his counter-cultural credentials. Cornellissen seems to be in direct conflict with with corporate retail.
"Farming becomes a
type of salvation."
The fair’s founder, Isabelle Legeron, who has bona fide conventional wine-world credibility as a Master of Wine, a rare title that is very hard to achieve, functions as their ideological and explanatory head.
She wrote a book on natural wine, and one moment stood out to me in particular: two young women from Vermont come to get a copy signed; a friend of theirs has symbols from it tattooed on her arm.
Asked for advice by young people starting out in natural wine, she answers that this is not about wine anymore, but about farming; what they do is so critically important. Farming becomes a type of salvation, and the consumption of natural or organic produce becomes ecological activism.
The following year, the wine fair that Legeron earns money from offered preferred VIP packages to American Express customers.
"We romanticise
very much."
The couple that I had first encountered in Sicily on the vineyard tour sums up - in a not entirely self-ironic way - that they really love meeting the producers; the story, for them, goes a long way, and they like to support small farmers because it is less commercial.
She works in high-end real estate and he—at that point at least—worked for a tech start-up, so both make money in conventional capitalist ways, but draw legitimacy from being natural wine consumers in a more meaningful way (interestingly, he tried not to answer my question about the nature of his professional work, I looked it up).
“We romanticise very much,” he says in conclusion. Again here, as in my case study with the winemaker in the Hudson Valley, Todd Cavallo, I am noting how keenly aware the individuals are of themselves and their actions and mechanisms.
They are not deceived; they know.
This is very interesting, as it means that the experience of authenticity, which there seems to be a need for, is not hindered by its adherents’ realisation of its functioning.
One could not say they are being played; it is more that they play the game and seem to come out well.
Contemporary notions of authenticity are not destroyed by the knowledge of their construction; reflexivity has almost become a marker of authenticity itself.
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