natural wine folk science pt ii

 This week’s blog is about dinner table tripping, natural wine theory of relativity:

On Monday I was walking to Le Bouchon to meet some old friends for dinner. It’s funny timing, I’m already feeling nostalgic, which I’ve attributed to seasonal change.

Now I’m at the restaurant and we’re having some Chardonnay from Julien Labet and catching up. The conversation feels very familiar and comfortable, enacting the past in which we all know each other more intimately. This isn’t reminiscing, we’re not talking about the past we’re talking as if it were 2014 or something.

But we’re also drinking some natural wine and in my body is the natural wine feeling. Something we’ve sort of shared in together, but not often and not in a nice restaurant. So while I’m saying something old out loud at the table, something I might not bring up with more present company, my bodily feeling is very much defined by my present. And being acknowledged only privately by me. Still working on getting that sensation out of the iykyk category. But have been listening to the song Cowboy Take Me Away a lot and think it’s the best way to describe it, the natural wine feeling. Both lyrically and the sensation of the sounds in your ears. 

Already I am feeling physically stretched across time, between past with these friends and the present cowboy in my life but I think wine can show you the future too. In flavors saved my life pt 1, over a year ago I referred to one of the German words for experience, Erfahrung. Which we account for in a definition of experience, but for them it is distinct enough for its own word, Erfahrung serves as your understanding of your past and the perception which shapes your present. Though in your moment of experience you are grazing the future, creating the opportunity to change your perception. I don’t think I always understand wines that are refined, like nice Jura white wine, but in appreciating them without a full grasp I feel closer to that change.

How nice and how hard and how special to sit still, so temporally fucked.

I wouldn’t argue that it’s exclusive to natural wine, but I want to submit it to the folk science archives because I think it is special about the wine. I’m reminded of this poster we made at Cellar Door for our last wine school (February 13, 2020). Everyone went around and said something that defines natural wine and I wrote a simplified version on butcher paper, it hung in the restaurant for a couple weeks after that. Someone on staff (sorry if you know it was you please text me!!!) suggested that there is a tension, natural wine is “how wine used to be/connection to history” and “ALSO helps us look forward”. The past and the future colliding in glass, for us to drink now, fresh & feel.