Wine
Barry Smith
Nature’s bitter taste
Is wine a natural product? For centuries, humans have produced drinks from crushed and fermented grapes. Knowledge and practice have been passed between generations and continents. It took effort and endeavour to fashion the skills of all these winemakers. It was far from a natural occurrence.
Sure, if you let grapes grow until they fall from the vine, burst their skins and start to ferment, this will induce the process that turns fruit sugars into alcohols, but they will amount to no more than rotten grapes. But there is a great deal of interest in so-called “natural wine”—why is it surrounded by such controversy?