LET THE GRAPES DO THE TALKING
Popularity of next week’s Raw Wine fair proves natural wines not only for insiders
Last week I wrote about Le Salon des vins d’importation privée, taking place this weekend at Marché Bonsecours. If you want even more tastings, there are two other opportunities next week, although one of the events — the Raw Wine fair — is already sold out. I will talk about it below, because the fact that the public tasting is so popular is significant.
But first, La Grande Dégustation de Montréal (LGDM), which takes place Nov. 2 and 3 at Place Bonaventure and is the largest consumer wine and alcohol tasting of the year. Last year’s edition drew more than 13,000 people. There are thousands of wines and spirits to taste, more than 200 producers from 20 countries on site and, if you want to dig deeper into a particular subject, a number of organized tastings and seminars.
If you want to expand your palate, this is a great opportunity to taste wines you might not normally try. This year’s featured country is Italy. Pinot grigio is the featured grape, and gin gets the spotlight for alcohol.
While La Grande Dégustation gives a solid overview of the wine and booze world, the Raw Wine fair is much more focused. When I saw that it was sold out, I was shocked.
The Nov. 1 fair marks the first time Raw Wine has come to Montreal. Started by French Master of Wine Isabelle Legeron in 2012, the event spotlights “natural” or “authentic” wines. While there is no set definition of natural wines, the producers at the fair adhere to a charter of quality that covers grapegrowing and winemaking. On the grape production side, organic agriculture is the minimum standard. But what really makes these wines stand out is what happens in the cellar, where producers use as little intervention as possible.
This means that all grapes are harvested by hand and juices are fermented with indigenous yeasts. Winemakers are not allowed to use additives such as enzymes, or machines such as reverse osmosis or spinning cones, which increase concentration or remove alcohol from a wine. In terms of sulphites, the winemakers use a bare minimum or none at all.
I am a big believer in minimal intervention in winemaking. In many ways, these wines are a return to a different epoch — to a more traditional and artisanal approach. Are they all good? Do they speak more of a sense of place than those made with modern techniques? That is a hot topic in the wine world.
Montreal’s wine bars and many restaurant wine lists are chock full of natural wines, so I expected tradespeople to flock to the Raw Wine fair. But the fact that
tickets for the general public are sold out tells me consumers are equally interested in this debate.