https://open.spotify.com/track/3MrWxJaD2AT0W9DjWF64Vm?si=8SowEtkdTPGofUwF7h0d9A&nd=1&dlsi=11f058f87f894afe

After Bacchae, I keep thinking about the conversation on natural wines. So, I'm going to come out with something. People operate by rules, and that's okay. Rules protect them from the insecurity of not knowing exactly how things work. But if you expect someone who strictly follows the rules to deliver a great result, you'll never get it. How much you use and depend on rules depends on many factors that I can't fully analyze. But I can tell you this: those who step outside the rules—each in their own way—are the ones who make a difference. This applies to everything. And to wine.  To make great wine, you have to break away from protocol, operate outside the box. And, of course, you must respect your consumer and their health—as much as you can, within your financial limits and theirs. Great wines are naturally natural. They don’t need to shout about it. They don’t have to say it. But the world needed to hear that we can’t take mass-produced, canned wines anymore. That’s what the natural wine movement served and continues to serve.  Those who enter just to make a quick buck follow rules: no yeasts, no filters, no sulfites. And those who only follow rules don’t go far—neither in natural wines nor anywhere else. But it’s important to remember why this whole story started and why it continues.

Are conventional wines bad? For me, no—they serve a mass market, keep vineyards alive, and meet a real need that natural wines, for now or perhaps ever, cannot fully cover. But that’s where it ends. It’s absurd for a great vigneron to have to apologize to a conventional wine producer just because a movement has its freeloaders—or because some people are simply trying to do better in the vineyard and in the bottle, even if they make mistakes. Anyone who steps outside the rules might make mistakes. And that’s okay. What matters is that this whole movement is pushing the mass market to accept a different perspective on taste. And that benefits the entire wine industry—conventional, natural, and everything in between—by encouraging learning and better results. Because at the end of the day, we’re all in this together, in an incredible country full of stories and vineyards. And maybe it’s time we stop wishing for the damn neighbor’s goat to die—because, honestly, it’s done nothing to us.

Giannis Siganos