Expressive Grapes
Expressive Brands —Apr '24

Whenever anyone fails to spot an edgy new trend, a witty friend of mine quips, “Go to the rear of the avant-garde.” I hear that line in my head these days as I realize I missed the surging interest in “natural wine.” If you are with me in the rear of the avant-garde, let me tell you: Natural wine is in. Its advocates are much cooler than crypto nerds. If you’re not conversant in natural wines you might as well have an AOL web address and still say “awesome.”
           Well, now I’m moving up the line. William Mougayar — friend and former Brandsinger client — has created an online celebration of natural wines. William is an entrepreneur, author and marketing genius who speaks three languages and always finds a role in any new trend. He wrote the first business book on blockchain back when most of us were still excited by email. His “GuideMouga” is a useful online directory of restaurants, bars and shops that offer natural wines.
           Intrigued by his latest business focus, I quizzed William on the ins and outs of natural wines. But before we spoke, I read up on the sector and here’s what I found…
           Nature may not lie—but the word “natural” does. It has been exploited broadly and deceptively in commercial culture. Consumers and regulators debate which foods may be termed natural. Despite edicts laid down from the FDA and the USDA, any “natural food” actually may be genetically modified and may contain pesticides. Furthermore, a “natural” food may be industrially processed in ways that defy the laws of nature as laid down from Newton and Johnny Appleseed.
            That said, natural wines seem to be the real deal. First, they are farmed organically without pesticides or herbicides.
            Second, they contain no additives — and third, fermentation of fruit is minimally manipulated. No, the grapes aren’t allowed to lie around until they smell and attract bugs. But nature is allowed to apply its transformative magic in the bottle in one go.
            Natural wines are produced by smaller vineyards, are available in limited batches, tend to cost more than mass-produced wines, and come in exotic hues like yellow and copper. Implied in their production are benefits to the planet and human health.
             Of course, the global wine market contains doubters — led by the successful Big Wine Establishment. Example of their influence was an article in The New York Times “Is Natural Wine Actually Better for You?“with the provocative subhead: “How do the health claims stack up against the science?” The margin has a verbal eye-roll: “Scam or not?”
            The writer, after citing experts from such established sources as The Mondavi Institute of Wine and Food Science, concludes: “If you enjoy how natural wine tastes, or if you want to support sustainable farming, then go ahead and drink it. But just know that it may not be the superior health choice you may have thought it was.”                         At the opposite pole are the natural wine enthusiasts — or rather, the rebellious fanatics. To give you a taste of their ethos, one natural wine site on Substack is called “NOT DRINKING POISON.” Get the vibe?
            So which is it—is natural wine a godsend or a scam? Is conventional wine nectar of the gods—or toxic?
             Let’s turn to the expert. I ask my friend William Mougayar what drives the trend and how are natural wines marketed. While granting that some natural wines are marketed by “opportunists,” William champions the movement with unapologetic zeal. Indifferent to my ignorance, he answers my questions as if speaking to a small child.
            Why do people buy natural wines? — “The Initial impulse is to get re-connected with the original way of making wine —back to ancient times when additives were not liberally used. Sulfites became common in the early 1900’s to stop the growth of bacteria and unwanted yeasts.”
            What’s driving the movement today? — “It started gaining traction around the 80’s mostly in France, along with the interest in organic farming. ‘Don’t spray the grapes’ was the starting point. Then it became winemaking without additives, which winemakers use to stabilize wine, to make it come out the way they want. The reason a Bordeaux is what it is supposed to be year after year is, in part, because additives help make it consistent.”

          Why are you so passionate about it? —“Although natural wine is more volatile, less predictable — those same properties also make it more exciting and more expressive. I don’t care if the wine is a little “off” if I’m going to be surprised. I expect to be surprised! It’s vin vivant. The wine is still living in the bottle and develops with indigenous sulfites in (sometimes) an unpredictable way.“
           “So it’s literally back to nature — the opposite of intensive commercial wine-making. Drinking natural wine gives me time to contemplate how wine connects to the terroir where it was born. What makes it popular is people like me who appreciate this artisanal way of making wine.”
          How are natural wines branded — named and labeled? — “Nothing more than an extension of the expression of creativity of the natural winemaker. It’s not done for marketing purposes. Names and labels are more original… true to themselves… more an expression of creativity. The wine itself is expressive… so there is no such thing as a picture of a castle or chateau or field. Natural winemakers are having fun with labels and how they name their various cuvées”
            “Some names and labels are hilarious…  For example, from Anders Frederick Steen comes a bottle labeled ‘I wear blue when I don’t know what else to do.’” Another expression of Steen’s individualism:  
            And GuideMouga, your web site? — “It’s a directory… a consumer guide – for whoever is a lover of natural wines and wants to find them easily in any city around the world. It doesn’t have all of the listings in the world, but it has a curated selection of the best ones, about 1,200 such references, personally curated by me, and many visited by me. This has been a labor of love project of the past five years.”
            As our conversation ends, William says, with feeling: “If you haven’t experienced natural wines, there will come a day — in the moment of taking a sip — you’ll have this aha… You’ll say, aha,now I get it. Then, you know you will have caught the bug, or I won’t be able to stop you going down that rabbit hole. This was my experience, around 2010 when a good friend introduced me to this new world, and I haven’t been able to get rid of that bug since.” 
      On branding and marketing natural wine — My takeaways:
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1. Target Market: People who are tired of mass produced food and drink and are drawn to artisanal breads and beers. They crave the personal, the unusual, the distinctive. They prefer Jersey tomatoes in summer rather than cardboard tomatoes refrigerated in November.
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2. There is an appeal to being in a community of cognoscenti. In an age of inclusivity, these wines are for the exceptional few who crave them. “Bottled for the insiders”reads one natural wine description.  
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3. To save the planet is not the primary motivation, but it’s part of the appeal. Any consumer today is aware of the danger of chemically polluted air and water. Any brand can benefit by helping to protect the earth from the deleterious impact of industrial production and mass consumerism.

4. Finally, there is a strong thirst to support creative expression and the romance of the counterculture. A bottle of natural wine is the creation of someone who identifies as an artist, not a manager, a rebel, not a yes-man. The unorthodox names and zany labels project the individual spirits of wine-makers and their fans.

            After speaking with William, I waded into the trend by sampling a bottle — my first natural wine, which I found tucked away in a liquor store amid thousands of conventional reds and whites. The natural wine — from Spain — was a cloudy orange. Its brand name was Gulp.
           While sipping my Gulp — which tasted like a cross between a fine sauvignon blanc and a glass of Tang — I realized it was too early for me to have an aha moment.
           But I savored the experience and drew my own lesson: Choosing natural wine is an act of identifying with a cohort of sensitive consumers who reject added chemicals in their food and don’t want them in their wine. It’s the appeal of by-gone times, of anything that is simpler, more real, not artificial, an alternative to everyday life that is more — what’s the word I’m searching for? — natural.
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—Claude