How Small Growers Make The Most Personal Wines

Written by Jonathan Kemp

For all the talk in natural wine circles about sulfur in the cellar and chemicals in the vineyard one thing that often gets overlooked is scale. Before 'natural wine' became the umbrella term, 'small grower' was the phrase more commonly used. Using both terms together is more effective, I find; especially when compared with their opposites, which is mass-produced wines made with synthetic chemicals. The scale necessitates the chemicals. Smaller scale allows for humans to do all the work, which is the good news and the bad news.

Small-production natural wines like those that are featured in Direct Press are a minuscule drop in the proverbial spit bucket of the global wine industry. David is barely a gnat to Goliath in this metaphor. A study by Michigan State University from a few years ago revealed that 51% of the wines available for sale in the US were owned by just three companies: E&J Gallo (think brands like Barefoot and Apothik), The Wine Group (Franzia, Cupcake, Benziger), and Constellation Brands (Mondavi, Ruffino, Clos du Bois).

With this in mind, I worry that when we get caught pitting a winemaker using zero sulfur against one adding 40ppm we are missing the more serious threat. Bigger landowners, corporations, and cooperatives have the ability to buy up vineyards and squelch out competition at a level that is nearly impossible to match for an independent winemaker. And they cannot make the same kind of wines. Changing the scale of wine production drastically changes the end product. One of my favorite things about getting into wine was the fact that vineyards and grapes had a limit to their production where the quality level would immediately drop. The best wines are impossible to mass produce because nature does not allow it. You cannot get around the equation of superior fruit making superior wine—and superior fruit is a finite agricultural product. The winemakers we feature this month - in Direct Press - are doing all the vineyard work themselves, walking the rows, putting their hands on every vine, and it shows. I don't know the Josh behind Josh Cellars, but he sure as s%*& isn't in the vineyards pruning or digging post holes.

I spoke with Kevin McKenna of LDM (Louis/Dressner/McKenna) Wines, where he has been working with small growers since 1995. "It's all about the work," he says. "If you're going to make wines naturally you have to do the work to get proper raw material that will vinify itself and ferment without adding anything. You have to be really selective and make sure all the grapes are healthy. And in order to do that you have to work in the vineyard. Exceptional vineyard work has got to be there. And it's kind of a given that once you go past a certain scale you cannot possibly be making the wines that way."

To be this hands-on throughout the winemaking process, how big can you really be? We chose to feature winemakers who are working with less than 10 hectares under vine (about 24.5 acres). Think roughly the size of Fort Greene Park. That seems to be the cutoff point for those who want to do all the work themselves, in the way they want. António Marques da Cruz of Serradinha in coastal Portugal (featured in the Press 4 Mix and Red groups this month) told me seven hectares is perfect for him because he can work the vineyards himself. He is the only full-time employee, and gets part-time help throughout the year as needed. Any more land than that and he says he is "no longer working with vines but with spreadsheets," which is why he left his previous career in plastics back in 2003 to start making wine with his father.

To be clear, you can make thoughtful, amazing wines with far more land and more full-time help. I would say most of the wineries we stock in the shop are somewhere in the 10-20 hectare range. Scaling up from this and the added labor and fossil fuel use that is required can begin to mitigate any claims to making natural wine. Despite the challenges of growth, I would argue that it is deeply important to have more wineries of larger scale that stay true to organic farming and good labor practices. The last thing I want to do is fetishize small wineries just for being small—but I feel strongly that when you are putting your hands on everything in the process all the time, you are going to make a more personal, idiosyncratic wine. That is what I want to call attention to.

Before Stephen Bitterolf began his import company Vom Boden 10 years ago, we worked together at Crush on 57th St, where he was one of two seasoned buyers and I was a very green sales associate. I owe much of my understanding of German and Austrian wine to Stephen, but his contagious passion for these wines was even more central to my growing love of wine. At heart, it was not specifically Germany or Austria but the fact that he was finding wines from these places that had the unmistakable stamp of the personal touch. My feelings about small producers are just as easy to trace back to the mentorship of Stephen as my ability to decipher a Prädikatswein label. His recent book about his years as an importer, Ten Years of Hocks & Moselles, is out this month. It is a must for any wine lover, especially any German wine freak. But he explains this concept of size and scale better than I could so he graciously allowed me to use an excerpt here.

From "Ten Years of Hocks & Moselles" by Stephen Bitterolf: For me, one of the most profound consistencies through nearly a decade of retail wine experience, no matter the country, the grape, the terroir, or the philosophy, was the following: Small estates just make the more curious, the more individual wines.

They’re not always better, mind you, they’re just more...human. The wines have more of a personality; they have their own signature. They are more transparent and they are less consistent, in the beautifully unpredictable way humans are.

This is hardly a revolutionary idea. In the landscape of much European wine over the past half-century—to say nothing about human commercial endeavours since time immemorial—scale has been something of an issue.

We seem to always want more.

This growth imperative seems to be a particularly human ailment—the logic of cancer made manifest in our behavior, in our societies. One finds this perverse association even in our linguistics. In English, the word “great” can have a complicated dual meaning. It can, on the one hand, be used to suggest quality, excellence, or virtue. It can also be used to describe something that is quantitatively large with no reference to quality. “The great hall” is not always an architectural work of art; it’s just a big room. The German word “gross” blurs this line even more. “Gross” truly translates to both “great” and “large.” Beethoven’s 9th Symphony is “gross,” yet so is an airplane hangar.

Certainly the “amazing” technologies of the last few decades have encouraged this growth. They have made everything quicker, easier, faster, more ergonomic and better looking. It’s become easy to expand, to grow. After all, now we can toast our bread, have the dishes washed, and whiten our teeth at the same time. I don’t mean to dumb down a very complex story. In viticulture, some of these technologies have literally saved vineyards. And by saving these vineyards, by making them economic to farm, they have saved the growers and the villages that grow, or die, based on the health of these ecosystems.

Yet as machines have taken over more and more of our human practices, it shouldn’t be too surprising to us when we notice that we’ve lost something of our human touch in the things we are making—or in fact are not making.

All of a sudden, curiously, much of what we “make” somehow feels so appropriately average, so perfectly correct and consistently the same, that it feels foreign. It feels deeply unsatisfying in a very essential way. Yet why exactly it’s unsatisfying is very hard to articulate. It’s something like looking in the mirror and having a perfectly symmetrical human face smile back. It’s us, but it’s not at all us. Something is amiss, but it’s hard to articulate.

Humanity and nature are defined by not being perfect or consistent.

It’s important to also keep in mind that the correlation between scale and a certain homogeneity is not completely a matter of deep, mysterious essential truths. It is in some ways, but not completely. Another part of the equation we can’t ignore is capitalism, with its childish logic of supply and demand. In other words: If you produce a lot of wine, if you have a large supply, you are going to have to create a large demand. And most people, alas, are not looking for singular, unique, imperfect wines. Most people are looking for something in the middle, something generally comfortable and familiar. And they want this familiar comfort to be more or less consistent, year after year after year.

In other words, larger estates may make more uniform wines not only because the human touch has been taken away, but because they have to. Growth has its consequences.

If this is all grandiose—and it is and is meant to be—for me, as the importer, as the person on the ground, there is also a much more basic and selfish motivation: I want to hang out with growers and not with “cellar managers,” “export managers,” “vice presidents of sales,” “marketing directors,” or the like. No disrespect meant: I’m also just a cog in the sales apparatus; I get that.

But part of this is—how do you say—a lifestyle choice?

I want to go to Europe and sit at a small table, preferably not in a sleek tasting room, with the grower and talk about wine and not about sales. I want the person sitting there with me to have their name on the label; I want to see the dirty fingernails. I want to selfishly gorge myself on their connection to their land, for at the end of the day, this is what I lack, and this is what I yearn for.

For me, chasing sales is a fool’s game. I know people do it and do it very well; they make a lot of money. That’s wunderbar. I personally just can’t deal with looking at the universe that way; it would kill me—and then bore me. (excerpt taken from Ten Years of Hocks & Moselles)

The actual scale, however, of a small-scale winery is its own impediment. "Basically, you have to put in as much energy as someone else does and it's just a question of how many workers you have," says Kevin McKenna. You're doing the same amount of work as somebody who has a 12 hectare or 16 hectare and you're getting less for it. When you're a small producer you're thrown to the back of the line when sourcing equipment and materials. When things become scarce—like what happened during the pandemic with bottles, labels, capsules, et cetera—the big companies get first priority and the small ones get f#%@ed, basically. And so a lot of smaller wineries during that period banded together to make a big enough purchase that bottle manufacturers would pay attention."

Then there's a fiscal consideration.

McKenna explains, "the more vines, the more wine you have to sell, the more cash eventually you have. It's the economy of scale. If you already have the vines, if you already have the facility, then it's just a question of the extra cost of labor and energy utilities. And so you have a bigger pool of money at the end of everything to keep going. So for smaller producers it's much more hand to mouth. They have to sell as much as they can possibly produce every year or else. With more hectares and more employees you have more time to get away and sell your wine. For a small producer to go do the marketing they're losing time on the other end with all the vineyard work." This is why an importer like LDM or Vom Boden who can sell these wines is vital to keeping them afloat.

Another way small producers can stay in business, especially with the added vulnerability of climate chaos, is by purchasing fruit from neighbors. Often called négoce, this process of using someone else's grapes would at first glance compromise on individuality. "For a small producer, having to reach out to other growers to buy fruit is a big decision," says McKenna. But working at such a small scale is tenuous, and these are humans contending with more than just their own work ethic or philosophies. Survival is the name of the game here. Négoce fruit can be used to help finance a small winery; or get it through a vintage where they have lost fruit due to hail, frost, or other acts of nature.

Philippe Chevarin, who has five hectares in the western Loire, did just this starting in 2021 with his 'Détour' label (featured in this month's Press 4 Red group). It was the fourth devastating vintage in the six years since he started making wine. Négoce fruit enabled him to stay in business. "I work about 10 hours a day and still I can not do everything I want in the vineyard," he told me. "Having a small area is not necessarily ideal but in my case it is complicated to grow any bigger. I started by working alone on a small parcel and then even though I grew I never found the financial balance to hire people. So now I work alone and I like the freedom it provides. I continue gaining efficiency a little each year." He sarcastically added, "the day I retire I will be at the top."

But what is the top? If we're talking about freedom and expressiveness, Philippe is already there. If we're talking about connecting souls with wine that possesses real human emotion, Philippe and others featured this month are already at the top of my list.