Natural Wine with Marc Papineau

Marc Papineau has been filling our wine glasses in Seattle for decades. Marc is the proprietor of Cantina Sauvage — a wine shop he opened last year in Melrose Market, alongside Cafe Suliman in the Capitol Hill neighborhood of Seattle. There, he curates a unique selection of independent wines that are, as he coins, “unfuctwith”: wines that have been only minimally altered by human intervention, which happens at the behest of a person, not a corporate entity.

Wine is in the revelries of a renaissance in Seattle, fueled by the natural wine craze: those “pet nat”, “skin contact”, “orange” bottles with colorful labels. Those bottles from grapes you never heard of (good) and a frequent sidestepping of traditional labeling standards. Some are delicious. Some are...challenging. However you feel about them, their impact on drinking patterns here and in other urban centers deserves a closer look. Natural wine's popularity presents an alluring contrast from big-name, mass-produced wines manipulated into homogeneity. It demonstrates savvy and awareness that it does matter where what you eat comes from.

Stick with this episode: at first it may sound like its more of a conversation for wine nerds, but it is a study on this city's consumption patterns and how they've changed (rather radically!) over the past decade.

At about minute 2:24, where Chris asks, “um, which one of them is dry?” and we all crack up because his question cuts through our heavy conversation like an acidic wine through fatty cheese. It's a funny question because “dry” is one of those words people often use when pressured to describe what they’re looking for in a wine. It's a question that, to a wine purveyor, can signal a lack of knowledge about or interest in wine.

Which patrons sound most knowledgeable to servers and winesellers? People who ask questions. People who are willing to place trust in their purveyor to guide them on a discourse about the right wine for that moment in time.

This episode is just that: a casual conversation with a guy who knows wine. Chris and I ask things we always wanted to know but were afraid to ask, for fear of sounding clueless. I’ve been in that position, Chris has been in that position, and a casual survey among friends indicates that many of us have been in that position.

We’ll talk about what makes a good wine good and what makes a tank wine industrial. We’ll talk about how to identify the differences among all the degrees between those two ends of a spectrum. (Hint: if you’re buying it at the supermarket, it is probably industrial).

“If you care, then you’re probably not in a grocery store buying wine. You should go to a place where they know their wine.” --Marc Papineau