To build a pairing for the future
By our Sommelier, César Garduño
Most wine pairings are full of products (I am using this word because conventional wines have around 200+ chemicals, so I wonder if I can keep calling them wine) that come from the sommelier's best friend. Or the “buy 12 and take X for free”, without forgetting the “prestige” label, where, if we are honest, is about expensive wine you only want a photo for your fee. So let's eliminate this; what if I tell you that it’s possible to work solely with wines that have no chemicals added, rather than the ones naturally occurring with sulfites?
It is indeed possible to have a pairing where the winery is working with low intervention, which makes sense with the mentality of some restaurants about manipulating the ingredients - only the necessary so we can keep the essence of it. There is, of course, the fact that depending on where in the country you can choose to keep it local, or within your continent. You can find amazing low-intervention wines from México and Slovakia, just to name but a few, however, the title says “for the future”, where the ideal keeps it as local as possible. To support your region, neighbor farmers, and most importantly; to reduce the carbon footprint in aspects of the wine process. There is of course the problem of the limited quantity when you work with these wines, but that's also the fun of it, right? To keep showing them to the world and supporting projects that truly make sense for the environment.
Can we make it even more sustainable? From these niche wineries, we can look into what they are doing in terms of these specific things; electricity is a big one, a lot of wineries are working completely with gravity and animals in the vineyard, the ones that help to the biomass and lead us to the most important of all, regenerative agriculture, where it changes from palace to place but the goal is the same, to restore the soil and the ecosystem health.
Maybe we can go deep a little bit more, I promise it is the last one, but hey! The title says “for the future”, but we need to start thinking about it yesterday right? And it's about the beautifulness of the bottle itself, how much does it weigh? The less will lead to reducing CO2 wherever it is processed, and wherever they are transporting it to. What material is that label about? It looks amazing in my Instagram story but might go to the trash after, if, we are lucky enough to have the recycle bin.
