It all started the other day, where every great controversy begins: on Zoom. We helped curate custom wine bottlings for Patagonia’s online marketplace and among the small collection was a white wine infused with thyme. A virtual press conference was held and many, if not all of the journalists were skeptical of this strange concoction. And then they put a glass to their mouth, and all doubt was removed.

On one hand, I get it. It’s a complete unknown. Infusing a botanical into a tank of Pinot Blanc from Austria is hardly what we come to expect of the category wine. It was my colleague Vanya, however, who reminded me in her own subtle way, that all wines are essentially the result of some sort of infusion. What really matters are what extracted elements make our list. And those decisions are usually based on some dogmatic cultural standard that the industry upholds and the consumer is brainwashed into believing.

More on that, but in the interest of myth busting and shattering stale ideas, let’s start by discussing what an infusion is. By definition, an infusion is something that is leeched into a liquid. This something could be another liquid, as with an IV, where intravenous fluids are absorbed into our circulatory system. Or it could be a solid, like an herbal tea infusion, or the most obvious component in wine: grape skins.

Another common infusing agent, whether new or old, is oak. Wood leeches into wine and any dispute from the industry about this chemical process revolves not around the vessel itself being utilized, but rather the degree to which it leeches into the wine. I suppose we accept oak at least partly because we need some sort of abode for fermentation and aging and perhaps also because oak barrels have been around long enough to conjure up a time when people didn’t much care about mundane conversations like what they were infusing or not infusing.

And so when viewed in this context, is it really so strange that herbs, in an around a farm, would be given a platform in wine? After all they have more claim to ‘terroir’ (whatever that is) then let’s say an Oregon winery with a cellar full of barrels from the Allier forest in France.

I’m certain no one in 1st century Pompei would be raising an eyebrow over wine beyond grape. They might have complained about Vesuvius erupting, and they’d have a legit beef, but archaeochemical analysis of teeth and amphorae have revealed that the genesis of our beloved beverage took the form of all manner of infusion: fruits, herbs, spices (even cannabis and opium!). And beer, to a Minoan, would have looked like grapes, honey, and ergotized barley (aka psychedelic cereal).

Any imagery floating through your head of Caesar’s patricians and plebes, overdosing on B.C. potent potables, while destined for satire, misses the point. Natural wine is an exploration of the past. A recognition that, in the modern era, pumping one’s wines with insidious additives that echo the atrocities of chemical farming and mechanization in the vineyard, is perhaps a good enough reason to explore how wine used to be made and land used to be treated.

A botanical infusion in wine, rosé with roses, grape skins in pear juice, aronia berry in red grape must, this is nothing new and innovative. It may feel that way because the stroll down memory lane is too long a walk for any generational reference point. But there, deep in the recesses of time and tide, we begin to ascertain what might have been lost along the way. Another way of saying it is what might be gained by unearthing buried treasure.

What is there to gain with rose hips and plums and elderberries and blackberries and hawthorn working their way past the sorting table? New levels of sensory experience? Yes. But beyond our little aesthetic attachments, these very elements are an encouragement of biodiversity. Their lack of presence in wine means on land, they are viewed as weeds in need of eradication, as such flora are undoubtedly an invasive threat to the cash crop. But their inclusion in wine means they become welcome assets, worthy of the greater ecosystem.

If the marketplace calls for Pinot Noir, and auction paddles wave frantically for single vineyard, single grape bottlings of special terroirs that have been earmarked for a one man show, then where is the incentive for a farmer to foster a vineyard with a multitude of life? We split hairs so finely, the arrow piercing the shaft of the arrow in the bullseye, so as to leave no room for anything else on the mantle of vinous supremacy.

Grape only, mainly one species, often one clone of one species incentivizes monoculture with every foaming mouth of consumer demand and regional regulatory control. And still none of those benchmark wines escape infusion. Instead they are likely, even in the most expensive cases, ‘infused’ with copious amounts of sulfur, wood, clarifying agents, synthetic yeast, industrial nutrient supplementation, stabilizers like Velcorin (ever wonder why earlier iterations of Gatorade contained fruit that is shelf stable at room temperature?), and many other elephants in the room, that pour down our throats, where they in turn are ‘infused’ into our bloodstream.

In the end, what are we scared of? Nature? Or a cavalry of industrial additives that show up in 99% of our alcoholic beverages? For if this is our notion of biodiversity, it’s a shrine to the artificial. I, for one, can handle a sprig of thyme if you can…