Budburst Natural Wine Festival 2018 – A Photo Exposé

The Budburst Natural Wine Festival 2018, held at The Boatshed and The Rowing Club on Wellington’s waterfront appeared to be a wonderful success. This is the second time this event has been held, the first in 2016. Elissa Jordan and her team is the driver of the event, and she has had plenty of support and healthy sponsorship to ensure that Budburst would run well. Elissa is one of Stephen Wong MW’s Wine Sentience people and Wine Sentience was fully supportive. Many of New Zealand’s wine producers have taken to the concept and philosophy of making wine as ‘naturally’ as possible; it is an approach taken by many winegrowers and producers throughout the world. I can only see this growing. www.budburst.nz

There are no set definitions of making ‘natural’ wine as yet, an there will probably never be; the approach can be as simple as avoiding the use of synthetic additions, the non-use of sulphur, to a way of life that the adoption of biodynamics requires. It really is a matter of decision by the wine producer how they want to make ‘natural’ wine, and up to the consumer as to what constitutes ‘natural’ wine to them. One thing is sure, is that there is a growing awareness of the principles of the different pathways to making what is considered ‘natural’ wine, as could be seen by the very large attendance at Budburst.

I try to keep an open mind to wines I taste that are made naturally. The variation in styles is enormous; from wines with very subtle differences to what may be considered ‘conventional’ or ‘industrial’ wine, to ‘orange’ wine and those with significant phenolics from techniques such as skin contact (particularly in whites). The edge for me and most producers and consumers I suspect is where a wine borders on faultiness with oxidation, volatility or hard phenolics that are impossible to balance. Taking a holistic perspective, the presence of a fault and how acceptable a wine is to drink is relative to the tolerance of the consumer. Sure, there are faults that are ‘black and white’, these usually technical as mentioned before, but most faults have a range of intrusion. The final question must be: “Is this wine enjoyable to drink?”
 

This year’s festival was very well organised, with at least 27 natural wine producers exhibiting. Most of these were New Zealand producers, but 8 were from overseas, from Australia, Italy, France, Georgia and Chile. In addition to the exhibiting wines to taste and principals to talk to, there were a number of ‘Education Sessions’ conducted by key speakers. Topics included the influence of amphora, orange wine and the use of SO2.

I attended the Budburst Festival not long after the doors were opened for admission, and already the venue was full of attendees. As I find events such as these difficult to assess wine properly (well, to my satisfaction) I had the intention of not tasting wine, but taking photos of the exhibitors, especially the New Zealand ones who I have some interaction with. Unfortunately, I missed a couple of them, and also, I wished I had taken photos of the overseas people. Next time… Following are some of the pictures I took on my trusty old Samsung S3 cellphone camera.