I think maybe you're reading something between the lines here that isn't actually there.
I think I'd summarize this article as being about groupthink more than anything else. The wine world is overwhelmed with all sorts of rules about what's good, what's not, how something should be produced, and how it shouldn't. "Natural wine" is an attack on all of that. It's just saying, "screw you, we're going to potentially disregard every single rule in the book, and we don't care what you think of the result."
I think this paragraph sums up the whole article:
"The inconsistency, the impurity, the strong smells, the bits of stems and yeasts that sometimes make it into the bottle – all this signals to the consumer that natural wine is an alternative to the bland, monotonous “perfection” of commercial products, in the same way that slight asymmetries distinguish handmade furniture. Natural wine offers a nothing-to-hide-here image at odds with the stuffy culture of the traditional wine world. To many people for whom a restaurant wine list represents a hellish combination of a geography, history and chemistry test specially designed to make them feel stupid, there is something very appealing about upending the critical hierarchy, or at least being told it can be ignored."
I think I'd summarize this article as being about groupthink more than anything else. The wine world is overwhelmed with all sorts of rules about what's good, what's not, how something should be produced, and how it shouldn't. "Natural wine" is an attack on all of that. It's just saying, "screw you, we're going to potentially disregard every single rule in the book, and we don't care what you think of the result."
I think this paragraph sums up the whole article:
"The inconsistency, the impurity, the strong smells, the bits of stems and yeasts that sometimes make it into the bottle – all this signals to the consumer that natural wine is an alternative to the bland, monotonous “perfection” of commercial products, in the same way that slight asymmetries distinguish handmade furniture. Natural wine offers a nothing-to-hide-here image at odds with the stuffy culture of the traditional wine world. To many people for whom a restaurant wine list represents a hellish combination of a geography, history and chemistry test specially designed to make them feel stupid, there is something very appealing about upending the critical hierarchy, or at least being told it can be ignored."