Too much hoo-ha over glou-glou

I'm beginning to think that for something synonymous with natural wine, the concept of glouglou is actually a little incongruous.

We’re making too much hoo-ha over glou-glou. Worse, its easy to love, one-taste-for-all is straight-jacketing wines’ soul. Glou-glou is the Red Hot Chilli Peppers of natural wine: who doesn’t like it? It’s poppy, it’s upbeat; once a bit edgy, now a crowd-pleaser. A rune placed at the gateway of youth to guide us back to simpler times. I get it, and yes I like it. For better or worse I drink tanks of it. But even if you don't adhere to the Gregorian calendar, 2019, dear reader, is the year our preoccupation with glou-glou needs to change.

Glou-glou to me means a light, easy-drinking red made to be drunk quickish by which I mean I’m not going to linger over it for hours or cellar it for years. It’s the answer to thirst, a solution to not having much storage and a conduit for more fluid cash flows. It can be structured, have length and finesse, but can also be a wine (and here I paraphrase the French) that you drink to piss or, in other words, forget. Glou-glou is good. It is necessary. I…