The Battle of Gulp Hablo

I'm tired.

Two days ago, VinePair published an article titled, “The Unstoppable Rise of Gulp Hablo, Everyone’s Favorite Liter of Orange Wine,” which has been doing the rounds on social media, largely due to acclaimed wine writer Alice Feiring’s critical response. The article praises Gulp Hablo’s unexpected market success, claiming the makers have “cracked the code” of wine marketing strategy by appealing to a large group of younger drinkers. But Alice, along with myself and many others, took issue with this particular passage:

“Ultimately, Gulp Hablo aimed to strike the right balance on every front: fun and approachable, but backed by serious winemaking; true to the natural wine ethos, but with clean, straightforward (and shelf-stable) flavors; and made with biodynamically farmed, high-quality grapes, but still relatively affordable.”

Alice took to Instagram* (edit: since removed) and commented on how the wine is being sold — a “natural wine” — and highlighted how the wine’s very tech sheet told a different story, including 103ppm of added sulfur, machine harvesting, and lack of clarity around filtering, fining, ambient yeast, and high yields. Her main issue with the article was not that this wine is popular and selling well, but that it’s being sold and labeled as a natural wine.

For those new to natural wine debates, these specifics matter. The ethos centers on minimal intervention: using as few additives as possible and allowing the grapes and terroir to speak for themselves. Machine harvesting can damage grapes, introduce oxygen too early, alter flavor, and risk spoilage. And high levels of added sulfur remains one of the most divisive issues in natural wine circles. When a wine markets itself as natural (not just Gulp Hablo) but relies on practices that directly contradict that ethos, it’s a breach of principles and methods that built this space.

Now before I get to the comment section, I need to note that I too got so frustrated by that passage that I posted an Instagram story about this and made a blanket claim about how many issues I have with it. I enjoyed a couple of discussions about my whys in my personal DMs with other wine people, ultimately taking the post down — not because I stopped caring, but because I needed to step back and remember I’m ranting about verbiage when the world is on fire and my tax dollars continue to fund an ongoing genocide.

Lately I’ve been navigating a complicated space where I’m trying to publicly and constructively critique natural wine culture while the world teeters on the brink of WW3. At the end of the day, it’s extremely minor. But my background in psychology informs my work every day, and I can’t help but see an old wound that keeps getting prodded in new ways.

Anyway — the comment section. Despite some thoughtful discussion happening beneath the noise, the comment section, as always, is ablaze: some calling out the false advertising, others debating yeast fermentation and skin contact, others derailing the whole thing by critiquing Alice’s political activism or her use of AI. And of course, the old reliable: “Sulfur is natural, this is fine!”

In the last couple of years, I’ve noticed a major uptick in passionate, fiery debates around controversial wine posts. For example, this Andrews Frederik Steen reel arguing against added sulfur has 526 comments currently. Some folks might raise an eyebrow at me using Instagram as a pulse-check for the natural wine world, but social media offers a valuable gauge: it allows people to be brazen and unfiltered while maintaining some anonymity.

With all the heated takes on capitalism’s chokehold over natural wine and more folks dunking on us “natties,” I have to ask: why does defending or critiquing natural wine feel so personal — and so explosive?

It’s clear that these arguments go way beyond wine. I suspect the reason they strike such a cord is because what we’re actually debating is what wine represents: authenticity, values, taste, belonging. And what we’re seeing more of now than ever is that even resistance movements get quickly repackaged and sold back to us through the same capitalist channels they were pushing against.

We’re in a cultural moment where every choice is politicized. What you drink, what you post, what you critique all signal who you are, what you stand for, and what you’re against. I imagine that in its golden days, the natural wine scene used to feel like a real counter-cultural space, built upon a strong ethos, farming, hard work, care. But as soon as natural wine turned trendy, this space suddenly became a battleground with everyone fighting to control the definition of what is “natural” or “real.”

When someone like Alice points out a wine’s tech sheet and challenges it, it’s not just a nitpicky, nerdy fact-check, it’s a defense of an ethos she’s spent her career clearly advocating for. And when that gets dismissed with “sulfur is natural” or “why does this even matter when there are wars going on?”, it doesn’t just undermine the critique, it compromises the entire culture of care that natural wine was built on.

That kind of deflection — the whataboutism, the eye rolls, the moral superiority of "there are bigger issues" — is its own kind of performance. More often than not, those same people turn around and double down on their own hills, making fun of “natties” and drawing their own rigid lines around what is and isn’t acceptable. It’s the internet’s favorite pastime: dismiss someone else's passion while moralizing your own.

I think the reason these debates feel so exhausting lately is because they mirror the kind of polarization and culture war fatigue that’s everywhere right now. We’ve been primed by the political climate to see difference as threat, to be hypervigilant, to protect our tastes, our teams, our definitions. We don’t want to be misled. We don’t want to look uninformed or morally compromised. So, we do our internet thing where we fight, correct, and retreat to our separate camps.

Let’s keep it real, though — natural wine folks aren’t off the hook either. This scene has struggled with gatekeeping, purity testing, and elitism for as long as I’ve been here, all of which makes it (unfortunately) really easy to parody and dismiss. When defenders of natural wine refuse to engage with valid critiques, or alienate newcomers with snobbery dressed up as ethics, it plays into the perception that natural wine is less about values and more about belonging to an elite club. And I’ve absolutely contributed to that with my online snark in the past, despite my best intentions of fostering a better scene.

And while yes, I do find this behavior on both sides to be annoying… at its core, it’s human. I see patterns here that go way beyond wine. When people argue this passionately, it’s rarely about sulfur, machine harvesting, or skin contact. It’s about identity. Belonging. Fear. In a chaotic, unpredictable world, our tastes have become a kind of shorthand for who we are, and when that’s challenged, we don’t just feel corrected, we feel exposed.

It’s classic cognitive dissonance: the internal tension we feel when something threatens our self-image. And both “sides” are feeling it, just from different angles.

We wine people tend to treat knowledge as social capital and flex our soil-type fluency, vintage recall, and sulfur hot-takes like they’re our credentials. And they are, in a way — but they’re really just power plays at the end of the day, no? Wine culture has long been built around a hierarchy of who knows more, who tastes better, who drank it first, who said it better online. All of this is deeply tied to how we see ourselves and how we stake our place within this community.

For those defending natural wine, it can feel like our movement’s values (transparency, care, connection to land) are being minimized, rebranded, or commodified by people who don’t actually believe in them, and that hits a real fucking nerve. If you have anyone in your life in this field, I can all but guarantee you that they’re feeling this on some level.

For skeptics or critics, being told your choices are “unnatural” or less thoughtful can feel condescending. If you already see the natural wine world as exclusive or intimidating, the instinct is to push back, to mock, troll, demand definitions, poke holes, call bullshit. But really, it’s the same wound: the fear of being judged, misunderstood, or excluded from something that matters. When people feel that way, they typically don’t lean in with curiosity — they reach for control.

I’m speaking from experience. I know what it feels like to be burned by both camps. I know what it feels like to have my tastes and thoughts about wine scoffed and laughed at in a group setting, and to not be invited to sit and drink with the cool wine kids. To feel unwanted, like I don’t belong — like my presence might embarrass someone or detract from their clout. To be seen as green, naive, dogmatic, self-important, annoying, stupid, or uncool. (Trust me, I’ve spent a good chunk of time there.)

But I’ve also felt deeply misunderstood by other folks, people who seem to speak a different wine language than me. I’ve felt grouped in with natural wine lovers only to be ridiculed and dismissed. In my opinion, there’s toxicity on both sides. Ego, knowledge, taste, and clout are all deeply woven into wine culture — whether we admit it or not. I believe everyone could benefit from a little self-reflection on how they contribute to this widespread cultural “othering.”

I don’t really know how to end this one. I just know that, on top of the world going to shit, these debates are utterly exhausting. I’m really not trying to Kumbaya the wine world here. Perhaps the real work is admitting that we’re all operating from weathered ideals, trying to protect something that once felt pure and exciting, but now feels like it’s fading under the weight of capitalism. We know natural wine was born out of resistance, and that fight is still worth fighting. But in our defense of it, we need a culture that can hold fire and humility simultaneously.

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Good on T. Edward for posting transparent vinification details about their wine just now, and clarifying that they don’t use the term “natural” to sell their wine on their website. My feelings on debates around natural wine haven’t changed, and neither have the rampant green-washing tactics used for this particular kind of wine product. It’s important and necessary to keep civil discussion and debate alive.