Funk & Soul

When wines lose their funk in exchange for cleanliness or consistency,
does the soul go too?

WORDS Anna Lee C. Iijima
IMAGES Van Chung

The word funk is most often associated with music—those soul-shaking beats and grooves that blossomed out of African American communities in the mid-1960s and continues to inspire new generations of artists today. An infectious departure from other popular music at the time, funk was radical for its furious, syncopated and sensual style.

Within the past two decades, funk has also become a familiar, albeit controversial descriptor in the world of wine. In Brooklyn where I live, a unique ecosystem where gentrification adjoins post-hipster subculture, funk seems to be a particularly celebrated sales point for wine. “The funkier the better,” you’ll hear requested in local wine bars and retail stores. And if you’re tempted to roll your eyes already, I suggest you save it for folks seeking wines that taste like kombucha—the vinegary, often sulfurous fermented health drink.

But what is funk, exactly, and why is funk such a popular way to describe wine?

FUNK DECODER

By definition, funk is slang for a strong, unpleasant odor. Funk signifies the jarring or crude: odors of decay and mustiness, or the carnal, feral notes of sweat, sex, animals, feces or urine. Beyond its olfactory use, however, funky can also mean unconventional, offbeat or unpredictable—things that are stylish or trendy in an eccentric, sometimes extraordinary way.

For wine, funk can signify a multifaceted array of sensations. At its most innocuous and charming, it can recall a whiff of wet fur, damp earth or leather in a complex wine. At its worst, funk denotes wines marred with aromas or flavors of vomit, feces, vinegar or cardboard, symptoms of microbiological taint or spoilage resulting from faulty grape growing, winemaking or packaging.

Many wine lovers find soulfulness in wines with a hint of funk. To me, funk in wine is that alluring, vaguely sexual aroma of sweat or animal—the smell of a lover’s well-worn leather belt or that sweetly stinky odor of your dog’s fur or cat’s toes. I find parallels in the base notes of perfume, like hints of animal musk, earth, spice or smoke that lend complexity and contrast to top notes of flower or fruit.

But using the word “funk” to describe wines can be problematic. “Frankly, it’s inarticulate,” says Christopher Bates, MS, winemaker and owner of Element Winery in the Finger Lakes region of New York. “It leaves too much to the imagination to actually be understandable. Funk doesn’t articulate what a wine tastes or smells like, or whether anyone will want it.”

Moreover, whether freshly tilled earth or vomit, determining which aromas in a wine translate into funk is inherently personal and subjective. Alexandre Schmitt, a Bordeaux-based perfumer and consultant to wineries like Pétrus, Château Cheval Blanc, Louis Roederer and more, suggests that positive or negative associations in aroma or flavor vary widely according to one’s origin, education, culture or lifestyle. For a person who grew up in the countryside, a fecal smell in wine might be reminiscent of the smell of the mountains or hills—a nostalgic, emotional sensation that’s not necessarily negative, notes Schmitt. “Gamy or meaty can also be positive or negative depending on your global understanding of wine,” he adds.

BRING ON THE FUNK

But why are humans even attracted to funk?

While it’s difficult to compare the role of funk in wine and perfume, understanding how perfumes are structured can lend textural backdrop to our own animalistic proclivities, suggests Schmitt.

For centuries, substances like musk, civet or castoreum, historically extracted from animals, were added to perfume as stabilizers to extend the longevity of aromas. Musk, a pheromone secreted by male musk deer to attract females, is particularly ubiquitous in perfume, although synthesized artificially today.

“Musk has a deep, intensely sweaty character, like the sweat of lions or tigers in the zoo,” says Schmitt.

Aromas of animal sweat, fur or sexual glands might seem “dirty, uncomfortable or even disgusting when isolated,” Schmitt explains. “But just a hint in perfume gives structure, a kind of suave character, something sensual. It makes perfume warmer, more attractive.”

Similarly, feral, even fecal notes in wine can be alluring in small doses. Indeed, historically, wines from classic regions like the Rhône, Burgundy or Bordeaux were habitually described as “rustic” in style, often with barnyard, fecal or sweaty characteristics attributed to the soulfulness of French terroir.

Until the late 20th century, however, funk of some sort could be expected in most wines regardless of origin. The squeaky clean, impeccably fruit-forward wines that consumers take for granted today are direct results of strident advances in modern winery hygiene and winemaking technology. Temperature-controlled tanks, mechanical filtration and selective cultured yeast, for example, all gave winemakers an unprecedented ability to take control over the style of wines they produced.

OLD TIME FUNK AND SOUL

Seemingly funky characteristics like cat pee in Sauvignon Blanc, burnt rubber in South African Pinotage, petrol in Riesling or barnyard in French wines were all considered inherent and unavoidable in these wines historically. Today, these traits can all be traced to compounds arising from specific vineyard or cellar practices, most of which can be controlled, even eradicated, by modern winemakers.

Barnyard and sweaty horse, for example, point to the presence of Brettanomyces, a spoilage yeast which runs amok in contaminated barrels and produces odorous compounds like 4-ethylphenol or 4-ethylguaiacol. While historically common, particularly in red wines, few commercial producers make “Bretty” wines with intent or consistency these days.

“We live in a time when the majority of winegrowers produce quality wines because consumers are more and more demanding,” says Benoit Brotte, fifth-generation winegrower at Maison Brotte, a family winery founded in Châteauneuf-du-Pape in 1931. As a winegrower, Brotte suggests, it’s his responsibility to make wines that express the region’s terroir and grapes, avoiding deviations like faults.

Yet some wine lovers do find themselves nostalgic for a bit of old-time funk in their wines. With a balanced touch, even spoilage yeasts like Brettanomyces “can add really beautiful, savory, earthy, gamy characteristics that define a lot of the wines I’ve loved in the world,” says Bates. “A lot of modern wines tend to be focused on just fruit, and oftentimes, I find them to be a bit boring. They’re missing those savory, spicy things that made classic wines so delicious.” Despite being a longtime devotee and collector of wines from Châteauneuf-du-Pape, Bates says he typically does not buy wines produced in the region after the early 2000s.

For Jean-Pierre Brotte, Benoit’s grandfather who helmed the winery until the mid-‘80s, the quality and cleanliness of contemporary wines produced in Châteaneuf-du-Pape are a point of pride, not regret. Through the ‘90s, he says, wines from the region were “too often rustic and grossier [rough or crude], with a warm taste of wine lees.”

Moreover, critics like Schmitt refute the notion that Brettanomyces gives a wine complexity. Simply put, “Brettanomyces gives you a fault,” he says. While he has no quarrels with those who harbor a sweet spot for Brett, “I always push my clients to avoid Brettanomyces because it makes a wine less pure, less transparent or limpid. It’s like a veil: When you have too much Brettanomyces, it becomes a character that dominates, making it impossible to perceive the true complexity of a wine.”

A BALANCING ACT

Still, many in the wine industry admit the pendulum shift towards ultra-clean, ultra-technical wines reached extremes in the last few decades of the 20th century.

“Everything got big in the ‘90s,” says Kirk Wille, president and director of marketing at Loosen Bros. USA, a leading importer of German wines. “Big wineries were filtering perfectly clean juice. Sulfur levels and must weights, they all went pretty high.”

Eventually, suggests Wille, “we kind of peaked with this ultra-clean, over-sanitized style of winemaking.”

Of course, with every action, there is an equally fervent reaction. And today, we find ourselves in the crux of two polar extremes in the wine world. Globally speaking, wines have never been as clean, fruity and sculpted as they are today. At the same time, the natural wine movement, born out of revolt against the horrors of industrialized, manipulated winemaking, is increasingly attracting a mainstream audience with messages that aren’t always cogent.

The proliferation of natural wines in all their various creeds have influenced a new generation of consumers to select wines that align with their values. “The enthusiasm for natural wines makes sense,” says Benoit Brotte, following a basic ideal of “eating better and drinking better.” But it has also fostered a counterculture that embraces not just funk, but faults in their worst iterations.

“There’s a group out there that’s just looking for the funk,” says Wille. Misguided devotion to the natural wine movement, suggests Wille, “seems to be training an entire generation that poorly made, filthy wines are somehow to be desired for their supposed authenticity and vitality.”

“Our wineries are maintaining a longer tradition,” says Wille about his company’s wine portfolio. “We want the kind of funk that’s expressive of a place. We believe in the concept of terroir and the hand of the winemaker, but funk that results from unclean winemaking has nothing to do with expressing a vineyard anymore, it only has to do with the kind of bacteria that got into your wine.”

As with music, it’s an acknowledgement that there is something soul-shaking about funk in wine, but that funk alone should never have been the end game. Extremely funky wines may be tussling for their moment in the mainstream, but whether they’ll be just another eccentric trend or evolve into something even more extraordinary, in the pursuit of balance between the immaculate and soulful, remains to be seen.