Filtration

Sorry to quibble, Oliver, but I think it's important because there seems to be a lot of misconception about this: wines aren't "put through" MLF; that phrasing suggests that MLF is an intervention of some kind. MLF will happen naturally if it's not too cold and there's enough malic acid to convert. If it is inhibited in most Italian whites using sterile filtration of some kind, as you suggest, then that is the intervention, not the other way around.
 
While we're quibbling, Oswaldo, I suppose one could say that anything more organized than allowing bunches of grapes to fall into a convenient depression in the ground and ferment by themselves is an 'intervention,' the only question is where on the intervention continuum does one choose to perch. Many winemakers do indeed put wines through ML (or hasten its onset) very deliberately, for example by warming a cellar and adding selected ML bacteria; some inhibit it by low temperature, SO2 and sterile filtration. Some 'interventions' such as filtration and addition of yeast attract much more attention than others, I am not sure why.

I would imagine that many French classic whites are similarly treated, for example Muscadet and Sancerre?
 
My response wasn't so much about the intervention aspect - I share some of your misgivings about the whole idea of non-intervention - but about MLF being something that winemakers are responsible for. Only when they prevent it from happening is it a tool in their repertoire of techniques.
 
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