Why natural wines?

There’s no legally defined criteria nor universally accepted definition of what can be called a “natural wine”. So the term can be ambiguous.

I see “natural wine” phenomenon as the combination of two ideas:

- small producers

- sustainable farming, along with low-intervention winemaking.

No large industrial manufacturers but instead, small producers and family-run businesses. Artisans, in a sense of master craftsmen, who have honed their skills through years of practice and training. This involves lots of manual labor, small scale and tiny quantities, focused on quality and authenticity. It’s distinct from mass-produced wines.

Grapes for natural wine are grown using sustainable farming methods, usually organic or biodynamic, without the use of chemical fertilizers, pesticides, and other artificial inputs. Healthy grapes translate a genuine sense of the place.

In the cellar, there is a minimal intervention in the winemaking process. Grapes are fermented using wild yeasts instead of commercially cultured yeasts. During the fermentation process, little to no sulfur is added to the wine.

There is no manipulation of the wine, such as acidification, chaptalization or clarification, and filtration is often minimal…