APRIL 2020 – Pinot gris

Natural Wine

 We all have our favourite wines, producers and styles - the wines that we rely on for familiar tastes, textures and quality - something that we might call ‘normal’. Wine, like most popular things, is also subject to fashion - with trends emerging from time to time (an example being the current rise in popularity of vegan wine). 

Another increasingly emerging term is ‘natural’ wine’. The same discussion may cover organic or bio-dynamic wine, and for some readers an orange wine. What is ‘Natural wine’ and is it real? 

Be careful when including these categories under the one heading – where organic and bio-dynamic winemaking practices have strict regulations attached, officially when describing a wine as natural there is no specific legal definition, no rule book written and guidelines are not enforceable. It’s a term that is creeping into wine vocabulary without a clear perception of boundaries. 

Wine as we know it does not occur naturally in nature because there are no conditions in a spontaneous and connected sequence where wine is just there (the grape berries may ferment without interference, but the juice would need to be collected and preserved in some way). People learned long ago how to harness, propagate and intervene in every aspect of grape growing and wine production. 

There are many winemaking decisions made – including fermentations that are allowed to happen on their own – a spontaneous, natural ferment can happen easily and is a common technique, but this does not define a wine as ‘natural’. The lack of fining agents can render a wine vegan friendly and organically grown fruit can add extra complexity and minerality to wine. These techniques have been explored, developed and documented over decades with each adding to our modern wine producing world.

Natural wine has somehow become a new and sometimes confusing term that appears to be intended to describe a wine with a lack of intervention from farmers and winemakers producing a beverage that is different and somehow ‘natural’. This idea is further confused through other common terms (some found on a wine label) which include wild fermentation, no added preservatives, no adjustments, no filtering or fining and any solids or suspended particles remaining in the juice at time of bottling become part of the wine’s voice. These legitimate and often used techniques some in combination also do not define a wine as natural.

Sometimes the results of these processes can be expressions of wine that quite literally take on a life of their own because many of the standard controls engaged by winemakers are left to chance. If there’s a fault – and there are many that can occur - you won’t really know until you open the bottle, taste it and make a judgment call. This is a part of the modern evolution of winemaking, and exploration and experimentation are important considerations.