the history of
Natural Wine
what's the difference?
Natural Wine
Natural wine is simple — it's a philosophy of low intervention winemaking used by a few winemakers to let the grapes express their character as best they can. Once organically grown grapes are harvested, they are fermented using naturally occurring ambient yeasts, with no foreign ingredients added, and nothing removed from the wine. In other words, wine made from one single ingredient: grapes.
What's the difference?
Conventional Wine
In conventional wine, grapevines are sprayed with synthetic chemicals to improve yields, and the wine has been shaped by machines and various regulatory bodies of government. With 72 perfectly legal and completely unnecessary additives, these are wines that can hide their faults. Using things like egg whites for clarification, sulfur derivatives and enzymes for preservation, and refined sugar to kickstart the fermentation process.
“Natural wine is not new; it is what wine always was, and yet, somehow today it has become a rarity. It is a tiny drop in a big ocean, but, oh my, what a drop.”
Isabelle Legeron