INTRO TO NATURAL WINES

What is this new fandangled natural wine movement sweeping the nation? What does natural even mean? Isn’t all wine natural? So many questions! 

First, it isn’t exactly new at all. Many of the attributes associated with so-called natural wine are ancient practices that have been with civilization for millenia. And it turns out there’s no set list of requirements to deem a wine as natural. There is no certification for the natural wine designation either. It certainly depends on who you ask. And, while you won’t see natural wine necessarily listed on a label, you might see it marketed as such. We’re here to help you untangle this intricate web, and with any luck, help you learn to navigate the often confusing, and even overwhelming wine world we live in. 

There’s a few themes common with natural wines, which we’ll explore in this release: wild yeast, sustainable agriculture, and low intervention practices in the winery.

The most agreed upon criteria is that the grapes and resultant juice would have been fermented by indigenous yeast (aka native, ambient, or wild yeast), which is to say - the yeast around us doing their thing, by virtue of airborne microbes which land on those plump vineyard clusters just waiting for the grapes to ripen. The main yeast species is Saccharomyces cerevisiae (also common in brewing and breadmaking) and has hundreds? Thousands? of strains - new strains are discovered all the time! Modern science has isolated strains and allowed experimentation with them in labs, with winemaking in mind.

Put on that winemaker beret for a moment. Let’s say you want an aromatic riesling that can ferment at high temperature and also be super boozy. There’s a strain of yeast specific to get those results. Add the powdered form to your freshly pressed juice or lightly foot-tread must, and WHAM. You’ve got a fermentation going at high velocity! This can be quite helpful to a winery. You’ll know exactly what you’re going to get, you can reliably make the same product vintage after vintage, and you can make a lot of it. However, what you gain in consistency, you lose in complexity. Those inoculated (cultivated, un-natural, lab-made) yeasts are potent by design and will out compete all those beautiful native yeasts that come in off the skins. All the different strains of yeast were going to make a bouquet of aromatic compounds called phenolics, which would have made your wine quite nuanced by comparison. This is why natural wine, as opposed to conventional wine, is so freaking special, and leads us to the next point. 

Natural wines are low intervention, craft products, made by real people. Conventional wines are often produced like Coca-cola, and can have a bunch of gross shit in it. There’s little to no additives in natural wines including sulfur dioxide (i.e. sulfites), chemicals, or other fining agents. Fining is a process of adding stuff to a wine-in-progress to fix something like a bad smell or unwanted microbial bloom. The most common fining agent is bentonite - a type of clay also used for waterproofing basements. Others include egg whites (traditionally), crushed up fish bladder or crustacean shells, or even gelatin. When a wine is labeled vegan and you’re like, “what’s not vegan about fermented grape juice?” Well, that’s usually what that means. Sometimes, fining agents can be synthetic polymers that need to be filtered out of the wine. Filtering is an extractive process that remove unwanted compounds such as proteins that create haze or tartrate crystals (aka wine diamonds). A lot of commercially made wine is filtered because brilliantly clear bottles are what most wine consumers have come to expect. There’s also sterile filtering which will rid your wine of all wanted and unwanted microbes. If you are drinking natural wine, a lot of times it is unfined and unfiltered. After all the time and effort of a wild yeast ferment, why fuck with all that splendid character the wine developed? Sometimes, the stuff you don’t want just settles out in the tank, and all that intervention to “fix” the wine you’ve made was for nothing. To us, finding wine diamonds in your chard is akin to opening an oyster with a pearl inside - a glimmering celebration of imperfection. We are looking to bring you wines with less crap, less manipulation, and full of the goodness you deserve.

Similar to the low intervention production in the winery, natural wines come from vineyards practicing sustainable agriculture. This is as squishy a term as natural wine. But, it basically means that the growers are cultivating the earth, instead of trying to wield it. They aren’t using toxic chemicals. Many of the vineyards are dry farmed with no irrigation. Some of the vineyards are practicing or certified organic (Organic certification is expensive, and many natural producers find practicing acceptable - as do we.) A step further is a vineyard practicing or certified biodynamic. This involves a bit more rigor with hands in the earth and eyes toward the sky. It can vere headfirst into witchy territory, like burying sheep horns full of cow dung (fertilizer!) and relying on the lunar calendar to harvest. Lastly, regenerative agriculture is actually intended to heal the earth.These vineyards encourage biodiversity with layers of native flora abounding with farm animals roaming the vines. Many natural wine producers like to ensure fair and stable labor practices are conducted by the growers they support, as well. The grapes are often picked by hand with little to no mechanization. Applaud loudly. These are all uphill feats on a world full of mechanized commercial farms and  a planet circling complete environmental collapse. We’ll need the wine made with good intent when that happens. 

In conclusion, natural wine is a dynamic concept. Often these wines are higher in acid, and lower in alcohol. They are idiosyncratic and distinctive. They are fresh and alive. These wines more than anything, exhibit vitality that conventional wines simply could not.