Somewhere around the second evening of every tour, a guest puts a glass down and asks whether what they are drinking is natural wine. It happens at a family table in Georgia’s Kakheti, with an amber Rkatsiteli drawn straight from the qvevri, and it happens in a cellar an hour from my door in Brno, in South Moravia, Czechia, with a hazy Pálava. The honest answer is that the phrase has no fixed meaning. It does have a working meaning among the people who make it, sell it and argue about it, and this is my attempt to write that down, including what natural wine is not.
The short version#
Natural wine is wine from organically farmed grapes, fermented by the yeasts that arrive on their own, with nothing added and nothing taken away in the cellar, and with little or no sulfur added at bottling. That is the producers’ own consensus. Everything else people associate with it, haziness, orange colour, clay vessels, barnyard smells, is either a frequent side effect or a separate decision.
Two things follow. Natural is a set of choices, not a certificate; nobody inspects it, with one French exception, below. And it describes the process, not the result. A natural wine can be clean and precise, or it can be faulty, exactly as a conventional wine can.
It starts in the vineyard#
Almost every definition begins with farming. Grapes for natural wine are grown without synthetic herbicides, pesticides or fertilisers, whether or not the grower has paid for organic certification. Many go further and farm biodynamically. Hand harvesting is close to universal, because a machine picks leaves, wasps and split berries along with the fruit, and a wine made without corrections has less margin for that.
The reason farming matters so much is yeast. A healthy vineyard carries its own yeasts on the skins and in the cellar walls. Systemic fungicides thin that population, and a packet of cultured yeast becomes the safe way to start a fermentation. Natural winemakers want the opposite: a fermentation that begins by itself, in its own time.
What happens in the cellar#
The cellar rules are mostly a list of things not done. No cultured yeast, no added sugar or acid, no enzymes or tannin powder, no fining with egg white, bentonite or gelatine, and usually no filtration. No reverse osmosis, spinning cone, flash heating, oak chips or micro-oxygenation. The one addition most natural producers allow themselves is a small dose of sulfur dioxide, and they argue about it constantly.
Vessels are not part of the definition. Stanko Radikon in Oslavia, in the Friuli Collio, fermented in open Slavonian oak vats and aged in large old casks, and his son Saša still does. Iago Bitarishvili in Chardakhi, in Georgia’s Kartli, ferments his Chinuri in buried qvevri. Marcel Lapierre in Morgon aged his Gamay in old oak foudres. Three vessels, one method: hands off once the grapes are in.
What replaces the tools is time and cold. Radikon’s public position was that years in large casks, not chemistry, bring a wine to stability; I wrote about a visit to Oslavia and what that patience tastes like. Many producers ferment reds whole-bunch and cool, as Lapierre did, so the wine keeps its own carbon dioxide as protection for longer.
Sulfites, the number everyone argues about#
Sulfur dioxide has been used in wine for centuries as an antioxidant and an antimicrobial. Yeast also make a small amount of it during fermentation, usually well under 20 mg/l, so “no sulfites” on a label is never literally true. The accurate phrase is “no added sulfites”.
Scale matters here. EU law allows up to 150 mg/l total sulfites in a dry red and 200 mg/l in a dry white or rosé, with more for sweet wines. Certified organic wine lowers those ceilings to 100 and 150. Anything above 10 mg/l must carry the words “contains sulfites”. Most natural producers work far below all of these, adding nothing or 10 to 30 mg/l at bottling.
Two honest notes. Sulfites are not the cause of most wine headaches; dried apricots are legally permitted far higher levels than any wine, and few people blame apricots. And a wine with no added sulfur is a more fragile object: it wants a cool cellar, a short trip home and a glass that is not too warm. The detail is in sulfites in wine.
Natural is not organic, and not biodynamic#
Organic is a farming certification. In the EU it has meant, since 2012, both organic grapes and a set of cellar rules, including the lower sulfite ceilings above, but it still permits cultured yeast, fining agents, filtration and a long list of other additives. An organic wine can be made in a steel tank at a large company and taste like its conventional neighbour. Iago Bitarishvili held the first organic certificate in Georgia, from 2005, and also makes natural wine; the two facts are related, but they are not the same fact. I tell that story from Chardakhi.
Biodynamic is organic farming plus Rudolf Steiner’s preparations and calendar, certified by Demeter or, in France, Biodyvin. It says a great deal about the vineyard and almost nothing about the cellar. Some biodynamic estates make natural wine; others make polished classic wine with commercial yeast and a normal sulfur regime. I keep the two words apart in biodynamic wine without mysticism.
Natural is not orange, and not qvevri#
Orange wine, or amber wine as Georgians prefer, is white grapes fermented on their skins. It is a technique, and a very old one, not a philosophy. Kakhetian qvevri wine has been made this way for centuries by farmers who never heard the word natural. Today an estate line such as Schuchmann’s Vinoterra ferments Kisi and Rkatsiteli on their skins in qvevri, then ages them in oak under a conventional sulfur regime: skin contact, clay, and not natural in the movement’s sense. Conversely, a great deal of natural wine is red, or white pressed straight off the skins, or lightly sparkling. See orange wine and skin contact and qvevri, karas and amphora.
The confusion runs the other way too. Joško Gravner of Oslavia visited Georgia in 2000 and buried his first qvevri in 2001; since then clay has been shorthand for natural in many wine bars. But a qvevri is a fermenter and a store. What matters is what goes in with the grapes, and what does not.
Where the movement came from#
Most histories start in Beaujolais. Jules Chauvet, a négociant and chemist in La Chapelle-de-Guinchay, spent decades working out how to make sound wine without added sulfur, using native yeasts and cool, whole-bunch fermentation. Marcel Lapierre in Villié-Morgon met him and from 1981 made his wines on those principles; his neighbours Jean Foillard, Guy Breton and Jean-Paul Thévenet followed, and the Paris bistros did the rest. The Lapierre story is where I would start.
The idea then travelled. In Friuli, Radikon went back to his grandfather’s skin fermentation in 1995 and co-founded the producer group ViniVeri in 2003; VinNatur followed in 2006 and now sends its members’ wines to a laboratory. In Georgia, where village cellars had never stopped, the Natural Wine Association was founded in Tbilisi in February 2017 by ten growers and holds the Zero Compromise fair each May. In Czechia, the growers’ group Autentisté took shape from 2008, signed its charter in 2011 and prefers the term autentické víno; its Prague fair is Prague Drinks Wine. Several of its members work within an hour of my door.
The legal position#
Almost none. “Natural” is not a regulated term in the EU, the United States or Georgia, and any producer may print it. The exception is France, where the Vin méthode nature charter was recognised by the authorities in March 2020: certified organic grapes, hand harvest, indigenous yeasts, no additives, no heavy processing, and either zero added sulfites or under 30 mg/l, each tier with its own logo. Elsewhere the definitions belong to producer associations and fairs, and they do not fully agree. That is untidy, and it is why you should ask the person pouring rather than trust the label.
The faults question#
The usual criticism of natural wine is that it is dirty: mousy, vinegary, fizzy when it should be still. The usual defence is that this is character. I accept neither whole.
Mousiness, high volatile acidity and refermentation in the bottle are faults. They happen more often without sulfur, because sulfur is the tool that prevents them. But they are not the definition, and the producers I visit are the first to pour a faulty bottle away. A good natural wine tastes, first of all, like wine, often with more texture and a little more air around the fruit. If a bottle tastes of mouse, the winemaker made a mistake, not a statement.
What I pour#
I take no side. On my tours a Vinoterra Kisi and a Pheasant’s Tears Kisi can stand on one table in Kakheti, and the interesting conversation is about two winemakers’ decisions, not about which one is virtuous. That is the point of the Georgia routes, and sharper still in the Friuli Collio, where Oslavia’s skin-fermented whites sit a few kilometres from polished classic estates on the same hills.
The tours where the question comes up most are the Kakheti qvevri week, the Friuli and Collio orange wine tour and the Jura and Beaujolais route. Bring the questions. The winemakers answer them better than I do.
