Natural wine: A lens on the future of wine and winemaking
It’s a term that takes in many styles of wine and approaches in vineyard and winery, but natural wine is undoubtedly inspiring a surge in interest from intrigued consumers and the specialist retailers who offer them. We look at what lies behind the natural wine movement’s influence on the winemaking of today and tomorrow.
I’ll never forget the moment Pierre Overnoy handed me a jar containing a cluster of Ploussard grapes, harvested on 2 July 1991: a preserved piece of the natural world from my birth year. As I was departing, the pioneering Jura winemaker gave me a loaf of homemade bread.
For the winemakers who gave birth to what has become known as the natural wine movement, this love for nature, combined with a paysan mindset, lies at the core of not only their approach to wine, but to life.
Ten natural wine recommendations below
It was this approach that resonated with me when I first came across natural wine in my mid-20s. I was quick to embrace it.
Bottles such as Guy Breton’s 1989 Morgon, experiences with wines by the Jura’s Houillon-Overnoy and Domaine des Miroirs, the Mosel’s Rita and Rudolf Trossen, Pierre Frick in Alsace, Maison Valette in Burgundy, as well as meeting their farmers and makers, saw me fall head-overheels for wine made without sulphites (SO2).
Years later, I now hesitate to use the term ‘natural wine’. It’s not because I don’t love these wines anymore – quite the opposite, I love them more than ever – rather it’s the term that I find problematic, as it lacks a specific definition.
When we try to define complex topics in simplistic terms, it leaves room for misuse. When somebody tells you a wine is natural, you can’t take it for granted. Only with research can you decide.
The first question should be: does it come from a truly healthy environment? As Jean-Philippe Bret of Domaine La Soufrandière/Bret Brothers in the Mâconnais summarises: ‘To make natural wine from grapes grown with synthetic chemicals is simply impossible. We must return to a form of living agriculture.’
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Dedicated winemakers are working to better understand their wines and vineyards, and to ensure that they are as full of life as possible to cope with an uncertain future climate. It’s their efforts that deserve centre stage.
What is natural wine?
The first mentions of natural wine during the 1800s focused on eschewing additions in winemaking, namely sugar (chaptalisation). By the 1980s, winemakers were embracing organics, noting significant improvements in both vineyard and fermentation health.
Today, it’s generally agreed that natural wine should be farmed organically or biodynamically, should be made with minimal intervention (meaning no techniques such as flash pasteurisation) and without additives. Most also feel it should be unfined and unfiltered.
The only substantial area of disagreement is over the addition of sulphites (sulphur dioxide, essentially, which can be used at various stages in the winemaking process to help prevent oxidation in the wine) – among natural wine advocates, some say that none should be added, some say only up to 30ppm, others say less than 70ppm.
Getting to know microbes
In the 1970s, under the guidance of biochemist and négociant Jules Chauvet, Beaujolais winemaker Marcel Lapierre shifted to organic farming and started to shun additions, instead using a microscope to assess yeast and bacteria. Soon others joined him, including Guy Breton, who made his first vintage in 1988.
‘After five years of farming organically, we saw a real increase in yeast strains,’ says Breton. ‘It takes at least that long for soil to heal from herbicide. Fermentations became healthier and faster.
Even just 500m apart, healthy vineyards can have completely different yeast populations. If you ferment naturally, this gives your wines completely different tastes.’
The next generation of Beaujolais winemakers continues this work. Camille Lapierre of Domaine Marcel Lapierre explains that microscopes have become more precise, enabling them to spot yeasts they hadn’t seen previously: were they there before, or have they recently arrived? Time will reveal more.
Paul-Henri Thillardon of Domaine Thillardon, based in Chénas, which he runs with his brother Charles, travels across French regions with like-minded winemakers and his microscope. Their united goal is to better understand the changes in wine microbiology that are taking place due to climate change, and to seek solutions to problems.
In Cambria, California, Rajat Parr of Phelan Farm cultivates a diverse microbial population in the soil by composting, as well as spraying turmeric, neem oil, nettles, willow and oak bark, milk thistle, honey, thyme, horsetail, kelp, Pacific Ocean water and fish-bone emulsion, thereby improving vineyard health and resilience.
Lab analysis of Parr’s soils by Brian Vagg, a consultant at Dr Elaine’s Soil Food Web School, showed a significant increase in the fungal population in a period of just 15 months from July 2022 to October 2023, as well as a marked and beneficial decrease in the bacterial population.
Angiolino Maule of La Biancara near Gambellara, in Veneto, is so dedicated to natural wine that in 2006 he founded VinNatur.
The non-profit association, which now has more than 300 winemaker members in 12 countries, funds research by soil scientists, entomologists, oenologists and agronomists, including a study by analysts FoodMicroTeam of the complexities of ‘mouse taint’, a phenomenon caused by lactic acid bacteria.
Maule says: ‘To make good natural wine you need much more knowledge than for making good conventional wine. With climate change, by working with open-minded researchers, we can get to the bottom of these challenges, too.
The plant kingdom
Vineyards were once criss-crossed with trees, fields and livestock, but when globalisation took hold, and tractors arrived, in just one generation many landscapes became monocultures. Faced with the threat of species loss, accelerating pest outbreaks and grapevine diseases, many winegrowers are reverting.
In Sicily, Arianna Occhipinti says that 50% of her farm is planted to wheat, olive groves, citrus fruits, pears, vegetable gardens, rotational arable land, forest and Mediterranean scrub. This includes small plots of indigenous species, otherwise in danger of abandonment.
‘This is my contribution to saving species,’ says Occhipinti. ‘Vineyards are more resilient in polyculture. A balance gives energy to the vineyards, and to the people working here.’
In the Loire valley’s Anjou region, Stéphanie Debout and Vincent Bertin of Deboutbertin work with agroforestry: vineyards surrounded by hedges and some co-planted with trees. This involves either climate-resilient trees or indigenous fruit trees from the regional fruit-species preservation association Les Croqueurs de Pommes.
‘It’s depressing to walk through a vineyard home to just vines,’ says Bertin. ‘It feels like a place of work only. Walking through a parcel with trees growing, fruit ripening, flowers blooming, birds and insects – that brings pleasure.’
He adds that it’s fragile economically to produce only grapes; working with additional crops provides security.
In the Jura in eastern France, Katie Worobeck of Maison Maenad is planting trees within rows, ‘to create as biodiverse an environment as possible, within a cultivated environment’.
She checks that the species she plants have the same mycorrhizal networks (underground expanses of fungal filaments that form connections between plant root systems) as grapevines, that they tolerate pruning and provide dappled shade, and aren’t susceptible to mildew.
She began among the Poulsard vines, a variety that’s prone to sunburn. In Mâcon, renowned botanist Gérard Ducerf has assessed vastly diverse species in Maison Valette’s indigenous cover crop.
The past decades have seen significant decline in the diversity of grape varieties planted. In her article ‘A resource for the world?’ in Decanter’s September 2024 issue, Dr Laura Catena, founder of the Catena Institute of Wine in Argentina, stated: ‘In general, there has been a dramatic reduction in genetic diversity within many of the noble grape varieties over the last century.’
In Trentino, northeast Italy, Elisabetta Foradori saved the genetic diversity of her region’s indigenous variety Teroldego by planting massal selections (propagated using cuttings from a diverse selection of vines with desirable characteristics) when others were only planting clones.
She also began a breeding programme, propagating Teroldego seedlings. To further enhance biodiversity, she breeds Tyrolean Grey cattle and her daughter Myrtha Zierock has implemented market gardening.
Globally, winemakers are also turning to hybrid grape varieties, which are often more resistant to climatic extremes and disease pressures. In Vermont, USA, Deirdre Heekin of La Garagista proves they can create profound wines.
The animal kingdom
Hooves, trotters or claws on the ground combat monoculture. Jura domaine Les Dolomies had a vineyard that frequently succumbed to budworm – moth larvae that have a habit of hollowing out flower buds from the inside. Integrating 50 chickens solved the problem: they happily feasted on them.
Some winemakers have returned to ploughing by horse, such as Anjou’s Deboutbertin and the Thillardons in Chénas, or even harvesting by horse, as at Les Frères Soulier in the Gard, west of Avignon, or by donkey at Les Dolomies. Soil compaction is lessened, and manure forms a key ingredient for compost.
Charlotte Touati-Houillon, of Domaine Houillon in the Vaucluse, southern Rhône, uses manure as a component when making label parchment, having learnt the technique during her previous career translating ancient manuscripts as a historian in Ethiopia.
With her husband Aurélien – brother of Emmanuel and Adeline Houillon in Jura – they focus on rare breeds, such as the Poitevin horse (in 2011 there were just over 300 breeding horses, according to specialist Cécile Zahorka at thepixelnomad.com), the Poitou donkey (which was not far from extinction by the 1970s, according to livestockconservancy.org), and miniature Mediterranean donkeys.
‘If we don’t continue breeding and conservation, eventually we’ll only have two horse breeds and two grape varieties,’ says Touati-Houillon. ‘We can each do our bit to safeguard diversity. It can be beneficial when a pandemic occurs, and there’s the emotional side of looking after breeds of which only few individuals survive.’
At Phelan Farm, Rajat Parr tends sheep, protected from mountain lions by Maremma dogs, for grazing and biodiversification.
In Austria’s Weinviertel, Johannes Zillinger also seeks these benefits with his Ouessant sheep and Kune Kune pigs, which live in his vineyards. The lanolin in sheep’s wool is evidently a natural deterrent to deer, and he supplies his extended family with pork from happy pigs.
‘In our village, we have two huge indoor conventional pig farmers with 3,000 or more pigs,’ says Zillinger. ‘For many, pigs are just “walking money”. Our 40 pigs live in 3ha of vineyards, with two ponds. You see how happy they are. Why should a vineyard only be a vineyard?’
When visiting Beaujolais recently, I met a cow. She had been lovingly raised by Bénédicte and Emmanuel Leroy of Champagne Ruppert-Leroy in the Côte des Bar, and was soon to be integrated into the Thillardon herd in exchange for 90 bottles of their wine.
This represents the very essence of permaculture: to live from your land and to share produce. Both domaines work in polyculture – a decision rooted in a love for biodiversity, animals and, most crucially of all, for people.
‘When talking about natural wine, we must talk about the social aspect,’ says Emmanuel Leroy. ‘Given that consumers expect cheap produce, agriculture and human beings are in grave danger – people even take their own lives.
‘With Paul-Henri Thillardon, we often discuss that our domaines will only function if the people working with us are happy and feel a sense of belonging. Across France, you see vineyard workers, often from abroad, being paid a pittance. For us, it’s crucial that we pay our employees well, and look after them. Every day, we have lunch together, with produce from our farm.’
Open minds, broader palates
Once niche, styles such as pétillant naturel – the ‘ancestral method’ in which efferevescence is created in a wine by bottling it before it has completed its single fermentation – and wines matured under a layer of flor are now celebrated: the Jura’s Stéphane Tissot is globally renowned for several single-vineyard vins jaunes.
Orange wine has also crossed multiple borders. Maria and Sepp Muster, Weingut Werlitsch (Brigitte and Ewald Tscheppe) and Andreas Tscheppe (Ewald’s brother) were inspired by the likes of Italy’s Joško Gravner to create their own spellbinding examples in Styria, Austria.
In Germany, Petra Kujanpää of Mosel’s Shadowfolk created The Mystics, macerated for up to 350 days.
‘I love skin-macerated wines,’ she says, ‘because the terroir is still there, but they give you a whole new dimension of texture and flavours.’
Mphumeleli Ndlangisa of Magna Carta Wines in South Africa was inspired to make orange wine by his love of the wines of Georgia. Now that he has his own farm and vineyards in Swartland, he hopes to go so far as to make his own clay vessels.
Many of his wine names feature his indigenous language, Zulu: ‘I’m really trying to find an African style, and to work with what we have locally,’ he says. ‘The DNA of this place is in the clay.’
Sulphite exploration
Commonly used in wine production for their antiseptic and antioxidant properties, sulphites can alter wine’s structure and taste. The wish to intervene less, to transparently show a sense of place, lies behind winemakers’ decisions to work without them, or to use them at lower doses.
Jean-Philippe Bret (pictured above) has had success with microdoses in the Zen cuvées at Bret Brothers and La Soufrandière, adding sometimes as little as 5 parts per million (ppm) – in the EU, regulations permit up to 200ppm (or mg/L) in dry white wine.
Yet for him, even a tiny amount can give microorganisms a ‘shock’, preventing a potentially problematic microbial party.
Instead of using sulphites produced as a by-product of the petrochemical industry (the norm), Mark and Martial Angeli of Anjou’s La Ferme de La Sansonnière work with mined Polish sulphur; they find that this gives significantly different results, barely affecting the wines.
Also in the Loire, Virginie Joly of La Coulée de Serrant adds that sometimes it enables her to reduce doses.
During Rajat Parr’s sommelier career, he found himself drawn to wines made entirely without added sulphites, notably Thierry Allemand’s cuvée from the northern Rhône. Wines at Phelan Farm in California have been made without sulphites thus far.
‘Wine made without sulphites,’ says Parr, ‘is like listening to a vinyl record or taking a photo with an analogue camera – you have the raw version. It’s not necessarily better, but the vibration feels higher. If I’m going to spend so much time taking care of a vineyard, why would I dilute the fruit’s rawness?’
The future of wines like these relies on their people. Only fairly treated, thriving human beings can cultivate thriving vineyard ecosystems. In turn, only thriving vineyard ecosystems can create grapes that can be transformed into wines that truly tug at our heartstrings.
Honey Spencer recommends these low intervention wines…
Guy Breton, P’tit Max Morgon, Beaujolais, France 2020
Guy Breton’s P’tit Max cuvée represents his nickname as the son of Max Breton. From vines up to 130 years old, Breton crafts his wines for precision and finesse over opulence or power. Fermented with native yeasts, P’tit Max goes through carbonic maceration, whereby whole clusters see a maceration in tank (the duration depends on the conditions of the vintage) followed by 10-12 months’ elevage in old barrels and a minute dose of SO2. P’tit Max is imbued with the chiselled energy afforded by Morgon’s granite bedrock combined with a distinctive spice coming from Breton’s oldest vines. Pair with autumn game meats and other umami-led dishes such as risotto with dried morels.
La Biancara, Monte Sorio Passito, Veneto, Italy 2017
An enthralling passito sweet wine from the bucolic hillsides of Veneto’s Sorio di Gambellara. Made from Gargenega under the guidance of biodynamic veterans Rosamaria and Angiolino Maule. Handselected bunches are strung up in the winery for three months in order to concentrate the sugars before fermentation at the turn of the year, with indigenous yeast in stainless steel tanks. The wine is then committed to barrel and released after three and a half years. A rich amber, this has layers of stem ginger, raisin and almond. An affable companion to blue cheeses such a Roquefort, as well as desserts of like-minded sweetness and viscosity, such as tarte tatin (or better yet, the two combined).
Maison Maenad, De L’Avant, Côtes du Jura, France 2021
A singular Chardonnay from a parcel of old vines in Jura’s Sud Revermont region. Canadian Katie Worobeck perfectly captures the vibratory qualities made available by the ancient Jurassic terroir. Grapes are added to a manual vertical press and subsequent movements are facilitated only by gravity before 12 months’ ageing in old demi-muids. Notes redolent of late-summer citrus and river stones precede a staggering vibrancy on the palate. At Sune restaurant (in Hackney, east London), we pour the few bottles afforded to us alongside roast monkfish, nori and sake lees emulsion.
Foradori, Granato Teroldego, Vigneti delle Dolomiti, Alto Adige, Italy 2018
Granato, first bottled in 1989 (the 1988 vintage) by Elizabetta Foradori, displays the family’s determination, exemplifying the potential of both local native variety Teroldego and ambitious biodynamic farming. The Foradori formula has proven unflinchingly unerring for more than 30 years. Dark, fleshy and muscular with contours of smoke and a savoury finish, Granato is the Foradori family’s expression of the best selected parcels, clusters and vessels. Pour alongside smoked meats or game such as venison with a blackberry jus.
Phelan Farm, Trousseau, San Luis Obispo, California, USA 2021
A high-toned and haunting take on Jura’s prized (alongside Poulsard/Ploussard) black variety Trousseau. From the cool coastal town of Cambria on the northerly fringes of California’s San Luis Obispo coast and made by sommelier turned viticulturist and winemaker Rajat Parr. In 2021, grapes were retained as whole clusters and fermented with native yeast, followed by maturation in neutral oak barrels and bottling via gravity with no SO2 additions. On the palate, the wine is open-hearted and supple with a redcurrant coulis fragrance. I’ve always been a fan of Trousseau at the end of a meal, with a plate of hard cheeses such as Comté, but game or mushroom terrines would work equally well.
Ruppert-Leroy, Fosse Grely Brut Nature, Champagne, France NV
The lieu-dit of Fosse Grely, in southern Champagne’s Côte des Bar region, is where Bénédicte Leroy’s father Gérard Ruppert chose to plant the domaine’s inaugural vines. But it wasn’t until his daughter and her partner Emmanuel showed an interest in taking over the family business that the first wine was made at the domaine, allowing the couple to harness the full potential of the meticulously kept, relatively high-elevation organic vineyards (at 260m). The Fosse Grely vineyard is perched atop a thick layer of limestone with a thin covering of red clay and small stones. A decisive and dazzlingly pure expression of Pinot Noir and Chardonnay (50% each), with 20 months on lees, no sulphites and no dosage. A subtle black pepper spice pervades at first, giving way to warm lemon skin, flat white peach and shortbread. Best paired with siu mai dumplings or fried chicken with crème fraîche and roe.
La Garagista, Harlots & Ruffians, Vermont, USA 2022
While Vermont is technically within the latitudinal limits of global grape-growing (30°-50°), Vitis vinifera vines have limited ability to survive the harsh winters this far north, which has prompted growers to plant hybrid varieties that are more frost resistant. Deirdre Heekin’s Harlots & Ruffians is a field blend of two such hybrids, 75% La Crescent and 25% Frontenac Gris, which are both able to withstand temperatures of -35°C. With native-yeast fermentation, no filtration and zero SO2 addition, Heekin is able to craft a wine that’s dry yet detailed, with myriad orchard fruits and a dusting of baking spices. A good contender for veg-led dishes such as cucumber with whipped feta, quiches or white fish.
Andreas Tscheppe, Stag Beetle, Styria, Austria 2021
I defy any wine lover not to be bowled over by Elisabeth and Andreas Tscheppe’s triumphant skin-contact wine Stag Beetle. It’s a blend of 60% Sauvignon Blanc and 40% Chardonnay, two varieties that seem to pick up electric momentum from the region’s opok soils: compacted clay and silty limestone deposits. As amber wines continue to enjoy a modern resurgence, cuvées such as this serve as a benchmark for quality and character for the category. Harvested by hand from the Tscheppes’ steep, biodynamically farmed slopes, the grapes see extended skin contact of five weeks before being transferred to a 600L barrel, which is then planted in the ground over winter to harness energy from the soil. It’s bottled after 24 months. Densely structured and utterly alive: tropical fruits bed in with crushed rocks and minerals in the glass.
Rita & Rudolf Trossen, Lay Purus Riesling, Mosel, Germany 2019
Not all producers are capable of making wine without the addition of sulphites, but Rita and Rudolf Trossen, who have been certified organic and working in accordance with biodynamic principles since the 1980s, certainly are. Lay Purus comes from 40-year-old vines on some of Mosel’s steepest slopes and forms part of the Purus series: wines made without any additives whatsoever since 2010. The Trossens opt instead for extended lees ageing to ensure biological stability before bottling. Precise and high-toned, with layers of umami, almond and apricot. The natural wine for those who ‘don’t do’ natural wine.
La Ferme de la Sansonnière, La Lune, Loire, France 2022
It’s hard to know what came first, the term ‘unicorn wine’ or Mark Angeli’s otherworldly Vin de France cuvée La Lune, with its signature purple unicorn on the label. What is clear is the defiant mastery of the Angeli family (Mark works with his son Martial) in turning wines from a historically sweet wine appellation (AP Bonnezeaux in the Loire valley’s Anjou) into dry, crystalline iterations of local varieties. Made from 100% Chenin Blanc, there is both a confected element to the fruit profile and a current pulsing through it that would leave many uninitiated blind tasters scratching their heads. An elixir to drink whenever possible, to remind us of the unadulterated joys wine can add to life here on Earth. Pair with soft goat’s cheese, cooked seafood or any dessert that isn’t overly sweet.