⌈ Regions & Styles ⌉

What is natural wine?

The philosophy, the practice, and the controversy

Quick answer

Natural wine is made with minimal intervention in the vineyard and cellar — typically organic or biodynamic farming, native yeast fermentation, no fining or filtration, and little or no added sulphites. There is no legal definition; the term is a philosophy rather than a certification.

Natural wine has no single agreed definition, which makes it simultaneously appealing to its advocates (who see the absence of rules as true freedom) and frustrating to its critics (who argue the lack of standards enables poor winemaking to hide behind the "natural" label).

The core principles shared by most natural wine producers: grapes farmed organically or biodynamically, without synthetic pesticides or herbicides; fermentation using only indigenous ("wild") yeasts present on the grape skins, rather than inoculated commercial yeasts; no or very low sulphite additions (conventional wine uses sulphur dioxide as a preservative and antioxidant); no fining (using egg white, clay, or other agents to clarify the wine) or filtration; no acidification, chaptalization (sugar addition), or other technological adjustments.

The result can be extraordinary wines of great complexity and site expression — or cloudy, volatile, unpredictable wines that would be considered faults in conventional winemaking. The difference lies in the skill and honesty of the producer.

Key takeaways

Natural wine = minimal intervention: organic/biodynamic farming, wild yeast, no/low sulphites, no fining or filtration.
There is no legal definition — it is a philosophy, not a certification.
The movement originated in Beaujolais and the Loire Valley in the 1980s–1990s.
Orange wine (white grapes with skin contact) is closely associated with natural wine.
Quality varies widely — the best are exceptional, the worst are faulty.

The natural wine movement emerged in France in the 1980s and 1990s, primarily among Beaujolais producers like Marcel Lapierre and in the Loire Valley. Its intellectual godfather is often cited as Jules Chauvet, a Beaujolais négociant and chemist who pioneered low-sulphite and no-sulphite winemaking in the 1980s.

Natural wine is now a global movement, with producers in Georgia (using ancient qvevri clay amphorae), Jura, Sicily, Spain, California, and New Zealand. Natural wine bars and bottle shops have proliferated in major cities. The orange wine phenomenon — white wine made with extended skin contact, producing amber colour and tannic structure — is closely associated with the natural wine world, though not identical to it.

Controversies: critics argue that "natural" is a marketing term, not a guarantee of quality; that wines made without sulphites are inherently unstable; and that some natural wines contain elevated levels of volatile acidity (VA), a fault-marker that renders wine unpleasant. Advocates argue that conventional wine contains a cocktail of permitted additives that consumers are unaware of, and that low-intervention wine is simply more honest.

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