What Is Natural Wine?

I love natural wines, but I am also a fan of reality. Sorry about this, but I need to pop a few myths about natural wine, but then we can

There is no such thing as a 100% natural wine.

Neither winemaking nor farming is a natural process. Along with tearing out all the native plants and ripping the soil apart when building a vineyard, those grape vines are far from natural. Humans spent ten thousand years breeding them to be both delicious and hermaphroditic. Plus, those vines haven’t survived on the ground for the last century due to parasites. They have been grafted onto lab-grown rootstocks.

Even in the wild, grape vines are considered an invasive species. According to Penn State (https://extension.psu.edu/invasive-weeds-wild-grape), Wild grape vines have a tendency to suffocate the trees they grow on. This is a known problem in Philly’s Wissahickon Valley Park. The work of local nonprofit groups like NotWeeds is to control the overflow of such vines.

Smart people don’t know what it is.

Even the greatest wine writers have been flummoxed by the concept of Natural Wine. I was fortunate to work as an editorial reader for the University of California Davis Press. One of the books I worked on was Jamie Goode’s Authentic Wine: Toward Natural and Sustainable Winemaking. He is one of my favorite wine writers of all time. His book, The Science of Wine, is essential reading in wine education.

Even Jamie couldn’t develop a clear and concise definition of natural wines despite a valiant effort. I think part of the problem is the name itself. It’s an umbrella for many winemaking approaches: Biodynamic, IPM (Integrated Pest Management), Organic, Sustainable Farming, and Non-interventionism. Natural sounds so much better than IPM.

Maybe the Mormons?

In some ways, it’s a philosophy. Biodynamic winemakers follow astrological signs for planting, watering, and harvesting. I like to think of them as the Mormons of the wine trade. They believe in wacky ideas but are often really successful. Something is to be said about welding a belief system into a hardy work ethic. It’s the foundation for some great wine… and Ryan Gosling.

It is about the Cool Kids.

It’s also a social movement where the stickiness comes in. Writers like Alice Feiring have crafted a career out of judging who is and isn’t “natural” enough to be part of their club. A wine instructor who had dinner with Alice a few years ago calls her “the grandmother of the cancel culture.” Ouch.

I was recently at a winery in Italy famous for its natural wine movement, and I was one of Alice’s darlings. The winemaker casually admitted to using significant sulfur and filtration on all their wines, two things that are supposedly not allowed in natural winemaking. Hypocrisy abounds.

Is it about crazy flavors?

Sometimes, natural winemaking can even be wines that are poorly made. Flavors similar to cider vinegar or oxidized apple slices are common flaws in these wines. These flaws are what most wine tasted like in the 19th century. But here’s something interesting: those flaws are tasty when paired with food.

Maybe we should accept that we like flawed wines made by people with a unique philosophy. This is where I think the most fun is.

The concept can be broken down into five common characteristics. Some natural wines will have two or more of these characteristics, but all natural wines have at least one. This is how we define natural wine in our wine-tasting classes.

• Bio-dynamic
• No Additional Sulfur
• Non-interventionist
• Aged in Amphorae
• Orange

Numbers that show the trend.

The trend is real, but it’s also tiny. Natural wine sales have never exceeded .001% of sales. In other words, about one bottle of natural wine is bought for every million bottles of wine consumers. Right now, about one in every hundred thousand bottles of wine purchased is a natural wine. That’s a 100X increase in US sales on paper, but it’s still a minimal amount of actual wine.

This is an estimate because there isn’t a universally accepted definition of natural wines. Natural winemaking is a philosophy and even a spiritual practice. It’s hard enough to get a group of scientists to agree on something. Have you ever tried to get agreement from philosophers? Forget about it.

What is driving the trend?

This is isn’t a Millennial trend, this is a GenX winemaker trend. That tiny little group of folks between the Millennials and Baby Boomers? The generation that brought you Nirvana is also bringing you the “Fuck the Wine Industry” credo of making wine. It’s more of an aging punk-rocker type of rebellion than anything else.

Basically, if someone isn’t willing to make the crazy stuff, then there is zero chance of buying it. It seems that the audience is mostly wine buyers in their 20s and 30s, but that is pretty typical. Young wine drinkers are always the first to embrace the new and the unique. That said, there is more acceptance of the challenging flavors of natural wines than ever before.

We run bench trials and tests weekly. We have found that the acceptance of natural wines across the board has increased from almost zero percent ten years ago to 60% today. Of that 60%, about 25% say they prefer the flavors of natural wines to any other type of wine. That is pretty incredible.

Is there enough supply for demand?

These are small numbers; many of these natural wines have been sitting in warehouses and wine shops for years. If the trend continues—and supply doesn’t increase– we’d see shortages in about five years.

Is biodynamic wine natural?

Bio is the original natural wine. Bio is a religion crafted around sustainable farming practices. It’s as woo-woo as you are going to get.

Best natural wine bars and the cities (Paris/Montreal/San Fran?)

The best place for natural wine is in the suburbs of Philadelphia. One of the Wine School’s students (Jack Cunicelli) opened a natural wine shop named one of America’s top natural wine bars (Food and Wine Magazine). If you love natural wine, you must go on a pilgrimage to 320 Wine.

The other great spot isn’t a bar. It’s the wine shop Astor Wine in Manhattan, a mecca for natural wines.