What is natural wine?

Here’s a good one.  What is natural wine?

Is natural wine better than conventional wine?

More than once I’ve been in a restaurant and have asked the sommelier if they have any natural wines on the list, “All wines are natural,” is the terse response.  But that is not so.  A true natural wine could be a grape berry that falls on the vineyard soil, it cracks open, ferments and creates wine.  Not many of us would care to sip that off the vineyard floor so there needs to be some sensibility to the answer of “What is natural wine”.  For me, it’s simple.  It’s wine made from grapes that have been grown with no artificial inputs in the vineyard.  They are harvested and pressed, I prefer hand harvested and foot stomped, but that shouldn’t be a deal breaker.  The juice ferments naturally using native yeasts, the skins are pressed off and the juice/wine is allowed to age with zero additions all the way into the bottle.  That’s not complicated is it?  At AmByth we make Biodynamic/Organic/Natural wine according to the above definition.

Now to address the 2nd question.  Is natural wine better?  Simple answer, no.  The answer is no for many reasons.  The first and most important reason is that we all taste differently.  If you are used to eating at fast food restaurants, you crave the flavor, they are better because they give you that flavor.  The same with wine.  Large wineries go to a great deal of time and expense to create flavors in their wine that they know satisfies a desire in the wine drinking public, so therefore that wine is probably “better” to that person.  A second reason is that perhaps the person making the natural wine doesn’t take the care that is required and the wine turns bad.  The same is true in conventional wine making.  In either case, that wine will not be “better”.  I am guilty. I will drink a natural wine over a conventional wine, even if the natural wine has not been cared for as much as I might wish.  The reason being I’m a winemaker, I know what can go into conventional wine, and I don’t want it inside me, for the same reason that I don’t eat fast food.  Of course sometimes the choices aren’t good and I’ll reach for an organic beer.

“For me, it’s simple. It’s wine made from grapes that have been grown with no artificial inputs in the vineyard.