Natural Wines? Tell me more.

Natural wine: You’ve probably seen it on a menu or heard it shouted in a bar or maybe even downed a glass or three of the stuff at some point this year. It’s been everywhere.

Natural wine is a minimal-intervention approach to growing grapes and making wine: farmed with organic or biodynamic principles, fermented with native yeast, and bottled with very few (and very often zero) additives. Instead of engineering flavour with chemicals, natural winemakers aim to express the terroir, grape and season as much as possible, in a way that is as pure and transparent as possible. This guide defines natural wine clearly, explains how it differs from organic and biodynamic certifications, why it often means low sulfite, what it tastes like, and how to shop with confidence.

In the vineyards, winemakers use organic / biodynamic practices with no synthetic herbicides / pesticides. Often there is biodiversity to increase the nutrients in the soil naturally with cover crops. We have seen the use of tisanes and milk sprays instead to supplement the nutrients and to prevent mildew.

Harvest is done by hand - been there, done that - at the most suitable time of ripeness. Sorting for quality is also done by hand, and transportation is gentle to ensure minimal bruising of the grapes. 

Fermentation happens with wild / native yeasts, and the temperatures are managed by process instead of heavy manipulation. 

Élevage (aging) varies. This varies from winemaker to winemaker but we have seen that often neutral vessels such as cement, amphora, well-used oak, fibreglass are favoured as these do not impart much flavour to the liquid. After all, the idea is to showcase the grape, season and terroir in its purest form.

Finally, at bottling, most of these wines are unfined and unfiltered. If you see bits floating around, don't be alarmed as that is all natural and part of the process. You can pour the wines and leave the sediments at the very end. Most of the wines don't see sulfites added, and if they do, it is a small dose at this last stage of bottling.

Here at Temple Cellars we are not strictly 'zero-zero', ie we understand that being so far away from winemaking land some winemakers prefer to add just a touch of sulfite at the end of the process, just before bottling, in order for the wines to travel better (be more stable).