The Guide

Natural Wine,
Explained.

Grapes, and as little else as possible. Here is what that actually means, where it came from, and what we have on the shelf right now.

Start Here

What Is Natural Wine?

Natural wine has no legal definition, which is exactly why people argue about it. But there is a working version most of the trade agrees on: wine from organically or biodynamically farmed grapes, fermented with the wild yeast already on the fruit, with nothing added and nothing stripped out. No lab yeast, no acid or sugar corrections, no fining or filtering, and little or no added sulfur. The short version is the one we keep coming back to: grapes, and as little else as possible.

It helps to picture a spectrum. Most wine sits at the conventional end, where chemical farming and a long list of legal cellar additives are normal. Natural wine sits at the far end. The steps in between are worth knowing.

01

Conventional

Chemical farming is common, and the cellar can legally use dozens of additives to standardize the wine.

02

Organic

The farming is clean: no synthetic pesticides or herbicides in the vineyard. The cellar can still intervene.

03

Biodynamic

Organic, and then some. The vineyard is treated as one living system, farmed to its own calendar.

04

Natural

Clean farming plus a hands-off cellar. Wild yeast, nothing added, little or no sulfur. The far end of the line.

What goes in

  • Organic or biodynamic grapes
  • The wild yeast on the fruit
  • Time, and a careful hand
  • At most, a touch of sulfur at bottling

What stays out

  • Commercial yeast and enzymes
  • Added acid, sugar, tannin, colour
  • Fining and heavy filtration
  • The long list of conventional additives

Because nothing is there to standardize it, natural wine tastes alive. Some bottles are faultlessly clean and bright. Some are cloudy, a little wild, a little funky. Most land in between. That variation is the point, not a flaw. You are tasting a place and a year without the usual corrections. Want to go deeper on one grower who shaped all of this? Our Jules Chauvet piece is the place to start, and Bernard Baudry in Chinon is a perfect example of the low-intervention approach done at the highest level.

How We Got Here

A Short History

The modern movement traces back to one man: Jules Chauvet, a Beaujolais winemaker and trained chemist who, from the 1950s on, argued for native yeast, no chemical correction, and little to no added sulfur, at the exact moment the rest of the industry was racing the other way. His ideas were dismissed as risky. He kept going.

His thinking ran through a group of Beaujolais growers who became known as the Gang of Four: Marcel Lapierre, Jean Foillard, Guy Breton, and Jean-Paul Thevenet. Through the 1980s they carried Chauvet's ideas into their own cellars, and their wines, pure, vivid, unmistakably of their place, became the template everyone else measured against.

From Beaujolais it spread. To the Loire, across Italy, into Austria and Spain, down to South Africa, and eventually everywhere wine is made, including right here in BC. Today natural wine is less a fringe and more a way of working that a whole generation of growers has simply adopted. The names change. The idea, grapes and as little else as possible, is still Chauvet's.

On The Shelf

Natural Wine Around the World

Every pin is a producer we actually stock, from the Cowichan Valley to the Bekaa. Click one to see their bottles and add them to your cart. The map updates with what is in stock, so a producer drops off when they sell through.

Showing our natural and low-intervention producers in stock. See all natural wines in the Market.

Curious? Come Taste.

Nobody has to drink natural wine. But if you want in, we will point you at something approachable and tell you what you are tasting and why. That is the fun part of the job.

Browse Natural Wines