I recall a conversation I had with one of the new people I met when I first moved to Madrid. She’d found out that I worked in wine. “In wine?” she said with excitement. “There’s a great wine bar in Lavapiés you must try! They sell natural wines, it’s really good.” I took out my phone, pinned it on the map, noted in parenthesis that it’s a natural wine bar. In the two years since, I haven’t been once.
I don’t know what the rest of the wine industry thinks of the natural wine movement, and I don’t speak for anyone else, but as for me, well, what is an un-natural wine anyway? Where do we draw the line? Does the vine itself need to crush its grapes and bottle its own juice?
Perhaps my scepticism stems as much from the movement’s nebulous definition as it does from the foul wine I was served in a trendy wine bar in Shoreditch, or from the sommelier insisting that it was supposed to taste like that, that there was nothing wrong with the wine. The implication, of course, was that there was something wrong with me, my palate, that I simply didn’t understand natural wine. It was ten years ago. Since then, natural wines have become cleaner, or so I’m told, and it’s no longer natural wine; it’s low-intervention wine.
And you’d be wrong to think this is a piece to disparage natural wine. Quite the opposite. Despite my personal prejudice, I’ve discovered that some of the finest wines I’ve tasted have been marketed as natural — Gravner being an obvious example — and there are many others I’m eager to try, among them Chris Boiling’s Crazy Experimental Wines, which we’ll come back to shortly.
This is an exploration of natural wine’s remarkable success, and whether some of the factors behind that success can be applied to the rest of the wine world.
In fact, natural wine not only is the leading opportunity in wine according to IWSR’s Opportunity Index — which measures the strongest market opportunities for alternative wine categories, weighted by the size of each country’s wine-drinking population — but it is also one of the industry’s fastest-growing segments. Estimates from DataIntelo Consulting suggest the global natural wine market is expanding at around 13% annually, an impressive feat at a time when the broader wine market is struggling to grow.
The evidence extends beyond bottles produced. Natural wine bars continue to proliferate across major cities in Europe (Paris alone has 600, according to French app Raisin), North America and Asia, signalling that the movement has firmly entered the mainstream.
And perhaps most remarkably, natural wine has achieved what much of the wine industry has struggled to do: capture the imagination of the notoriously elusive Gen Z consumer.
As I’ve already hinted, what natural wine remains surprisingly ill-defined. Perhaps that’s part of its appeal. An idea is often more powerful when different people can project different meanings onto it. Even Georgia, one of the first countries to legislate a definition of natural wine, defines it vaguely as “wine produced through the spontaneous fermentation of organically grown grape must” without “the use of oenological practices and substances otherwise permitted under general winemaking regulations, with the exception of sulphur dioxide, which must be limited to a maximum concentration of 40 mg/l.”
Ah! Sulphur dioxide—the Enemy, with a capital E, that the natural wine movement has set out to slay. In the public imagination, mild wine intolerance is often blamed on sulphur dioxide, a belief reinforced by plenty of anecdotal evidence but very little scientific support.
In her Master of Wine research paper, What is the Relationship Between the Use of Sulphur Dioxide and Biogenic Amine Levels in Wine?, Sophie Parker-Thomson MW argues that the likely culprit behind adverse reactions in some wine drinkers is a group of compounds known as biogenic amines (BAs), which are naturally present in all fermented foods and beverages. Her findings turn the sulphur dioxide narrative on its head. Wines with no added SO₂—or with sulphur added only late in the winemaking process — were found to contain the highest levels of biogenic amines. Unsurprisingly, those conclusions caused no small amount of discomfort among supporters of natural wine, yet they did little to challenge the sulphur dioxide myth, as the research never made its way into the public consciousness.
So, sulphites aside, if there is no formal definition, how do you identify a natural wine when browsing the shelves of a wine shop or supermarket? As former United States Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart famously said of obscenity, “I know it when I see it”— the same could be said of natural wine.
In fact, while wine professionals continue to argue over what natural wine is and isn’t — or what low-intervention wine really means—the movement has succeeded in capturing the imagination of the average wine consumer. Why is that? Is it the places where it’s sold? The people behind it? The labels? The messaging? Probably all of the above.
Orwell wrote of his job reviewing books that most of them are so bad that, in nine cases out of ten, the only honest review would be: “This book is worthless.” It made me think that in wine, the opposite is true. “This wine is good” likely describes 90% of the wines, which arguably makes the job of a wine critic even harder than that of a book critic. What is there to say when a wine is good? Good, but not great. Good, but not particularly interesting. Well-made, sound, solid, like all the rest… What is there to object to? Nothing — other than, perhaps, that in a sea of identical wines, it’s just really hard to sell.
The final step in wine production is the first from the consumer’s point of view: the packaging.
Natural wines have cool names like Seggs with My Eggs, Kisi me slowly, gently or Potatoland. Their labels feature geishas, riot scenes, make reference to Playboy and other bold, artistic imagery. They’re colourful, vibrant, modern, and beautifully designed. Sometimes they give you almost no information; other times, they give you every little detail. They’re often bottled in clear glass to show off the wine’s hue, sealed with crown caps or other quirky closures, or dipped in brightly coloured wax. Of course I’d pick that over Château Boring.
Maybe all the money saved in the winery is simply spent on branding instead?
I put that question to Neil Tully MW, founder of Amphora Design, a wine branding and design agency based in Bath. His answer was no, they don’t spend more, with one important caveat: the design proposals tend to be bolder, and the branding decisions are far more intentional.
(As it turns out, making natural wine isn’t necessarily cheaper.)
Tully also suggested that winemakers in more ‘serious’ wine regions may not feel they have the same freedom, especially when it comes to the judgement of their peers. Perhaps natural wine producers aren’t as burdened by the need to be taken seriously—to make a “serious” wine capable of earning high scores. Perhaps it reflects the personalities of the winemakers themselves: people who are rule-breakers, who push boundaries. I think it’s all of the above — and more.
A beautifully plated dish from a Michelin-starred restaurant immediately looks more desirable than a rustic plate of pasta. We eat with our eyes first. But wine is different. Pour a glass of a great wine beside a glass of good wine and, in identical glasses, they will look much the same. The quality cannot be seen. That’s why, before the cork is pulled, the label has already done most of the selling.
And it doesn’t even have to be a “radical” label. When I was selling wine online in China, we put this to the test. We sold exactly the same Côtes du Rhône AOC from the same domaine, the same vintage, and the same wine—only the label was different. One bottle carried the producer’s regular label; the other featured a special “Centenary” label. Guess which one sold twice as much? We ran a similar experiment with Riesling. These weren’t identical wines, but they were comparable in quality, provenance, and style—both were off-dry Rieslings, but one had a blue bottle. Our blue-bottle Riesling outsold the other by three to one. These are only small examples from a very small business, so I wouldn’t pretend they’re scientifically rigorous. But they illustrate something that anyone who has sold wine to consumers already knows: design matters more than the liquid that’s inside the bottle. Sad? Perhaps. True? Yes.
We discussed sulphites already, but there’s a broader point here: the word natural does a great deal of work on its own. Type “natural wine” into Google and one of the first suggested searches is, “Is natural wine actually better for you?” Whether we like it or not, natural carries a promise — the rejection of “harsh chemicals”, the halo of sustainable viticulture — that resonates with consumers. If it’s natural, the logic goes, it must be good for me, or at least better for me. Well — see sulphites above. But even if consumers have been misguided (by whom is a discussion for another day), that doesn’t mean the rest of the wine industry should ignore the message. Consumers are telling us what they want: wines they perceive to be more sustainable, less industrial and, above all, healthier.
Speaking to Chris Boiling — a winemaker who only makes what his labels literally call “Crazy Experimental Wines,” in very small batches across Slovenia, Hungary, Georgia and Austria (soon Albania too) — told me he named one of his wines Oh, Natural! because, yes, he expected it to attract more interest from the market. Not to mention that his labels (done by the team at Amphora Design) go all out on radical transparency, letting you in on every step of the winemaking process — and even some of the viticulture — which I find refreshing, when all you’re normally given is the usual boilerplate story that adds little value to the end consumer.
As we’ve seen, the word natural can be interpreted as a move away from ultra-processed wine, in keeping with the wider health and sustainability discourse. It can also signal a move away from large corporations in favour of smaller, more thoughtful producers. And this isn’t unique to wine. We’ve seen the same trend in craft beer and gin. Inventive, original labels stand in stark contrast to the corporate branding of the likes of Stella Artois or Heineken, inviting consumers to choose something that feels small-batch, independent and distinctive — even if many of those brands have, in fact, been quietly hoovered up by multinationals. The lesson isn’t that we should mislead consumers, but that, once again, they’ve spoken. They’ve voted against the perceived sameness of big brands and the industrialisation of food and drink, and in favour of products that feel independent, distinctive and full of personality.
The places where these beers, wines and gins are sold also tend to be younger, more welcoming and more relaxed than those where you’ll typically find more traditional wines. If I were to stereotype, a classic wine bar is where you might take a date; a natural wine bar is where you’d meet your mates. Perhaps it’s simply the sort of environment that’s more conducive to relaxing around wine.
Another topic I discussed with Neil Tully: he feels that, even in the way labels are designed, natural wine places more emphasis on the wine itself than on the denomination. Having recently been in Burgundy, a traditional producer mentioned that on their Grand Cru wines, the appellation and the climat would be written in a larger font than the producer’s logo, because much of the wine’s identity is owed to the terroir, which in fact seems to support Tully’s point.
The last thing I want to mention is taste and smell. This is pure speculation on my part, but I wonder whether the kombucha-like flavours so often associated with natural wines reinforce their perceived healthiness through flavour associations alone. Even though, like Chris Boiling or Gravner, many natural winemakers place great emphasis on producing clean wines (sometimes using small amounts of sulphur dioxide to achieve that), those savoury, fermented aromas may subconsciously signal “natural”, “alive” or “healthy” to consumers. I also wonder whether their more pungent, distinctive aroma s— rather like unpasteurised cheese — give less wine-experienced drinkers the confidence that they’re actually tasting something, that they’re participating in the ritual of wine tasting. Faced with a more subtle wine, perhaps they wouldn’t feel quite so sure?
Of course, slapping a two-finger salute on the label of a fifth-generation family estate won’t translate well, if at all. But the lesson isn’t to imitate natural wine; it’s to understand what it has understood about consumers. They want clarity over jargon, transparency over marketing clichés, personality over corporate polish, and a clearer sense of what a wine will actually offer them before they buy it — not afterwards. Above all, they want wine to feel less intimidating and more fun. If the rest of the wine industry can embrace those lessons without abandoning its own identity, it may have a better chance of persuading the next generation to drink wine at all.
Photo by Peter Neumann on Unsplash