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Natural Wines Explained

What are natural wines?

Ideally, a natural wine has nothing added and nothing taken away from the grapes, must or wine. Natural wine is made with minimal chemical or technological intervention.

Natural wine is not to be confused with EU certified Organic Wine, which is permitted to have considerable chemical or physical manipulation in the wine making process, including the addition of over 40 chemical additives and very large amounts of added sulphites.

Sadly EU Organic certification is no guarantee of naturalness, or low sulphite content. The genuine EU organic producers are very unhappy about how lax these new rules are, as their wines are now grouped together under one "organic" umbrella with mass produced commercial wines.

Some typical traits of natural wine are...

• Made from organically or biodynamically grown grapes (with or without certification)
• Dry Farmed and Hand Picked
• No Added Sugars
• No Foreign Yeasts or Bacteria
• No Adjustments for Acidity
• No Additives for Colour, Minerality or Texture
• No External Flavours
• Minimal Fining and Filtration

Some Natural wines have no added sulphites, which makes them perfect for those who want to enjoy wine but may suffer from sulphite intolerance. Those that do add sulphites tend to use very low amounts.

Good natural wines get acknowledgement for what is left out of the wine rather than what is put in. Natural wine can be viewed as a misleading term as there is no established certification body: what winemakers consider as "natural wine" can often differ from producer to producer. Natural wine is commonly mistaken for being organic with consumers - it is the "organic" wine we would have liked to buy, before the term "organic" was hijacked by the big wine producers and subsequently robbed of any genuine merit.

We have tried and tasted a lot of natural wines. To be honest, not many of them are particularly that great tasting and they're usually very expensive (due to being hand crafted on such a small scale). However, as wine tasting happens to be a passion of ours, we've searched high and low and have discovered some of the very best natural wines available. We're also able to bring them in at favourable prices on a par with general wines.

Domaine Viret wines from the Rhone are just fantastic, definitely a favourite of ours (Oz Clarke described their wines as "cosmic nectar"). We also have a superb Cabernet Sauvignon from Teillery, Chile's first certified organic winery, and now making Chile's first ever no added sulphite wine - update here, we're in the process of importing 4 no added sulphite reds from them for early 2015.

We're also representing Frey Winery - California's oldest certified organic winery. In US legislation organic wines are not (currently) allowed to have any sulphites added. Their wines are not only sulphite free but also fantastic with a host of medals and awards to their name. Plus we have since added three more French wineries - Domaine Costes Cirgues, Domaine D'Anglas and Domaine Mayrac.

What are sulphites?

'Sulphites' is a collective noun for compounds of sulphur. In wine you usually find sulphur dioxide E220, sodium metabisulphite E223 or potassium metabisulphite E224. The E-numbers E220 to E227 are all sulphites which are widely used in all sorts of of different foods.

Why are sulphites used in wine?

Sulphites are usually added to wine as a preservative and anti-oxidant. (They also perform a number of other important tasks such as anti bacterial agent, and for controlling malolactic fermentation). When used in moderation they can be beneficial to wine. Some wines contain more sulphites than others depending on the properties of each particular wine. Unfortunately with globalisation of wine producing companies and the dominance of the supermarkets in the UK wine market, the quality of the wine has hit rock bottom, driven by the supermarkets' attempts to keep prices low. This base wine is such poor quality that more and more potentially harmful chemicals are needed to hold the wine together. People who are sensitive to them can suffer from potentioally fatal reactions, but these chemicals also effect those of us who are not so sensitive to them. Sulphites have been strongly linked to causing throat and stomach cancers, as well as asthma. One doctor told Jane that she was the lucky one having an allergy, as she's no longer consuming these harmful chemicals!

Wine always say "contains sulphites"

Pretty much every bottle of wine will have "contains sulphites" on the label somewhere. It is a legal requirment since 30 or so people died in the USA in the 1970s after eating from a salad bar which had been sprayed with a sulphite solution to keep it looking fresh. This can be fustrating if you're interested in how much sulphite a wine has. There are also different types of sulphites which can cause different effects and symptoms to those who drink them.

Finding a safe wine

If you suffer from an intolerance to sulphites and are looking for a safe wine to drink, the best place to look is our website. As far as we can tell we are the only UK wine merchant who is even aware of the problem, let alone understands it!

Sulphite Free Wine

Well, there's technically no such thing as a "sulphite free wine". There are always tiny amounts of bound sulphites from the fermentation process; but these are harmless and wines which don't have extra sulphites added are safe for sulphite intolerant people.

Why doesn't everybody make wine without Sulphites?

Sulphite free wine will never by available on a large scale commercially. There's a number of reasons for this. Only a very small amount of people have a reaction to sulphites which can be considered dangerous, meaning that retailers don't see it as a big problem. It's difficult to produce wine with low sulphites, requiring a lot of additional measures. Wine without sulphites can ruin very easily, meaning it's too risky for producers. A tiny technical error while bottling could cause an entire batch to be ruined if it was exposed to the air for a short duration.