Archives

29 May 2019

Why have we gone nuts for natural wine?

Since when was wine considered to be unnatural? It turns out that the production of some traditional wines is comparable to the rearing of a battery hen. Natural wines sometimes don’t help themselves, they can be cloudy and there is a distinct lack of knowledge of what to look out for. 

Why should we care about natural wines?
So the bog-standard stuff that you can quickly grab from the supermarket shelf is actually about as good for you as chowing down on a battery hen. We’ve become accustomed to monitoring the food we ingest, we have also started to question the traceability of water, tea, coffee, gin and even whiskey; but when we get to wine, we just seem to assume that vineyards make non-nasty wine.

How does natural wine compare to conventional wine?
Some natural wines can taste virtually no different from their conventional counterparts, whilst others can be quite challenging. Let's take white wine, for example, a crisp Sauvignon Blanc - the natural equivalent would be much riper and fuller in texture and would showcase honeyed, Acacia-type aromas rather than tart gooseberry. This is due to the growing and winemaking choices, and the notable absence in sulphites.

The makers of natural wine are low-intervention, this means that the processes are left to complete natural, letting the aromas develop themselves over time. You’ll find that wines are a lot less oaked, and they are a lot lower in alcohol. Natural wines are also unfiltered and unfined so the resulting wine can often look cloudy, which isn’t a bad thing!

What’s in conventional wine that’s so bad for you?
There are an astonishing amount of winemaking additives, manipulations and processing aids that are permitted by law. Anti-foaming agents and even hydrogen peroxide are allowed in some countries (yuck!). Sulphites are also added in substantial quantities to most commercially-produced wines, these certainly aren’t great for you. The products added have very limited traceability, and they aren’t regulated so even the final quality and quantity of the additives used can be highly dubious.

Is natural wine hangover free?
It’s not hangover free, but it will give you significantly less of one. As natural wine has a lot fewer sulphites in it, your body can deal with the natural amount properly - when you drink wine with fewer sulphites your body can process the alcohol like it would food, and this has a lot less impact on the body.