(Wine-Searcher) - In the third of his series on low-intervention winemaking, Tom Jarvis tackles the thorny subject of natural wine.

 

After two pieces focusing on organics and biodynamics in the vineyard, we conclude this series by focusing more on the natural wine movement, which, in a way, is just asking for trouble.

There is no strict definition of what natural means. According to Isabel Legeron MW, creator of the RAW wine fair and author of Natural Wine: an Introduction to Organic & Biodynamic Wines Made Naturally, natural wine is produced from pure grape juice without additives in the cellar. More generally, natural wine is a philosophical reaction against absolute control in the winery, a conviction that some processes should be left to nature, and a push against industrial, branded wines.

The process is as old as wine itself, but the modern natural wine movement is relatively new. It represents only a tiny fraction of global wine production but attracts a lot of headlines. Because "natural" is such a loaded term, some producers prefer the term minimal-intervention winemaking.

The hub of the movement is the established wine regions of France and Italy. This is perhaps unsurprising; New World producers have less tradition to fall back on (for better or worse) so have relied more on cutting-edge technology, temperature-controlled fermentations, and big stainless steel tanks.