(Winemag) Winemakers are turning to rustic methods to produce low-intervention wines. So how does skipping pumps in favor of gravity change what’s in your bottle?

Somewhere between industrialized winemaking and the full-on natural/no-intervention movement, there are a growing number of producers using the environment—and more importantly, gravity—to refine their winemaking technique. Many believe that removing pumps or motors from the winemaking process preserves better fragrance and flavor. Some wineries have even gone so far as to build their facilities underground or on sloped land to bypass machinery and let gravity better work its magic.

Are these environmental efforts the future or just a fad? Owners and winemakers from five wineries around the U.S. and Canada speak about how their environmentally-friendly production techniques influence the quality of the resulting wines.