INTERVENTION, NATURAL, HAND CRAFTED WINES
With a growing interest around sustainability and increasing demand for sustainable, ethically produced food and drink, low intervention, natural, or handcrafted wine is becoming increasingly mainstream. We’re here to bring you the very best of this exciting new chapter for sustainable wine.
NATURAL WINE
With no legal definition, the term “natural wine” generally refers to wines produced without adding (or subtracting) anything in the cellar. Yes, that’s no additives, chemicals, sulphur, filtering, cultured yeasts or oak character from barrels. Nada. The idea is, the more you leave the wines to sort themselves out, the more alive they are. You could also use ‘low-intervention’ in this context, but it’s a little less strict. The method often yields unpredictable results which is part of the appeal (often sometimes more than the taste), but Rob’s tried and tested all of ours and we can safely say there’s method to this madness.
BIODYNAMIC WINES
Now, the biodynamic approach to winemaking is a little more philosophical. It looks at the wine as a product of its ecological whole – not just the vines, or the soil beneath, but the flora and fauna in the surrounding area and even the planet as a whole. These grow together, as one solid ecosystem, to sustain the vineyard. Chemical fertilizers are a no-go, instead animals (from ducks to horses) live on the soil and fertilize it naturally. The result is a wine which is a true representation of the vineyard, grown on sustainable land for future generations.
ORGANIC WINES
The key player with organic wines, which is often tricky to achieve, are the farming methods – that means no pesticides, no chemical fertilizers, and no herbicides, only organic practices. Whilst the EU and US have different requirements for an organic certification, to get a USDA organic seal, the wine production must avoid any use sulphur dioxide (used to prevent refermentation and oxidization in the bottle). Now sulphur dioxide has been used since the Romans were around making wine, so its use is pretty longstanding, which is why our selected producers are making big waves in the industry, bringing you wines without compromise when it comes to taste.