Is This Wine “Natural”?

Answering the “natural wine” question without being a condescending dick about it

Over the weekend one of my clients received a DM from a customer asking, “Do you serve natural wine?” And I haven’t been able to stop thinking about it since.

I was so stumped at how to respond without coming across as a condescending asshole, I took to my Instagram stories to “think out loud” as I am wont to do from time to time.

Working in the wine industry, it’s likely you’ve also been faced with a question like this. One that makes you cringe a little because what you want to say and what you need to say to give good customer service are two different things.

Only some of these wines are considered to be “natural wines” by the zealots even though they are all minimal-ntervention, fresh, ready to drink, etc. (Photo by me, Heather Daenitz of Craft & Cluster)

What I wanted to say to this person was that all wines are natural. They come from the earth and relatively few of them are manipulated so much that they don’t resemble wine anymore.

I wanted to say that “Natural” is an unofficial, unregulated marketing term often used to explain away flaws. “Oh this wine is mousey because it’s NaTuRaL” even though the addition of a little more sulfur and a thorough cleaning of the winery would probably have prevented or corrected that flaw and preserved the wine longer.

I wanted to say that just because a wine is referred to as “natural” it doesn’t mean that it’s good.

But because I thought I knew what this person was really asking, I ended up saying:

“Hi friend! Thanks so much for reaching out. Our wines are made with minimal intervention and a focus on allowing our estate vineyard to speak for itself. That said, we don’t specifically market our wines as “natural” since definitions can vary and we do use some traditional winemaking tools like sulfur when needed for stability. If you’re looking for low intervention, thoughtfully made wines, we’d love to have you taste and learn more about what we do!”

It was only after I sent the message that I remembered the other ways the phrase “Natural Wine” can be interpreted.

The problem is that the term “natural wine” doesn’t mean anything.

“Natural Wines” isn’t an officially regulated category, even the big players in the “natural wine” space can’t seem to agree on this. Opinions differ, for example, on just how much sulfur dioxide is allowed for a wine to be considered “natural.” I’ve seen articles claiming that “natural” wines can only contain “trace” amounts of sulfites (cool, cool, cool, that’s super scientific); some claim 30ppm of total sulfur as the upper limit, and others claim up to 70ppm.

It should be noted that USDA organic wines can contain up to 100 ppm of total SO2. Full stop. Yayyyy mutually agreed upon definitions!

Note: I tried to do my due diligence and only refer to articles from reputable sources but had a very hard time finding anything specifically talking about “Natural Wine” from a peer-reviewed source (shocking, I know), so instead I included articles from known publications like Bon Appetit rather than personal blogs. It’s not perfect but it’s what I had to work with on my non-existant budget for this blog. If you know of a peer-reviewed source that discusses “natural wines” please send it my way.

What People Think They Mean by “Natural Wine”

I believe that when someone asks if a wine is “natural,” they’re looking for one (or more) of the following:

• Low-intervention winemaking

• No synthetic additives or commercial yeast

• Minimal or no added sulfur

• Organic or biodynamic farming

• Wine that hasn’t been overly “fussed with”

• Wine that’s crushable/fresh/ready to drink now (vs age first)

Sometimes, it also comes with a bit of anti-industrial sentiment: “I just want a wine that hasn’t been overly processed or fucked with.”

And fair enough.

People want to feel good about what they’re consuming. They want transparency, purity of flavor and philosophy, and they want to know that they’re drinking something with integrity. These are all extremely valid desires.

“Low-Intervention” and “Drink Now” aren’t always a circle on the “Natural Wine” Venn Diagram.

We need to give our customers better language to describe what they mean when they ask or talk about “natural” wines. Do they mean low-intervention wines? Do they mean funky, “flaws as features” wines? Or do they mean crushable, fresh, drink-now wines? The Venn Diagram of all of those things isn’t necessarily a circle.

My very official Venn Diagram of the subsets of “Natural Wines”

Natural Wine Isn’t the Enemy (But Misinformation Is)

For the record, I love a lot of wines that folks categorize as “natural.” I’m not knocking “natural wines” as a whole; I just think that the lack of regulation or even agreement on how to define the term confuses consumers who just want a straight answer.

Plus a lot of conversation around “natural” wine gives consumers a binary view of what wine is “good” and “bad.” Don’t even get me started on the “clean wine” movement—that will send me into orbit.

Okay fine, quick rant: I hate the term “clean wine” because it automatically assumes that other wine is “dirty” and that is bullshit 😤. I am also extremely skeptical of any movement that needs to denegrate “the other side” to get you to buy into whatever idea they are selling. That’s some reaaaaaallll small dick energy bullshit and I am not here for it.

I am also seeing this with folks making a blanket statement that “U.S.-made wine is full of hidden additives, but European wines are (collectively) organic.” UGHH it’s so frustrating and patently untrue! Not to go all “🦅🦅🦅’Murica” on you all but there are literally thousands of Certified Organic wines made in the U.S. each year—and that’s just the ones that are actually certified. Plenty more are farmed and made responsibly using organic practices but haven’t gone through certification because, surprise! Organic certification is expensive, bro!

We’re Confusing the Consumer

I like the idea of a category or phrase that can help consumers easily identify wines they want to drink. Maggie Tillman of Alta Colina and I briefly touched on this in this week’s podcast episode, Subscription Models Vs Wine Clubs.

But the problem lies in that we don’t have a mutually agreed upon definition of what “natural wines” means and there are bad players in that space that have given consumers the wrong impression, making them assume that if your wine isn’t considered “natural” then it must be bad and full of industrial additives.

In reality, most wineries would rather do as little as possible to their wines, because it’s expensive to fuck with them. But sometimes, winemakers have to intervene and maybe water back a bit because Mother Nature decided to throw a heatwave at them over Labor Day weekend, which raised the sugars and dehydrated the fruit before they could get a crew in to pick it. Or they had to add a touch more sulfur than they usually do or they filtered or added egg whites because they noticed a flaw they wanted to correct before losing an entire year’s+ worth of wine.

All this misunderstanding and black-and-white thinking bothers me because it’s the consumer who pays the price for the wine industry’s lack of clarity.

(I didn’t have, “Heather wants more regulation on wine” on my bingo card for 2025 either).

That lack of understanding on all of our parts leads to a bad consumer experience. Wine is complicated enough without also adding vague, indefineable terms to the mix.

All of my clients are low-intervention wineries that emphasize responsible farming as the foundation of great wine. But I wouldn’t consider any of them to make “natural wines,” at least not by the most common definitions.

Maybe the closest would be FOXEN. They make a carbonic-fermented cabernet franc from their SIP-certified estate vineyard that’s fresh, ready-to-drink, and made in a style that’s often associated with the “natural wine” movement. But their Santa Maria Valley Pinot Noir and Chenin Blanc—both of which I consider drink-now wines—probably wouldn’t pass muster with the “natural wine” zealots because they include added sulfur and don’t taste like kombucha or Band-Aids. (Tell us how you really feel, Heather!)

A Theory: Context Influences Expectations?

I wonder if this person asked that question of that particular winery because we don’t post as much behind-the-scenes vineyard or winery content as some of my other clients. Their brand is more experience-focused, so that’s what we spend more time talking about on social media.

Contrast that with FOXEN, where we share a lot more behind-the-scenes winemaking and sustainable farming content. I wonder if that same customer would have asked the question there; I kind of doubt it. They’d likely already understand what kind of wine they’re getting.

The TL;DR

If you’ve made it this far, bless you. Let’s recap.

This all started with a DM from a customer asking if one of my client’s wines was “natural.” A seemingly simple question that unraveled into something much deeper, about communication, transparency, and the way we in the wine industry talk (or don’t talk) about how we make wine.

We explored how the term “natural wine” is vague, unregulated, and interpreted a million different ways. We talked about what people are probably really asking for when they say “natural”—wines made with integrity, farmed responsibly, and not overly manipulated. And how, ironically, many small producers (like the clients I work with) are doing exactly that… but don’t market their wines as “natural” because the term has become too slippery to be meaningful.

We also discussed what happens when movements like “clean wine” or “natural wine” rely on fear or false dichotomies to sell their story: they mislead consumers, undermine good winemaking practices, and contribute to a culture of misinformation that helps no one.

So where does that leave us?

With an opportunity to create better conversations around wine, to give our customers more clarity without condescension, and to show what care, responsibility, and intention actually look like in winemaking.

We owe it to them. And frankly, we owe it to ourselves. We are doing a disservice to our customers by confusing them so much.

Now I want to hear from you:

How would you educate consumers on the topic of natural wine vs traditional wine? Would ingredients labels solve this for the consumer’s side or is it more red tape for an already overwrought wine industry to go through?

Drop a comment here or come chat with me on Instagram @craftandcluster.

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