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I have used the following glass in this video:
SPIEGELAU Hi-Lite Universal Glass – Get it here: https://www.spiegelau.com/en/shop/hi-lite/universal-glass-1750161?mtm_campaign=2025_cont_ec_baum20&mtm_source=ig&mtm_medium=afp&mtm_content=workshop&mtm_group=bgw&mtm_placement=link
I have tasted the following wines in this Video:
2019 Thomas Niedermayr Hof Gandberg T.N. 04 Bronner, Trentino-Alto Adige, Italy
https://www.wine-searcher.com/find/thomas+niedermayr+hof+gandberg+t+n+four+bronner+trentino+alto+adige+italy/2019?referring_site=KSB
2021 IGP Tetramythos Agrippiotis Orange Natur, Peloponnese
https://www.wine-searcher.com/find/tetramythos+agrippiotis+orange+nature+peloponnese+greece/2021?referring_site=KSB
2022 Kolfok Vulkan Alte Reben Gruner Veltliner
https://www.wine-searcher.com/find/kolfok+gruner+veltliner+alte+reben+weinland+austria/2022?referring_site=KSB
Jean-Louis Dutraive Domaine de la Grand ‘Cour Fleurie ‘Clos de la Grand’Cour’, Beaujolais,France
https://www.wine-searcher.com/find/jean+louis+dutraive+dom+de+la+grand+cour+clos+fleurie+beaujolais+france?referring_site=KSB
2024 Nikalas Marani Budeshuri
https://www.wine-searcher.com/find/nikalas+marani+budeshuri+kakheti+georgia+republic/2024?referring_site=KSB
I use this wine key: Forge de Laguiole Ebony
The 100 Point Scoring System (from www.robertparker.com):
96-100: An extraordinary wine of profound and complex character displaying all the attributes expected of a classic wine of its variety. Wines of this caliber are worth a special effort to find, purchase and consume.
90 – 95: An outstanding wine of exceptional complexity and character. In short, these are terrific wines.
80 – 89: A barely above average to very good wine displaying various degrees of finesse and flavor as well as character with no noticeable flaws.
70 – 79: An average wine with little distinction except that it is soundly made. In essence, a straightforward, innocuous wine.
60 – 69: A below-average wine containing noticeable deficiencies, such as excessive acidity and/or tannin, an absence of flavor or possibly dirty aromas or flavors.
50 – 59: A wine deemed to be unacceptable.
Natural Wine divides the wine community: some love the authenticity and purity of Natural Wine, while others dislike its flaws and the value signaling associated with the wines.
I have tasted many natural wines that I liked, but I have also struggled with the communication of the natural wine community. No wine is Natural – all wines are a cultural product – and I therefore think the term is misleading.
Additionally, Natural wine is not clearly defined, and producers might say their wine is natural, but no one controls their practices. So let’s talk about natural wine while I go through a selection of natural wines to see whether they are worth seeking out.
In the 1970s, Beaujolais vigneron Marcel Lapierre became inspired by a neighbor: vigneron, négociant, and scientist Jules Chauvet. Lapierre wanted to move away from industrial viticulture and followed Chauvet’s minimalist approach. Others joined their small movement. Namely: Jean Foillard, Jean-Paul Thévenet, and Guy Breton. They became known as the ‘gang of four’
This was the beginning of the natural wine movement. Today, many winemakers have joined the movement, but what does Natural wine actually mean? Isabelle Legeron, a MW and Founder of Raw Wine Fair – a fair that only shows natural wine, wrote the following text on the topic:
While there is no universally accepted definition of natural wine, it is generally agreed to be wine that is farmed organically and made without adding or removing anything in the cellar. No additives or processing aids are used, and ‘intervention’ in the naturally occurring fermentation process is kept to a minimum. As such, neither fining nor (tight) filtration is used. The result is a living wine – wholesome and full of naturally occurring microbiology.
This might sound great at first, but it’s not until you think about it. Do you actually want a wine where nothing is removed? Bits of leaves, grape skins, pips, and stems most certainly have to be removed from the wine, and does that make it worse?
Also, do you want a living wine if that means the wine might start to referment or go through malolactic conversion in the bottle? Just like the term natural wine, much of the messaging does not really meet my standards for truthful communication.
45 Comments
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The truth is that there is no truth. Natural wines should be judged as other wines, they are well made or not, you enjoy them or you don't, they are value for money or they are not.
I used to be skeptical about natural wines, but lately I cannot drink anything else.
I used to focus on semantics, as you did in this video, but I think it's pointless. Call them natural, untouched, "no chemicals", whatever you like, it doesn't change the concept: try to modify the wine as little as possible.
I feel like natural producers improved dramatically over the past 5 years, or probably I just found the right ones. I remember natural wines to be flawed and mediocre, but know I can see that I appreciate more spontaneously fermented wines, with some degree of maceration (for whites), unfiltered and so on, even in blind tasting.
Also, a lot of natural wines are super clean lately: Rodez in champagne, almost everyone in Bourgogne, Gravner in Italy. You don't have to be funky…even though I love funky 😅
I missed clos de la coulet de serrant from your lineup Konstantin! my favorite by far. . or is it considered more just a biodynamic, not full scale natural?
Some of the best wines I've ever tasted are naturals, and also some of the worst. Mostly I like them, and they often go really well with food. And hardly ever are they boring or mediocre. The movement itself holds importance as a counterforce to the heavily industrialized wine business. But, as you say, every well-made honest wine, "natural" or not, deserves to be enjoyed.
I usually enjoy your videos, but this was painful to watch. You come off as smug & taking cheap shots at the most rapidly growing segment of wine sales globally. Focusing on outdated semantics instead of why the methods used by this segment of producers is gaining so much traction is pointless. This is the original method of making wine & the return to form has been going on for decades. Many of the most prestigious winemakers in the Loire, Jura, Beaujolais, Italy, etc have been natural winemakers for a long time, but they don't scream about it. Let's face it, alcohol sales are down significantly globally. The days of high alcohol classic wines full of pesticides, herbicides, coloring, engineered yeasts, oak chips, egg whites, clays, sugars, acids, fish glue, gelatin, etc dominating the market are over. If you criticize "natural" winemakers for not labeling their wines with detailed ingredients, then you must also criticize classic winemakers for not disclosing all the additives used to make their wines so consistently "superior". No matter if classic or natural, there's good & bad practices. It's up to the consumers to choose. That said, the market has shown that the fastest growing segment of wine sales are low intervention, low alcohol, and easy to drink wines marketed in a youthful manner. Consumers are also more health conscious. The global natural/organic/biodynamic wine market was valued at US$28.5 billion in 2022 and is projected to reach US$69 billion by 2030. In 2024, organic wine accounted for over 61% of the global red wine market. Many of my contacts that are well known winemakers say they're seeing their largest sales growth in their low intervention product lines & they plan to increase them at the expense of their classic wines. So maybe focus on the exceptional low intervention wines as you would for any other style of wines instead of painting the entire style as flawed & deceptive. Now I'm going to go enjoy a low intervention Domaine de la Taille Aux Loups made by the wonderful Jacky Blot before his passing.
I have always maintained that a natural and mousey Italian wine called 'Mouseolini' would be a big hit.
If you need a grey area to pull extra money from me with a niche label, my money won't go your way, natural wine producers.
The Bronner ist a very interesting grape, I liked the vegetable taste profile best paired with Turkish food.
The best wine I’ve ever had was a natural wine, and so was the worst.
The majority of the production are bad grapes therefore you can only produce garbage using those grapes.
Producers won't throw the grapes away, they just label it differently. They need to make a living.
Bad wines have always existed, they weren't label as natural though but they tasted the same. The kind of wine that makes you want to vomit before swallowing.
Marketing is what it is, but the point is that grape juice is juste grape juice.
Same apply for every industry/product, like coffee or tea. Usually the quality is terrible, and the packaging very appealing.
There is a lot discussion justifying the "natural" process as following the ways of the original wine makers, or at least what we understood them to do. Of course they did what they did because they had no idea what chemistry is, what caused fermentation, and a host other things we now know about wine making. So it's better to throw out those ideas, pick and choose some? For me the word "natural" is the rub. It makes for a great slogan but is nowhere near the truth and results in wines with flaws far more frequently than the un-"natural" process.
Lazy wines I call them, if you can’t make a good wine, be lazy and then call it a natural wine.
None! I guess I follow you, Konstantin. Natural wines are not my cup of tea.
Coming from the beer world, as a drinker and brewer, having enjoyed (and brewed) spontaneously fermented or 'wild' beers, containing brettanomyces and bacteria usually excluded from commercial beer production, this interests me. I see there's a risk, reward relationship at play, and look forward to trying some natural wine. However, that the wine industry usually obsessed about geographical Terroir, doesn't take readily take advantage of the biodiversity of an area, always seems a bit odd to me. Opting for a narrow gamut of flavours in their drink of choice.
Few months ago while dining on a one M star restaurant, made the mistake to order the "natural" wine menu. It actually spoiled the dinner.
I would be even more interested in supernatural wine.
Love Dutraive! Their Lieu Dit Champ*gne Fleurie is a top cru Bojo in my books
Does the wine taste good? Then it's a good wine. Does it taste bad? Then it's a bad wine.
I lost some respect for you after watching this video. You practically rolled your eyes at the concept of natural wines.
No sulfite winemaking is a recipe for spoilage (from personal experience, at least).
Natural wine is like subscribing to ESG.
They way I see it the idea is to create a product with as little manipulation as possible. Meaning, a hand made product without using pesticides, adding yeasts, tannins, more so2 than needed etc. Some producers might be extremely picky about their vision but overall I feel the fuzz is something that is created by people outside the movement. I normally drink natural wine and I rather they would have 60mg of so2 in the wine if it is needed, filter it if that is what they want. I want an honset product without sugars, tannins added and where the earth is not damaged by poison.
Konstantin doesn't like natural wine. Fair enough. Don't drink it then. That leaves more for us. But this video
sifting through semantics to come up with a reasoningis cringe and painfull to watch.Konstantin, since this is your channel, I completely understand that it reflects your views. But calling the video “The Truth about Natural Wine” and then making straight-up subjective statements like calling Niedermayr’s wine “not bad at all” while looking surprised, or saying that “many natural wine producers avoid screw caps because they’re man-made” doesn’t really feel like a truth-seeking approach. Those are opinions, which is totally fine, but I don’t think they should be framed as the truth.
I’ve heard you make this point before about natural wine producers rejecting all things man-made, but that’s a bit of an oversimplification. All wines are produced — which winemaker would disagree with that?
I think it would make your videos a lot cooler if you said something like, “Hi, I’m Konstantin, and here’s my opinion on natural wine,” the way you said, “I don’t know if I need these wines in my life.” I get that! And that framing would make your videos feel more honest and personal.
One more note: tons of people disagree with Isabelle Legeron’s views on “natural wine,” so if you want to reach a broader audience, I’d deffo recommend avoiding her perspective as a jumping-off point.
Overall, good video as usual, I just think you’d be even more compelling if you made it clear when you’re sharing opinion versus… truth.
I've read in an article from Andre Jefford the idea of "whole wines", and made me thinking. Nowadays we praise unprocessed, unrefined, whole foods. Why would we make a difference with wines?
I'm far from the natural wine religion, but at the same time curios to understand and taste wines.
The definition of conventional wines is also questionable. We, in our lifetime have a definiton, but for centuries wines have been very different.
During the summer I drank a Domaine de la Grand'Cour Brouilly 2020 Cuvée vieilles vignes and I was blown away. Sure it's expansive, but the pleasure I had in drinking the wine was worth every euro. I was initially worried about the 14,5% but the alcohol was nowhere to be felt. Of course we chilled the wine a little and probably drank it at 16°-18° which feels chill if it's tge summer. An absolute banger of a wine, only rarely do I get this feeling that it has everything i wish a wine would have. I highly recommend anything from this Domaine.
Yes lets do that lets put every additive on the label…
The only natural wine is vinegar. This type of wine should be called minimal intervention wine or something similar. Obviously, they prefer to use the word “natural” in line with modern marketing trends that attempt to disguise many products as more “authentic,” "natural", or "environmentally friendly". That said, there are excellent minimal intervention wines, but there are too many wines of this type with a multitude of defects and aromas that overshadow the expression of the grape.
I find it really strange how many wine people keep bashing natural wine. It’s fine not to like it, but I don’t see this level of negativity toward any other drink. It’s almost as if some of these critics are being pushed by big conglomerates or traditional winemakers. You never see people making videos complaining about Pastis, Whiskey, Gin, Guinness, Coke, or Dr Pepper. Really weird.
It kind of reminds me of that Ricky Gervais sketch about Twitter and the guy in the town square — people getting worked up over something that literally doesn’t concern them.
Lidl Romania sells the Bob cu bob wines made in Adamclisi. These are not natural wines, they are Bio with No sulphites added. White is Chardonnay, red is Cabernet Sauvignon. Personally I prefer wines with no sulphites added as I can feel the alcohol makes a lighter effect on me. Wines with lots of sulfites make me feel the alcohol in the back of my head and a slight headache.
Haven’t Watched the video yet but I see Kolfok Alte Reben GV so I hope this one gets the approval! Such a great expression of GV.
How disappointing this video is – it's quite clear what the intent of this video was before you even produced it, and that is to just talk down the 'natural wine world’…
If you make a video about this topic, at least inform yourself properly?
And no, reading a definition somewhere from the internet is not it…
1. It's quite clear that you never even bothered to actually speak to a natural wine producer about the concept – what are the reasons they work like this? Etc. I’m sure you would learn a lot more like that rather than doing some Google search for a definition…
2. Why so focused on the semantics? Yes, there is no clear definition yet, but it’s generally understood that: A. The winemakers work in tune with nature in the vineyard B. Spontaneous fermentation C. If possible nothing gets added in the cellar, sometimes if necessary a small amount of sulphites is okay to be added… Shouldn’t you as a ‘master of wine’ YouTuber not try to educate rather than confuse everyone on the topic? Perhaps you could use your ‘Master’ status to help advance a more clear definition here?
3. The fact that you didn’t even know the details about some of the wines you tasted in the video, what the deal with them is about the points A, B and C mentioned above here is quite telling. I’m sure you can figure this out by either talking to the wine importer or the wine makers themselves? You have 192K subscribers, why put out such low effort content?
The point I do give you is with the transparency about how much sulphite is added – absolutely do agree here and hope that this will become the standard. Some winemakers already do, and with the new EU regulations about the ingredients hopefully this will only increase in the future.
This also counts for your conventional wine friends though! If you add your commercial yeasts etc. write it on the bottle! So I know which wines to avoid! 😉
And your recommendation to try out conventional wine at the end – no thanks, it’s like asking someone that drove a Porsche around the Nürburgring ’have you tried a Hyundai?’ sure we all know, it gets you safe from A to B but I know my choice every time 😉
I hope you revisit this topic soon in another video that is a bit more insightful, I would suggest that you invite and expert in the field to join you in your studio/cellar for that!
Vinegar I use in salads
For what it’s worth, I think the “natural wine” scene is an over correction from what many perceive as heavily manipulated wines.
For better or for worse, it’s a response to wines that are not of a place, but are truly a product. We all know what sorts of wines I mean – wines that use heavy amounts of new oak, are exceedingly overripe, sickly sweet, etc. In this way, I’d make the argument that the natural wine scene is ultimately for the better – any drive towards that links good wine as a product of good agricultural is a win in my book, but I agree many natural wines have swung too hard in the other way, and the label can be used to excuse poor winemaking.
Konstantin – I’d love to see you try top cuvées from the Gang of Four! That could make for an interesting deep-dive. Foillard’s Cote du Py holds a particularly special place in my heart…
if it is not rotten fruit in a natural sort of fermentation, then how is anything about it natural. seriously. Just say little effort wine. lol
I'm a big proponent of natural wine (by which I mean organically produced low-intervention wine) for three reasons:
1. It's organically or biodynamically produced. At the end of the day wine is a luxury product, so the environmental costs of production should be kept to an absolute minimum. This is especially important in viticulture where conventional farming practices use an ungodly amount of pesticides.
2. Low-intervention means that you get whatever the vineyard produced that year. It encourages creative problem solving and really tight work by the vigneron, both in the vineyard and in the cellar. Bad work shows, and there is no hiding behind chaptalisation, acidification, or some of the other 50+ additives permitted in wine making in the EU to make up for it.
3. It encourages innovation rather than conservation. Some natural wine makers make really good wine within the AOC (gang of four, Overnoy, Cossard, etc.), but many don't: they use old varietals, new varietals, varietals from other regions or planted in unusual soil; they make field blends, macerations, and experiment with vessels for fermentation and aging; and much more. This is how we do now what might become tradition later on.
@ClovisOchin hook the man up with some decent natural wine
People have been making wine for thousands of years (10,000?). They would pick the grapes, squeeze the grapes, ferment the juice and drink the wine. How silly then of, say, ancient Greeks: they thought they were drinking wine, while in fact they were drinking "natural wine". So, what I suggest is a change of perspective and reshufling of semantics: let's call wine with chemical additives "chemical wine" and wine without chemical additives (aka natural wine) just wine.
Perhaps it's because I'm 20 years older than you, but my view of the natural wine movement, at least its beginnings, is quite different. The Gang of Four, as Kermit Lynch named them, were just one part of a more general movement away from the mass sterilization of vineyards and winemaking that had occurred over the several previous decades. In California in the 80s and onward winemakers like Dr. Jerry Sepps, Joel Peterson, Paul Draper, Michael Havens and Peter Franus, to name a few, went back to a sort of vineyard first approach that focused on reducing or eliminating pesticides and using as light a hand as possible in the winemaking. It seemed at the time that many winemakers were simply terrified of the possibility of a bad bottle.
Today we take for granted a certain level of "natural" practices in both vineyard management and wine making that wasn't anywhere near as prevalent then.
I think Beaujolais made sense because Gamay was cheap, can make good red, and the general area was filled with people who knew how to make wine. It was great place to push back and experiment, to show people that wine wasn't a monolith, that there was more to wine than what everyone had been told to drink form Burgundy and Bordeaux. Good luck on getting a bottle from the Jura, Bierzo, Irpinia, etc., much less a whole list of countries whose wines I can find at any number of retailers in California.
Yes those wines could and can be blousy as all get out at their worst, but they were and still are a revelation at their best. The natural wine movement may be a lot of marketing now, but back in the 80s you wouldn't have had a single bottle of those you just tasted, other than maybe the Fleurie, available to you. You do now in no small part because of those wine makers.
This was very educational. I had always conceptualized "natural" as synonymous with spontaneous fermentation, and nothing more. Mentally, I've categorized naturals and generally more on the sour, mineral-y, even sometimes slightly carbonated side of things.
I would rather say YOUR OPINION about SOME (second-tier) "cleaner" wines. First time one of your videos is a painful and saddening watch.
If I disagree with something in the world of “natural wines” — which I actually prefer to call low-intervention or minimal-intervention wines — it mainly has to do with the pricing policy and the way some producers or hype promoters choose to present them, and secondarily with the branding and the audiences/communities in which they found acceptance. I understand that the term natural wines is somewhat catchy and trendy — perhaps even necessary — in order to promote this winemaking approach in a more dynamic way.
Some of the attempts have been genuinely poor, if not outright flawed, with aromas and flavors that many people comment on as such.
However, I’ve also had some excellent natural wines — ones that didn’t have a flashy profile or shout about the way they were made — usually from producers and wineries who have mastered the craft of winemaking over the years and aren’t experimenting on our palates.
I’m not against new efforts — quite the opposite, actually — but don’t promote a product that may have serious structural or organoleptic flaws, or even worse (if you’re a big fan of naturals), one whose production process you don’t actually understand/know.
What I love in my favourite winery is that they are doing both great conventional wines and a bit crazy low intervention wines.
Preach, brother ✊🏼 I’ve made it a point to drop the “n-word” and call them what they are: low-intervention wines. Less bankable, huh?