Natural wine: a complete primer

What natural wine actually is

Natural wine is wine made with as little intervention as possible — both in the vineyard and the cellar. There's no single legal definition that covers the whole category, no global certification body, and no industry-wide agreement on where the line falls. What most natural winemakers do agree on is a set of practices: organically or biodynamically farmed grapes, hand-harvesting, spontaneous fermentation with native yeasts, no added sugar, no commercial enzymes or additives, minimal or no filtration, and either no sulfites added or a very small amount at bottling.

The result is wine that tastes different from conventional wine — sometimes radically so. A natural Beaujolais might be bright, electric, almost crunchy with red fruit. A natural orange wine from Friuli might taste like fermented apricot tea with hints of beeswax and oxidation. A natural pét-nat from the Loire might be cloudy, faintly cidery, and arrive with a crown cap instead of a cork. The aesthetic is unpolished and individual rather than corporate and consistent.

This is by design. Conventional winemaking is built around the idea that the winemaker should be able to shape the final wine — to add what's missing, remove what's unwanted, and produce a stable, predictable, scalable product. Modern wine regulations permit roughly 70 different additives in the cellar without disclosure: commercial yeast, enzymes, tannin powder, color stabilizers, acidifying agents, deacidifying agents, fining agents (egg whites, isinglass, casein, bentonite, gelatin), Mega Purple for color, oak chips and tannin extract for flavor, dimethyl dicarbonate (DMDC) as a microbial control, and many more. None of these have to appear on the label. Most wine drinkers don't realize this.

Natural winemakers reject most or all of those additives. The philosophy isn't anti-technology so much as anti-correction. Wine, in this view, is an agricultural product first — like cheese, sourdough bread, or salami — and its character should reflect the place it came from, the season it was made in, and the choices the winemaker made within tight constraints. If the grapes have low acid, you make a wine that embraces low acid. If a bottle goes a little wild during fermentation, you let it. The wine you produce is the wine the year and the place gave you.

That working definition gets harder to apply at the edges. Is a wine still "natural" if the producer adds 25 mg/L of sulfites at bottling? Most natural wine drinkers would say yes. What about 50 mg/L? Probably still yes for many. What about 100 mg/L? Now you're approaching conventional organic winemaking. The line isn't sharp, which is part of why the category has been so contested.

Natural vs. organic vs. biodynamic — the terminology problem

Three terms get used interchangeably in casual conversation and mean three different things in practice. Sorting them out is the first step to understanding what's actually in your glass.

Organic wine

Organic is the most regulated and best-understood category. In the European Union, organic wine has carried the green-leaf "Eurofeuille" certification since 2012, and it covers both the vineyard and the cellar. Organic grapes must be grown without synthetic pesticides, herbicides, or fungicides — only copper, sulfur, and a short list of natural treatments are permitted. In the cellar, organic winemaking restricts certain additives and sets lower sulfite limits than conventional wine: 100 mg/L for red, 150 mg/L for white, versus 150-200 mg/L for conventional. In the United States, the USDA Organic label is even stricter — no added sulfites at all — but a separate "made with organic grapes" label permits sulfites up to 100 mg/L, which is what most American organic wines actually carry.

Organic certification ensures the vineyard is farmed cleanly. It does not, however, restrict most cellar additives. Commercial yeast, enzymes, added tannin, and many other interventions remain legal in organic wine. A wine can be 100% certified organic and still be made with industrial cellar techniques.

Biodynamic wine

Biodynamic takes organic principles further into a holistic philosophy of the vineyard as a living ecosystem. Developed by Rudolf Steiner in 1924 (predating organic standards by decades), biodynamics treats the vineyard as a self-contained organism. Practitioners follow a lunar calendar for vineyard work, use specific compost preparations (the famous "Preparation 500" buries cow horns filled with manure during winter to extract its energies in spring), and emphasize biodiversity and soil health over any single crop.

Two main certifications exist: Demeter certifies individual vineyards or parcels, while Biodyvin certifies whole estates and counts over 200 members. Biodynamic vineyards are also organic by definition — the standards are stricter — but biodynamic certification places stronger restrictions on cellar practices and provides a more comprehensive farming framework.

Many of the world's most celebrated wineries are now biodynamic, including Domaine de la Romanée-Conti, Domaine Leroy, Domaine Leflaive in Burgundy, Maison Chapoutier and Domaine Huet in the Loire, and Frog's Leap and Benziger in California. Biodynamic farming doesn't make a wine "natural" in the strict sense — most biodynamic wineries still use cellar additives — but it does dramatically narrow the gap.

Natural wine

Natural wine goes further than either organic or biodynamic in the cellar. It typically requires the grapes to be organic or biodynamic to begin with (whether certified or not), and then adds restrictions in the cellar: no commercial yeast, no additives, minimal sulfites, no filtration or fining. The vineyard practices are organic, but the cellar practices are what define the category. This is where the confusion comes from: many "organic" wines aren't natural because they use cellar interventions, while many "natural" wines aren't formally certified organic because the producer skips certification for cost or philosophical reasons.

A useful mental model: organic and biodynamic are about how grapes are grown. Natural is about how wine is made. A wine can be one without the other, both, or neither.

The principles in depth

While there's no single rulebook for natural wine, most practitioners adhere to a consistent set of principles. These aren't laws — they're a working consensus among the producers who've shaped the category.

Organic or biodynamic farming

The starting point is healthy grapes from healthy vines. Synthetic pesticides and herbicides change soil microbiology in ways that affect what comes out of the vine, and even small residues survive into wine. Natural winemakers farm organically — usually without certification, since certification involves costs and paperwork many small estates skip — and many also follow biodynamic principles.

Hand-harvested grapes

Mechanical harvesting damages skins, releases juice prematurely, and brings in unripe and rotten fruit indiscriminately along with the good. Hand-harvesting allows the picker to select what to keep and what to leave. For natural wine in particular, where there's no later cellar process to clean up the result, the harvest is the last chance to control what ends up fermenting.

Spontaneous fermentation with native yeasts

This is perhaps the most defining technical choice. Conventional winemaking adds commercial yeast strains — typically cultured Saccharomyces cerevisiae bred to ferment fast, finish reliably, and produce predictable flavors. Natural winemaking lets the wild yeasts already present on the grape skins and in the cellar do the work. These ambient yeast populations are diverse, slower, sometimes erratic, and often produce more aromatic complexity. They also fail more often. A spontaneous fermentation that stalls is a real risk; one that goes microbially sideways is a small disaster.

Why do it? Because the resulting wines tend to taste more distinctive — more characteristic of their specific place — and because commercial yeast strains tend to flatten regional and varietal differences. A Chardonnay fermented with the same commercial strain across three continents tastes more like that strain than like those three places. A Chardonnay fermented spontaneously tastes like itself.

No additives

The conventional cellar has a long pantry of permitted additives. Natural winemakers refuse most of them:

• No commercial yeast or enzymes — fermentation runs on its own biology
• No added sugar (chaptalization) — alcohol comes only from the natural sugar in the grapes
• No added acid (tartaric, malic) — if the wine is low-acid that year, that's the wine
• No deacidification — if it's high-acid, that's also the wine
• No added tannin, color, or flavor agents — no Mega Purple, no oak chips, no commercial tannin powder
• No fining agents — no egg whites, isinglass, casein, gelatin, or bentonite to remove proteins or improve clarity
• No flash pasteurization, reverse osmosis, or thermovinification

Minimal or zero sulfites

Sulfur dioxide (SO₂) is the one additive most natural winemakers keep, though they use it sparingly. Sulfites prevent oxidation and microbial spoilage; they're also produced naturally by yeast during fermentation, so even a "no sulfites added" wine contains some. The split in natural winemaking falls along two camps:

• Zero added sulfites — the most strict natural wines. These are unstable, ship poorly, and reward cold cellar storage. They can be transcendent and they can also turn into vinegar within months.
• Minimal added sulfites at bottling — typically 20-30 mg/L added only at the bottling stage to protect the wine in transit. The Vin Méthode Nature certification permits up to 30 mg/L total added sulfites.

For context, conventional wine commonly contains 100-150 mg/L of added sulfites; the legal maximum in the EU is 150 mg/L for red and 200 mg/L for white. A natural wine at 25-30 mg/L is using roughly one-fifth to one-sixth as much sulfur as conventional wine. The difference is significant, both in chemistry and in how the wine evolves over time.

No filtration or fining

Conventional white wines are usually filtered through fine membranes to remove yeast, bacteria, and proteins; conventional reds are often clarified with fining agents that bind to and remove suspended solids. Natural wines are typically left alone. The result: cloudiness, sediment, and occasional yeast deposits at the bottom of the bottle. These are features, not flaws — the cloudiness contains flavor and texture compounds that filtration would strip out.

A short history: Chauvet, the Gang of Four, and the modern revival

The current natural wine movement traces its lineage to one man and four disciples in the Beaujolais region of France in the 1980s.

Jules Chauvet, the godfather

Jules Chauvet (1907-1989) was a Beaujolais négociant, biochemist, and tireless researcher who studied wine fermentation as both a craftsman and a scientist. He published technical papers on aroma compounds, fermentation kinetics, and the role of yeast — work that's still cited in academic wine science. He also worked in the cellar, and what he found there made him a critic of modern industrial winemaking.

Chauvet argued for what he called vinification intégrale: harvesting healthy grapes from low-yielding old vines, fermenting with native yeasts, avoiding chaptalization, and using little to no added sulfur. He believed wine should taste of its place, that aggressive intervention masked terroir, and that the post-war push toward higher yields and standardized production was destroying the soul of French wine. He died in 1989, before the movement he inspired had a public name.

The Gang of Four

Chauvet's most influential disciple was Marcel Lapierre, who took over his family domaine in Morgon, Beaujolais, in 1973. Through the late 1970s and into the 1980s, Lapierre adopted Chauvet's methods one by one. By 1980, he had banded together with three nearby producers — Jean Foillard, Jean-Paul Thévenet, and Guy Breton — who shared the philosophy. They worked old Gamay vines, abandoned synthetic chemistry in the vineyard, harvested late, sorted rigorously, fermented spontaneously, and bottled with little to no sulfur.

The American importer Kermit Lynch began bringing these wines into the United States in the 1980s and coined the term "the Gang of Four" as a marketing handle. The name stuck. None of the four actually called themselves a gang; their philosophy wasn't unique to them either — Joseph Chamonard, Yvon Métras, and Georges Descombes were working alongside them in Beaujolais, and Pierre Overnoy was doing parallel work in the Jura. But the Gang of Four label, applied to wines that started to appear on Manhattan and San Francisco wine lists in the 1990s and 2000s, gave the movement its public face.

Marcel Lapierre died in 2010. His children Mathieu and Camille now run the domaine, continuing the practices and adding biodynamic certification. The 2010 vintage was Marcel's last, and the bottles from his era now trade as collector pieces. The Gang of Four are all still active or carried on by their families; the four Morgon domaines they founded are considered cornerstones of the natural wine canon.

The wider revival

The Beaujolais movement was the loudest, but parallel revivals were happening in other regions through the 1980s and 1990s. In the Loire Valley, producers like Pierre Overnoy (working in the Jura, technically), Marc Angeli, and Olivier Cousin were doing similar work. In Italy, Stanko Radikon and Joško Gravner rediscovered ancient skin-contact and amphora techniques in Friuli. In Slovenia, the same. In Georgia, producers were never not making qvevri wine — the technique had survived 8,000 years of continuous practice; the world simply rediscovered it in the 2000s.

By the 2010s, natural wine had grown from a fringe movement to a generational shift. Wine lists in Brooklyn, Paris, Tokyo, Copenhagen, and Melbourne began featuring natural producers exclusively. RAW WINE Fair, founded by Master of Wine Isabelle Legeron in London in 2012, became the central trade event. Importers like Louis/Dressner, Zev Rovine, Jenny & François, and Selection Massale built the US distribution infrastructure. Producers in California (Donkey & Goat starting in 2004, Martha Stoumen in 2014), Oregon (Day Wines, Minimus), Australia (Sami-Odi, Tom Shobbrook, Lucy Margaux), Chile, South Africa, and beyond joined the conversation.

What was once a small community of philosophically aligned winemakers is now a category that the mainstream wine press takes seriously, that has measurable consumer demand, and that has — finally — at least the beginning of a formal definition.

Vin Méthode Nature: the closest thing to a definition

In March 2020, after years of lobbying by French natural winemakers, the French government's fraud-control body (DGCCRF) formally recognized a natural wine certification: Vin Méthode Nature. It's still a private label rather than an official government certification — the certifying body is the Syndicat de Defense des Vins Naturels (SDVN), an industry association — but its recognition by the French state means producers can legally use the term on labels for the first time.

The charter

To use Vin Méthode Nature, a producer must follow twelve rules:

• Grapes from certified organic vineyards, or in the second year of organic conversion
• Manual harvest — no mechanical picking
• Indigenous yeast only — no commercial yeast strains
• No additives in the cellar — except sulfites within limits
• No "brutal" or "traumatic" winemaking techniques (reverse osmosis, cross-flow filtration, flash pasteurization, thermovinification)
• No added sulfites before or during fermentation
• Either no added sulfites at all (the strictest tier) or a maximum of 30 mg/L added at bottling
• External audit by a certifying body annually
• Producer details must be made public on the SDVN site
• If the producer makes both natural and conventional wine, they must be clearly distinguishable
• Bottle must carry the correct logo
• Producer commits to the charter for a minimum three-year period

The two tiers

The certification has two levels, distinguishable on the label:

• Vin Méthode Nature — sans sulfites ajoutés (no added sulfites). Lab testing permits up to 20 mg/L of naturally-occurring sulfites from fermentation but allows zero added.
• Vin Méthode Nature — <30 mg/l sulfites ajoutés (less than 30 mg/L added sulfites). Up to 30 mg/L added at bottling for stability.

For context: the legal maximum for conventional red wine in the EU is 150 mg/L, and conventional white can go up to 200 mg/L. The Vin Méthode Nature tier is one-fifth of that ceiling.

Limitations and criticisms

The certification is imperfect. It's still a private label, not a state certification. It's only available to French producers, though the SDVN has said it welcomes producers from other EU countries. Critics point out that the "no added sulfites" tier can be misleading because some yeast strains produce 10-30 mg/L of sulfites during fermentation naturally, and a wine that exceeds 20 mg/L of natural sulfites cannot wear the most restrictive label even though the winemaker added nothing.

Some prominent natural winemakers have refused to participate, arguing that a certification body imposes the same standardization the movement was meant to resist. Others have embraced it — being able to legally use "natural" on a label clarifies what's actually in the bottle for consumers who'd otherwise have no easy way to know.

The styles within natural wine

"Natural wine" is a winemaking philosophy, not a style. Within the category, you'll find every style of wine — still red, still white, rosé, sparkling, fortified, sweet, dry — plus a few that the movement has popularized or revived. The most important style distinctions inside natural wine:

Still red, white, and rosé

The bulk of natural wine is still wine in conventional formats. Beaujolais Gamay, Loire Chenin Blanc, Jura Trousseau and Poulsard, Sicilian Etna reds, California Zinfandel and Carignan — all the major styles have natural producers. What differentiates these from conventional versions tends to be: greater vintage variation (because the wine isn't corrected), more obvious terroir character, sometimes slight oxidation or reduction, and often higher drinkability.

Pét-nat (pétillant naturel)

Méthode ancestrale sparkling wine — bottled while still fermenting, with the leftover sugar carbonating the wine in the bottle. No second fermentation, no disgorgement, no dosage. The category predates Champagne by centuries (Limoux's Blanquette de Limoux from 1531 is the historical reference) but became a natural wine phenomenon in the 2010s. Pét-nats are typically crown-capped, cloudy with lees, lower in pressure than Champagne, and often have residual yeast in the bottle. They're best drunk young and cold.

For a full deep dive, see our pét-nat field guide.

Orange / skin contact wine

White wine made like red wine — fermenting the juice on the skins for days, weeks, or sometimes months. The skins contribute color (deep gold to amber), tannin (which white wine normally lacks), and structure. The technique is ancient — Georgian qvevri winemaking has used skin contact for 8,000 years — and was revived in modern winemaking by Friulian producers like Joško Gravner and Stanko Radikon starting in the late 1990s. Orange wine is now a major natural wine category, particularly from Friuli, Slovenia, Georgia, and a growing number of California and Australian producers.

For more, see our orange wine field guide.

Carbonic and semi-carbonic maceration

A fermentation technique where whole, uncrushed grape clusters ferment intracellularly in a CO₂-rich environment — essentially, each grape ferments inside itself before being crushed. The technique produces aromatic, low-tannin, fruit-forward red wines and is the signature method of traditional Beaujolais. Most of the Gang of Four wines are produced with carbonic or semi-carbonic maceration. The technique is also used widely in modern natural reds globally.

Glou-glou wines

Not a technical category, but a descriptor for the natural wine subgenre of light, fresh, easy-drinking reds and rosés — wines that "go glug-glug" down the throat. Low alcohol (often 11-12%), low tannin, served slightly chilled, made to be drunk in volume rather than analyzed. Beaujolais and Loire reds are the archetypes; many California natural producers have made glou-glou the foundation of their lineups.

Amphora / qvevri wines

Wines fermented and/or aged in clay vessels rather than stainless steel or oak. The vessel breathes slightly, allowing micro-oxidation without the flavor influence of oak. Georgian qvevri (large clay vessels buried in the ground), Italian terracotta amphorae, and Spanish tinajas all represent versions of the technique. Many natural producers use amphorae for orange wines and skin-contact whites; the combination of clay and skin contact is at the heart of Friulian and Georgian natural wine.

Faults or features: the funk debate

Natural wines sometimes taste different in ways that conventional wine drinkers describe as "faulty." The natural wine community generally argues these characteristics are features, not flaws — expressions of the production method and the producer's choices. Conventional critics argue the same characteristics are wine faults that proper technique could eliminate. The debate is ongoing and probably unresolvable, but both sides have points.

The five most-discussed characteristics:

Volatile acidity (VA)

The presence of acetic acid (vinegar) in the wine, usually from bacterial activity during fermentation. A small amount of VA — under about 600 mg/L — is undetectable. Above that, it adds a sharp, tangy lift that some drinkers love and others find aggressive. Many natural reds run higher VA than conventional wines because the absence of sulfur allows acetic acid bacteria to do their work. A producer like Frank Cornelissen (Mount Etna, Sicily) deliberately works with high VA as part of his style.

Brettanomyces (brett)

A wild yeast that produces compounds with aromas of barnyard, leather, smoke, band-aid, and horse stable. Conventional winemaking treats brett as a fault and uses sulfites and filtration to control it. Natural winemaking often welcomes a touch of brett as adding complexity. Burgundy has historically been brett-tolerant; many natural producers see it as part of the wine's character; some drinkers find it off-putting.

Mousiness

An off-flavor caused by certain Brettanomyces and Lactobacillus strains, producing compounds that taste like puffed cereal, hamster cage, or wet dog. Mousy taint is harder to defend than VA or brett — most natural winemakers agree it's a fault. The challenge is that mousiness is intermittent: it can appear and disappear in the same bottle over time, making it hard to detect at bottling. A wine that's clean at release can develop mousiness in the bottle, which is a real risk in low-sulfur winemaking.

Reduction

The presence of volatile sulfur compounds — typically hydrogen sulfide or mercaptans — producing aromas of struck match, burnt rubber, garlic, or rotten eggs. Reduction can be a fault but is also a stylistic choice in some natural and biodynamic wines. Light reduction (struck match, smoke) is fashionable in modern wine; heavy reduction is generally agreed to be a flaw.

Oxidation

The wine has been exposed to too much air, going brown and developing sherry or madeira-like notes. Conventional winemaking actively prevents oxidation through sulfur additions and inert atmospheres. Natural winemaking is less aggressive, and some natural wines show oxidative character intentionally — Jura whites and orange wines in particular often have oxidative profiles as a design choice rather than a flaw.

Where it's made: the key regions

Beaujolais, France

The spiritual home of modern natural wine. The Gang of Four's Morgon domaines are the historic core; today the entire region has shifted dramatically. Lapierre, Foillard, Thévenet, Breton, Métras, Descombes, Lapalu, Sunier, Chamonard, and dozens more produce some of the most reliably good natural wines in the world. The Gamay grape responds beautifully to natural fermentation; the wines drink across temperatures and pair with almost everything. Start with Morgon and Fleurie crus.

Loire Valley, France

The other French natural wine epicenter, sprawling across multiple sub-regions. The Anjou and Touraine areas are particularly dense with natural producers: Mark Angeli, Olivier Cousin, Jérôme Saurigny, Thierry Puzelat (Clos du Tue-Boeuf), Domaine de la Garrelière, and Domaine Mosse, among many others. Chenin Blanc, Cabernet Franc, Sauvignon Blanc, and Pineau d'Aunis are the grapes. The wines range from electric whites to crunchy reds to some of the world's best pét-nats.

Jura, France

A tiny mountain region in eastern France that punches well above its weight. Pierre Overnoy — now passed but his apprentice Emmanuel Houillon continues — is the canonical Jura natural producer; his wines are essentially impossible to find at retail. Other notable producers: Domaine Macle, Jean-François Ganevat, Domaine Pignier, Tony Bornard. The grapes are Chardonnay, Savagnin (the oxidative variety), Trousseau, Poulsard, and Pinot Noir. Jura whites can be intentionally oxidized; the region's signature style, vin jaune, is essentially deliberate sherry-like oxidation under flor for six years.

Friuli & Slovenia (orange wine country)

The cross-border zone between northeastern Italy and western Slovenia is the modern epicenter of orange/skin-contact wine. Joško Gravner and Stanko Radikon revived the technique in the 1990s, working with Ribolla Gialla and other indigenous whites and macerating on skins for weeks in clay amphorae. Movia (Slovenia), Damijan Podversic, Vodopivec, Princic, Kabaj — the list runs deep. The wines are amber-colored, structurally rich, often slightly oxidized, and unlike anything in mainstream wine.

Etna and southern Italy

Mount Etna in Sicily has become a major natural wine region in the last 20 years. Frank Cornelissen, Belgian by birth, makes some of the most polarizing and respected natural wines in the world from high-altitude vineyards on the volcano. Other notable Etna producers: Arianna Occhipinti (a few hours south in Vittoria), COS (also Vittoria), Salvo Foti (I Vigneri).

Georgia

The country with the longest continuous winemaking history on Earth — 8,000 years of qvevri tradition. Georgian wine in clay never stopped being natural wine; the world simply rediscovered the country in the 2000s. Pheasant's Tears, Iago, Niki Antadze, Gotsa Family Wines, and dozens of small producers make wines that are essentially unchanged from their bronze-age ancestors. The white grape Rkatsiteli and the red Saperavi are the most exported.

California

American natural wine started in California. Donkey & Goat (Berkeley, founded 2004 by Tracey and Jared Brandt) is the pioneer. Martha Stoumen (Sebastopol, founded 2014) became the face of California natural wine in the 2020s. Populis and Les Lunes (founded 2014 by Shaunt Oungoulian and Diego Roig) are the next-generation producers shaping where it goes. Add Forlorn Hope, Day Wines (Oregon), Lo-Fi, La Garagista (Vermont), Old World Winery, Subject to Change, and Ruth Lewandowski for a starter set.

Australia

Australian natural wine has its own distinctive identity, leaning heavily into amphora, skin contact, and unconventional grape varieties. Lucy Margaux (Adelaide Hills), Sami-Odi (Barossa), Tom Shobbrook, Jauma, and Patrick Sullivan are the canonical names. The Adelaide Hills, McLaren Vale, and Mornington Peninsula are the dense regions.

Other places worth knowing

Spain (Bodegas Cota 45, Envínate, Comando G), Portugal (António Madeira, Aphros), Germany (2Naturkinder, Weingut Brand), Austria (Gut Oggau, Christian Tschida, Claus Preisinger), Croatia (Roxanich, Tomac), South Africa (Testalonga, Mother Rock), Chile (Louis-Antoine Luyt, De Martino), and Greece (Domaine Tselepos, Glinavos).

Notable producers worth knowing

This is barely a sampling — the category includes hundreds of producers worth knowing across dozens of regions. A serious natural wine education involves working through the importer portfolios listed earlier, finding a few producers whose wines you respond to, and following their lineups through the vintages.

How to start drinking natural wine

If you're new to the category, four practical steps:

1. Find a natural wine shop or bar in your city

Natural wine is largely a recommendation-driven category — labels don't tell you much, and the price-to-quality relationship doesn't follow conventional wine logic. A good natural wine shop will hand-select a few bottles based on what you tell them. Major cities all now have at least one or two: Discovery Wines (NYC), Brooklyn's Astor Wines & Spirits, Lou (Los Angeles), Ordinaire (Oakland), Domaine LA, Maine & Loire (Maine), Henry's Wine & Spirit (San Francisco), Lou Marquis (Chicago), and the bars at places like Ten Bells (NYC), The Four Horsemen (Brooklyn), and Bar Brutal (Barcelona).

2. Start with Beaujolais

Natural Beaujolais is the gateway. The wines are friendly, well-priced (most bottles $25-40), broadly available through Kermit Lynch's distribution network, and deeply rewarding. A bottle of Lapierre Morgon or Foillard Côte du Py will tell you whether you like what natural wine has to offer. If you do, the rest of the world opens up; if you don't, you can stop and you've still drunk well.

3. Try a few categories

The natural wine universe contains very different drinking experiences. A pét-nat tastes nothing like a Jura Savagnin, which tastes nothing like a Georgian qvevri Saperavi, which tastes nothing like a California glou-glou red. Each is part of the same philosophical movement but a different sensory experience. Sample across:

• A natural Beaujolais — your entry to the philosophy
• A pét-nat — usually the most consumer-friendly natural wine and a good summer wine
• An orange/skin-contact white — to understand what skins on white grapes do
• A Loire Chenin Blanc — for white wine done with extreme care
• An amphora wine from Georgia or Friuli — for a sense of the ancient/modern connection

4. Track the importer, not the producer

Most natural wine in the United States comes through a small number of specialty importers. If you find that Louis/Dressner's portfolio tastes consistently good to you, follow them — their other producers will probably also work. The same is true for Zev Rovine Selections, Jenny & François, Selection Massale, Vom Boden, and Polaner Selections. Many natural wine shops organize their floors by importer for exactly this reason.