As natural wine continues to gain popularity, more an more people are asking about it. It’s a bit of a complicated topic to explain, so here’s a primer on the whole realm of organic, biodynamic, and natural wine that might be useful to help understand each term and put it all into context.

ORGANIC

Let’s start with the basics: organic wine. Organic wine is simply wine made without the use of any synthetics, anything un-natural. No chemicals, fertilizers, or other additives. But each jurisdiction has it’s own definition of what exactly is disallowed in it’s organic certification—you might have seen stickers on wine or food saying “organic claim not recognized in Canada”, etc. Some jurisdictions simply forbid chemicals or fertilizers, while others also forbid irrigation, cultured yeast from a laboratory, addition of acid, sugar, tannin, enzymes, or colouring agents that are popular in places like California. But either way, the main principle is: clean, organic growth and production with no added chemicals or synthetic fertilizers. Because attaining certification requires proof and testing for 3 growing years (exact duration varies from region to region), it is quite an expensive undertaking just to get a stamp that says you’re organic. So many winemakers who don’t have the extra cash to pay for expensive certifications still operate entirely organic farms out of their own principles, but don’t carry an official stamp. We refer to these as 'organically grown' wines as opposed to ‘certified organic'. Wines that are as organic in practice as anything else, but without an expensive certification.

BIODYNAMIC

The next step up is Biodynamics. A top biodynamic winemaker once told me that organics are about what you can’t do, and biodynamics are about what you can do. Meaning, with organics you can’t use chemicals, you can’t use synthetic fertilizers, etc. But in Biodynamics, there is a whole system in place with directions on how you can create an entirely self sufficient ecosystem within your farm to harness the maximum efficiency of nature itself. With biodynamics organic farming is presupposed, it’s the starting place, square one. It goes beyond simply being organic, it is all about making the whole farm into its own ecosystem with a life cycle that is also aligned with the universe. Yes, that sounds a little crazy and was regarded as pseudo-scientific witchcraft for a long time, but now many of the world’s top wineries are converting to biodynamic farming.

Biodynamics is a philosophy created by Austrian professor Rudolph Steiner, and is based on a series of 8 lectures he gave in 1924 simply titled the “Agriculture Course”. He took a lot of the modern biology and chemistry from the time and applied it to various historic, traditional, holistic farming practices and aligned them. Throughout all of humankind’s history, most agricultural decisions were made in consideration of earth’s relation to the cosmos at any given time. This is also why most religious celebrations centred around the change of the seasons, the solstices, moon phases, and the lunar calendar. What the stars were doing at a particular point in the year was not just fodder for light-hearted newspaper astrology, it was an understanding that where we are in the lunar cycle has very real effects on all life on earth. From gravitational pulls, to ocean tides, to weather patterns, barometric pressures, and seasonal changes. Steiner built out a philosophy and a biodynamic calendar that outlines what you should be doing on what days throughout the year, along with a long list of practices for natural fertilization, remedies for pests, weed control, soil health, etc. When you let nature do more of the work, this alleviates the need for extra farm machinery, chemicals, synthetic fertilizers, filtration, etc. As part of the philosophy, you required to have animals like goats, sheep, chickens, or cattle in your vineyard to complete a cycle where they graze in the vineyards to keep the weeds and insects down, grape canopies cropped back, while simultaneously fertilizing with their manure and providing compost for the field. He advocated using nature to combat nature: by planting specific flowers, grasses, and cover crops in between rows you can attract the predators of the pests who are attacking the crop. You can make teas out of stinging nettle or copper solutions to spray for things like mold and mildew and make special compost preparations to rehabilitate soil and plants. You can avoid filtration by racking the wine on days of high barometric pressure when the atmosphere naturally suppresses lees and other particles to the bottom of tanks. It is a complex and nuanced system of helping nature get into a balance where it can work in harmony with the farmer, as opposed to being over manipulated, filtered, sterilized or forced into submission with chemicals that are unhealthy for the environment, animals, farmers, and sometimes the people consuming it.

Biodynamic practices used in wine don’t necessarily give a flavour profile that you can immediately taste in an obvious way, but it’s something that promotes the health of the overall vineyard and farm to the point of finding it’s own balance and immunity against pests and diseases. He saw soil as a living organism who’s health was reflected in what was planted in it. When you have conventional vineyards that are like drug addicts, addicted to fertilizers and are doused in chemicals any time something goes wrong, the vines don’t have much immunity to strengthen themselves, defend against infestation, or flourish on their own. Then it requires more chemicals, fertilizers, or synthetic solutions to fix the problems and feed or protect the vines. What has sold so many winemakers on the idea of working biodynamically is not that their wine tastes a certain way because of the practices, but because the vines and farm are so much more vibrant, healthier, able to better defend against disease, and end up producing better quality wine in the long run. In a way, helping the vineyard help itself. While organic certification is regulated by many national, provincial, or state governing bodies with varying standards between jurisdictions, biodynamics has been regulated since the 1920s only by Demeter, an Austrian-based company that grants certifications globally. Eco-Cert is also becoming a leader in certifying sustainability, organics, and are now certifying biodynamics as well.

NATURAL WINE

So what is “natural wine”? First and foremost, there is no official definition to "natural wine”. It has largely been a term self-regulated by the winemakers themselves and it has not been controlled by any national or international governing bodies like organics or biodynamics have. Generally speaking, natural wine is supposed to be made with the lowest possible human intervention. It should be grown organically or biodynamically with no chemicals or synthetic fertilizers applied in the vineyard. It should be harvested by hand, fermented naturally by wild yeast, not have any fining or filtration, and have little to no sulphites added. This is sometimes referred to NSA (no sulphites added) or zero-zero wine (nothing added, nothing taken away). All wine contains some sulphites, because sulphur dioxide is a byproduct of fermentation, but those levels are extremely low in the 10-15 parts per million range. Generally speaking, it is only acceptable to add minimal sulphites to natural wine, and usually after fermentation and barrel aging has completed, prior to bottling in order to help preserve it in shipping and cellaring.

What's the big problem with sulphites? Sulphur is a "natural" compound, right? Yes it is, but what sulphur does is kill oxygen and subsequently anything that depends on oxygen to survive in wine. Industrially produced large volume wine (think Kim Crawford, Yellowtail, Apothic Red, etc) will want to maintain the EXACT same flavour profile from year to year with their wines. They also want very fruity, and often sweeter wines to appease the mass public palate. So they will add sulphites as soon as they crush the grapes into juice to protect the juice from oxidizing and keep it as fruity as possible. But because that juice has now been hit with sulphur, wild yeasts can struggle to start a natural fermentation, so the juice is usually inoculated with a more powerful commercially produced laboratory yeast. There are thousands of cultured yeast strains available from labs with varying potency levels and flavour profiles used to manufacture certain controlled styles of wine. Then when the wine is put to barrel it is often sulphured again to prevent oxidization and or re-fermentation of residual sugar, and then again prior to bottling for shipping. Conventionally farmed, industrially produced wines can end up with 150-300 parts per million sulphites. By comparison, Biodynamic wines must have less than 100 parts per million of sulphites, the RAW Wine Fair only accepts wines < 70ppm and the most militant natural wines are under 20-30 ppm.

What's the problem with higher sulphites? For one thing, many people find high sulphite wines to be the source of more headaches and hangovers, but natural wine purists will say that it kind of sterilizes the wine or erases a lot of the true character of the terroir, the variety, and the wine itself when you add sulphur and commercial yeast. It becomes just an industrially produced product instead of being a natural expression of terroir. This concept of masking terroir also extends into the use of oak. Natural wine purists either only use older “neutral" oak barrels that still help to age, evolve, and develop the wine but without adding any oaky flavour, or they use no oak at all, fermenting in stainless steel tanks, cement vats, or even ancient clay amphorae pots. The idea is that wine made with the use of a lot of new oak barrels tastes more of the overpowering oak than it does the grape and terroir.

As a result of all of this low-intervention, fostering of microbial cultures, and limited sulphur additions, the wines can taste very different than what you might be used to. Those uninitiated to very raw and hazy natural wine may think the wine tastes unfinished, very earthy or funky, or sometimes more like kombucha, cider, or sour beer than classic wine. It’s quite a different flavour profile, especially in the earlier days of the natural wine movement circa 2005-2015. Lately a lot of natural winemakers have gotten significantly more precise with their methods and have been producing cleaner, prettier, more classic tasting natural wine. They’re achieving this still without breaking the rules of natural winemaking, but with more experience and rigour in the vineyards and cellar they avoid the need for sulphites or filtration to “clean up” the wines because their methods have gotten cleaner, more rigorous, and precise.

So while all of these principles have been largely self-regulated by the growers with the absence of an international body like Demeter for Biodynamics, the closest thing to a regulating body has been the RAW Wine Fair, an international trade show that was the first to focus exclusively on natural wine. But recently it was announced that France is creating an official designation for it’s natural wines and it will be called "Vin Méthode Nature" governed by it’s AOC wine system. Many hope this is the beginning of broader regulations internationally for greater consistency in the natural wine world.

The bottom line on natural wine is: growing organically or biodynamically, having only natural spontaneous fermentation with wild yeasts, no fining or filtration, no additives of any sort (aside from a small amount of sulphites at bottling), and little to no use of new oak. And because all this is done on a boutique, micro level, there are no large volume natural wineries. They have small annual production and sell out pretty quickly, usually to very culty markets of restaurants and loyal fans.

SUSTAINABLE

In the past this has often been seen as a lesser certification, almost like an “organic lite”, but in recent years it has become one of the most relevant. As mentioned earlier, with organics and biodynamics, it takes 3-5 years to attain certification. Once you have it, if you use chemicals or any banned synthetic products you lose your whole certification and need to start all over again from the beginning…a very expensive endeavour. While biodynamics has many very good preventions and solutions in the vineyard, what happens when the organic farmer is overrun by a freak infestation of insects or an extra rainy summer followed by intense humidity gives rise to significant mold or mildew on the grapes? Often organic sprays or biodynamic tea preparations aren’t potent enough to deal with certain extraordinary situations. If they spray pesticides or fungicides they will lose their expensive certification, and if they do nothing they might lose their whole crop. They are caught between a rock and a hard place, and that is why many farmers grow organically, but without certification…so they can spray if they needed to save their crop in case something terrible happened.

But the more progressive Sustainable Certifications operate from baseline of organic farming, and if something drastic happens, the certifying body works with the farmers to allow a measured use of necessary chemicals to fix the problem, and then work with the farmers to rehabilitate the environment after use. Many see this as a more balanced, reasonable, and holistic approach to farming as it also takes into account the financial sustainability of the farmer and the employees. An organic farm is not very sustainable if it goes bankrupt. “Lutte raisonnée” is a French viticultural term that literally means “reasoned struggle”, and it refers to this very predicament the sustainable farmer is in. It is a viticultural philosophy to try minimize the use of any chemicals unless absolutely necessary to save the crop, and only in extreme circumstances, not as a matter of regular practice. Many sustainability certifications go much further beyond the vineyards and grapevines to consider the welfare of animals on the farm, health and safety of the workers, water management, and noise pollution. With the uncertainty of climate change already present with drastic effects around the world, and with the EU putting a ban on using more than 4kg per hectare of copper in field to protect against overuse and copper poisoning in the soil, these more holistic and balanced approaches are going to become increasingly relevant in the future.

LOW INTERVENTION

Lastly, this term has also become popular in the wake of the natural wine movement. And it essentially encapsulates all of the natural wine production philosophies and methods discussed earlier, but without necessarily being organic. “Natural Wine” certainly has a style and a flavour: it’s often cloudy or hazy from bottling unfiltered, no added sulphates can give it a funkier profile sometimes with a slight effervescence among other characteristics, etc. This profile is what so many have enjoyed about “Natural” wine and now more wineries are producing them, but not necessarily being entirely natural/organic/biodynamic in the vineyard. Most wineries in this category strive to be as organic as possible, but sometimes the climate of the region makes it too difficult and they ascribe to more of a lutte raisonnée philosophy in the vineyard but otherwise make the wine naturally. This would be a low-intervention wine. A hybrid model of natural production methods and principles of sustainability.

Each of these categories are deep and complicated topics that entire books are written about, but these are the broad strokes of what we mean when we’re talking about natural wine in general. There isn’t one that’s the bottom line best, there are lots of pros and cons in favour of one system or another, but they are all approaching the basic idea of having cleaner farming and moving away from the chemical dependant, additive heavy wines that have became standard in the last several decades.