A Guide To Choosing Natural Wines

From Fanta to rust to Orangina, this seemingly new trend, in reality is ancient. Skin contact, skinsy, skin ferment, cloudy whites, however you want to pitch it this is orange wine. Through a twist on the conventional white wine making process, the makers creatively allow the juice of whites to macerate and ferment on its skins (sometimes with stems and this is called whole bunch) from a few days up to a few months. The tannins and phenolics, which are freakin’ amazing and should never be wasted, seep into the wine juice and what you end up with what is now referred to as orange wine.

Oranges do have an unusual taste for those who are used to conventional wines, often with tannic intensity and somewhat textural. A lot of our favourite beautiful Italian orange wines. you often get this apricot, peachy stone fruit kind of vibe. Paired with food, notice the tannins soften and flavour profile pop. See below for what a tannin is if we lost you there.

If you drink conventional whites, then this category is likely to surprise you the most. Natural whites tend to be fuller in style and more unusual than their conventional counterparts.

White wine is usually made by fermenting only the juice, no skins. Naturals tend to add a small period of skin contact during fermentation (although avoiding the intensity or length of an orange). There are a lot of natural whites that are direct pressed, which means no skin contact, if the winemaker would prefer a cleaner and crisp style.

Whereas conventional whites would often rely on sulphur to block transformations of acids (malic to latic acid) natural winemakers often believe this hampers the full flavour and texture profile a wine is capable of.

Natural reds aren’t radically different from those conventional ones, as conventional reds are generally made more naturally that any other style. The juice is left to stew on the skins (and pips or stems) giving it that deep colour.

Natural reds tend to steer away from the aroma of new oak. Often the fruit is harvested at full ripeness, but isn’t left to hang to build up a jam flavour, which is often the case with conventionals. You’ll find natural winemakers tend to avoid those big, bold, silky and oaky textures of your classical red wines from the last 50 years. Instead expect something more fresh, bright and fruit forward.

Called Rosé, blush or vin gris, pink wines are crafted with grape varietals from red skins or red flesh, with colour leaching into the wine. This is done through small periods of skin contact in maceration as we’ve seen with oranges.

Other methods for pinks can by blending red and white wines together or skimming off part of the re-wine production at the beginning of its fermentation process. Its darkness or lightness depends on a variety of factors, length of skin contact time, pigment strength or grape variety. Many winemakers create pinks as an afterthought, so make sure the winemaker has the right intention when venturing into pinks.

Fizz. We all used to know only Champagne when it came to bubbly wine, however, there are more and more growers and winemakers experimenting with natural sparkling.

The ancestral and more natural approach, of which most winemakers at Notwasted will follow, is the normal natural winemaking process (wild/vineyard occuring yeasts and sugar fermented). However, all of this is done in the bottle so the carbon dioxide is trapped. Natural bubble is a real art because bottle too late and your sparkling will be flat, bottle too early and the bottle may explode!