Natural wine sounds like Berlin, Paris and Copenhagen. It is also made here, in the Kaiserstuhl. What the term means, why it isn't allowed on the label in Germany, and why the bottle still says "contains sulphites".
Ronald Linder, who makes natural wine in Endingen on the Kaiserstuhl, puts the definition in one sentence: wine from organic farming to which nothing is added and from which nothing is taken away that the wine doesn't let go of by itself.
That sounds simple and is quite a statement. The conventional cellar knows dozens of permitted processes and aids: cultured yeasts for a predictable fermentation, enzymes, acid to add and processes to take it away, tannin for structure, sweet reserve for roundness, fining agents for clarity, filtration for stability. Each one is a tool for nudging a wine in a desired direction. Natural wine does without practically all of them. What remains is grapes, yeast and time.
Almost everything is decided in the vineyard
If you don't want to correct anything in the cellar, you can't afford mistakes in the vineyard. That is why the beginning is almost always organic or biodynamic work — and it looks different from what you would think.
Ina Wihler farms around four hectares in Ihringen. Between her rows of vines grows a dense cover of clover, grasses and herbs. Ouessant sheep, a small Breton breed, eat the excess shoots and fertilise as they go. Instead of synthetic agents she uses plant extracts, from horsetail, nettle, yarrow and marigold. Herbicides are taboo, copper is kept to a minimum. Her own line on it: diversity should rule in the vineyard.
Biodynamics goes a step further and works with the phases of the moon and preparations after Rudolf Steiner. You don't have to share the worldview behind it to see what happens in such vineyards: more life in the soil, more insects, more resilient vines. In the end the wine doesn't taste biodynamic. It tastes of a vineyard where a great deal is going on.
Little happens in the cellar, and that is precisely the art
After the harvest, which is done by hand, fermentation starts by itself. Natural wine works with the wild yeasts that sit on the grape skins and in the cellar anyway. This yeast population differs from site to site and from year to year, which is why every spontaneous fermentation is unique. It is also slower, less predictable and can get stuck. That is the price.
Ageing takes place in whatever overwrites the wine the least: used wood, concrete egg, amphora. No new barrique contributing vanilla and toasty notes, but vessels that do one thing above all: leave the wine in peace.
The thing about sulphites
A lot of nonsense is talked here, including by people who should know better. There is no such thing as sulphur-free wine. Yeast itself produces sulphites in every fermentation, in small amounts, entirely on its own. The question is never whether sulphites are in there, but how much is added.
The orders of magnitude: for dry wines the legal ceiling is 150 to 200 milligrams per litre, depending on colour. Ronald Linder caps his wines at 30 at most. And as soon as a wine contains more than 10 milligrams, "contains sulphites" has to appear on the label — for natural wine too, even for an unsulphured élevage, because the yeast has produced some itself.
Why "natural wine" isn't on the label
A practical note for the shelf: in Germany the word Naturwein is not permitted as a designation on the label. "Natur" is allowed. So anyone standing in front of a bottle looking for the term won't find it. Nor is there an official certification for it, unlike organic. With natural wine you depend on the producer and on their disclosing what they do. Which is exactly why the winemaker's name comes so far forward in this segment.
What awaits you in the glass
Expect haze, wines that change markedly in the glass over an hour, and an aromatic profile that in whites often heads towards apple skin, herbs and fermentation notes. Skin-fermented whites, the so-called orange wines, have tannin — they feel more like light reds and want to be treated as such, so not ice-cold.
And yes: natural wine fluctuates. Two bottles of the same wine can taste different, one vintage can be brilliant and the next awkward. If you are looking for reliability, you are in the wrong place. If you want to know how a particular piece of land tasted in a particular year, you are exactly right.
The two we start with
We are adding natural wine to our range, and deliberately not from the Loire Valley or Georgia but from here. Ina Wihler does in Ihringen what is described above: four hectares, sheep, herbal extracts, spontaneous fermentation, little cellar. Her Grauburgunder is called Fontis. Ronald Linder works in Endingen by the same logic, with hand harvesting, at most 30 milligrams of sulphur, no filtration and no fining. Together with Linda Kurz the two run FreiWein in Freiburg, the region's natural-wine tasting.
The Kaiserstuhl is known for Grauburgunder and Spätburgunder, for weathered volcanic rock and loess, and for a very traditional wine culture. That two estates here of all places work consistently with natural wine is the more interesting story than any imported bottle.
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