It's always worth remembering: before the invention of pesticides and newer farming technologies, natural wine was all there was.

It wasn’t until the 1970s that the natural wine movement as we know it began in France, as a reaction to chemically-based agriculture. That’s when four winemakers in Beaujolais—the “Gang of Four” of Jean Foillard, Guy Breton, Jean-Paul Thévenet, and Marcel Lapierre—committed to farming without using pesticides, as well as sorting grapes for quality control, adding no or very little sulfites to wine, and refusing to add sugar as well. 

Since then, and especially in the past 10 years, natural wine has moved  from novelty to niche to, arguably, mainstream. Or as mainstream as natural wine can get. Natural winemakers have always prided themselves on doing it differently. No labels, no rules, just wine—good wine—and letting terroir speak for itself. Today, winemakers such as Tom Lubbe in Roussillon, the Radikon family near the Slovenian border, Gearhead Wines from California, and Australia’s Tom Shobbrook—just to name a few—prove that excellent wine and a natural approach can coexist perfectly.

Unfortunately, as many natural wine fans know, natural wine drinkers don’t always get excellent wine. Issues with oxidation or cellar hygiene sometimes lead to bottles that fairly scream with volatile acidity and its vinegary flavors and odors, and natural wine fans are all too familiar with wines that undergo a secondary fermentation in the bottle, which carbonates wines intended to be still. All of which hurts natural wine’s reputation, results in rants like this—and, perhaps, was a factor in leading the notoriously unruly natural wine world to band together to mount some sort of defense. Associations such as the Syndicat de Défense des Vins Naturels and Vins S.A.I.N.S.—both are French groups of natural winemakers—have been lobbying since the early 2000s to recognize a standard definition for natural wines. 

We are finally past the time, perhaps, when natural wine was commonly equated with punk rock; consider for a moment how far and wide natural wine bars and shops have spread in recent years. Now comes, perhaps inevitably, bureaucracy.

Vin Méthode Nature: the (Newest) Label for Natural Wine

In March 2020, the Institut National de L’origine et de la Qualité—which regulates France’s agricultural products—formally established a definition and label to certify natural wine: Vin Méthode Nature. Vin Méthode Nature mandates organic agriculture, manual harvesting, native yeast fermentation, and a ban on what it refers to as “brutal and traumatizing techniques.” These include thermovinification (raising crushed grapes to very high temperatures before fermentation), fining, and reverse osmosis and other means of filtration. 

There are two tiers of certification: one for wines with no added sulfites, and those that add less than 30 mg sulfites per liter. To earn the label, a winemaker has to join the organization, endorse its charter of commitment, and provide information on harvesting techniques and the wine itself: alcohol levels, acidity, pH, residual fermentable sugars—and total amount of sulfites.

Which raises two key issues. First, native yeasts produce varying amounts of sulfites during fermentation. Some yeast strains will produce 10 mg per liter or more before the wine is even bottled. Though this occurs naturally, the regulations mean that such wines must be labeled as containing sulfites, even if the winemaker didn’t add any. Second, it's impossible to check all of this after the wine is bottled. 

“I understand the critique, but we focused ourselves on what was, for us, the commonly understood definition of natural wine,” says Jacques Carroget, president of the Syndicat de Défense des Vins Naturel and the vigneron at Loire’s Domaine La Paonnerie. “The goal is to defend a mode of vinification, issued from organic grapes—nothing more.”

The View from the Vineyard

The simple fact that it’s long been hard to articulate precisely what “natural wine” means—at least one close association with the name raised regulators’s eyebrows in the U.S.—makes an argument for some consumer guidelines, even if no system is perfect. But is the Vin Méthode Nature actually being used by a critical mass of key natural winemakers? 

It’s difficult to get exact numbers, since there isn’t any kind of official registry of natural winemakers, even in France. However, Raisin, the app dedicated to natural wine, lists around 1,420 natural winemakers in France. Of those—each of whom produce a number of cuvées every year—there are 714 cuvées that use the Vin Méthode Nature label, according to the latest report of the Syndicat de Défense des Vins Naturels in March 2024. Of those 714 bottlings, 64 percent use the no-sulfites logo. To put this into greater perspective, in 2021, a year after the launch of the label, only 170 cuvées sported the label. 

That marks both a fourfold increase, but its adherents nonetheless remain far from a majority. Guilhem Soulignac, associate winemaker and oenologist at Roussillon-based Domaine Riberach, for one, doesn’t see a reason for it. 

"With labels such as Demeter [which certifies biodynamic products] or Nature et Progrès [which certifies environmentally friendly products] already in place, I don’t see the added value of the definition,” he says. “You can’t check when the sulfite was added, so why go through the bureaucracy when you don’t have to prove how you actually made the wine? Most of our clients and buyers don’t really look at labels. It isn’t proof of a good terroir wine. The hassle isn’t worth it, and our buyers know how we work.” 

“For me,” he continues, “it’s about the terroir—tasting every wine and new vintage, and making sure everything is done to guarantee the quality. Everything else is just marketing.” And, he adds, “platforms like Raisin provide more transparency. They check how the winemakers work, and they provide a clear overview of which winemakers, restaurants, and bars have natural wines.”

Still, many winemakers are on board, as Zev Rovine of the Brooklyn-based natural wine importer Zev Rovine Selections confirms. “There is quite a lot of participation. A lot of our producers use the Vin Méthode Nature label,” he says. “Generally, French natural winemakers feel overwhelmed by administrative work, so some may not be participating because it’s another thing to deal with—though I’ve never heard any sharp opposition.” [Rovine imports Domaine La Paonnerie.]

For Karine Mirouze from Corbières’s Château Beauregard Mirouze, the extra administrative work didn't stop her from immediately applying for the label. “For us, it was important that such a label existed and clarified what a natural wine is. Too many wines are sold under the label of vin nature when, in my opinion and in the opinion of the syndicate, they aren't at all.”

Natural wine, she adds, “is often reduced to the fact that there are no sulfites. But that's only a small part of it. Conventional wines that are machine harvested with lots of additives, sterile filtered or pasteurized but without sulfites, claim to be natural. And that just isn’t the case.” She concludes that Vin Méthode Nature ”has enabled winemakers, wine merchants, distributors, and consumers to sit down and agree on a very strict but clear set of specifications. And that provides clarity.”

So will natural wines end up just as regulated and controlled as conventional ones? I, for one, doubt it. It is not hard to find diehard biodynamic producers who refuse to go through the arduous process to win Demeter certification—and that is just one of many such longstanding options that would, well, certify their approach. In France, many very well known natural producers—such as Clos Lapeyre in Jurançon, Les Vins Pirouettes in Alsace, or Domaine de la Dourbie in Languedoc—just bring their wines to the market as a Vin de Table or Vin de France. 

They, too, may wish to avoid the extra hassle. Or maybe they’re thinking: since when did labels ever have anything to do with punk rock?