Living wine seeks its place in a world that prefers its certainties in a bottle.
There’s something strange about the relationship we have with what we drink. We want natural on our plates, local at our markets, living things in our gardens — but in our glasses, we always demand the same wine: the one that smells nicely of oaky vanilla, the one whose colour is perfect, the one whose taste never surprises.
And yet, a handful of stubborn winemakers are changing the rules of the game. Silently, in their cellars, on their knees in their vines, they are reinventing a thousand-year-old art. With little recognition, much scepticism — and one deeply rooted conviction: wine can be something else.
THE NEW PRACTICES
Biodynamics: tending the vine like a living organism
Far from being a New Age fad, biodynamics rests on a systemic approach to the vineyard. Inspired by the work of Rudolf Steiner, it sees the wine estate as a self-contained organism, capable of regulating itself if given the means.
In practice, this means working to the lunar calendar, preparing plant-based infusions and decoctions, and banishing every synthetic chemical input:
- Working the soil according to the root, flower and fruit days of the lunar calendar
- Decoctions of nettle, horsetail and valerian to strengthen the vine’s natural resistance
- Preparation 500 — cow manure fermented in a buried horn — to energise the soils
- Zero pesticides, zero synthetic herbicides across the entire estate
The result? Soils teeming with earthworms, mycorrhizal fungi, beneficial bacteria. Vines whose roots plunge deep, seeking out water and minerals on their own.
« A living wine evolves, breathes, changes with time and travel. For purists, that is where true nobility lies. For sceptics, that is where the risk begins. »
Sulphur-free winemaking and Georgian amphorae
In the cellar, the innovations are just as radical. Winemaking without added sulphur is the real revolution: SO₂ has been used for centuries as a preservative. Removing it means working without a safety net. The wine becomes living, unpredictable, sometimes capricious.
Other winemakers go even further, reviving ancient practices: amphora vinification, terracotta jars that allow micro-oxygenation without imparting any oaky taste. We told you about it a while back 😉
In parallel, the search for forgotten grape varieties becomes obsessive — Pineau d’Aunis in the Loire, topped-up Savagnin in the Jura, Tibouren in Provence. Wines we’ve never tasted, with no reference point in memory, and which for that very reason disorient as much as they enchant.
THE WALL OF PROFESSIONAL RECOGNITION
Juries that don’t know what to make of them
Wine competitions are the showcase of the wine world. But in this highly codified universe, natural wines often turn up as free electrons. A slightly cloudy wine — because it’s unfiltered — will be penalised on appearance. A wine with a slightly reduced nose — because it had no protective sulphur — will be marked down on the nose.
The problem? These evaluation criteria were designed to judge conventional wines. They’re incapable of grasping precisely what makes a living wine singular. It’s like judging a street artist at a Fine Arts competition: the form changes, the rules stay frozen, and it’s the creation that pays the price.
The tyranny of international taste
International criticism, long dominated by the Parker model, imposed a single ideal of taste: powerful, concentrated, oaky wines with ripe tannins. Natural wines, with their unapologetic lightness, their lively acidity, their sometimes atypical aromas, sit at the opposite end of that model.
« Some natural wines cannot claim their appellation — because they express a terroir in a way that yesterday’s rules never anticipated. »
Appellations that exclude their pioneers
The ultimate paradox: some natural wines cannot claim their appellation of origin. Because they’re made with atypical grape varieties or show sensory characteristics deemed non-compliant with the specifications. These wines are downgraded to plain “Vin de France” — even though they express a terroir with a precision that many a Grand Cru might envy.
Feel free to read our article on the definition of ‘Vin de France’:
THE CONSUMER’S PERSPECTIVE
Consumer distrust: a matter of comfort and codes
« My wine mustn’t surprise me »
The traditional wine consumer has built a relationship of trust founded on repeatability: each vintage must resemble the last, each bottle the one before. That’s the implicit promise the great houses managed to sell for decades.
Natural wine, on the other hand, is alive. It varies from one vintage to the next, sometimes from one bottle to the next. A wine opened too early can seem closed, austere. The same wine two hours later can open up in a deeply moving way. This isn’t a flaw — it’s a quality. But for a consumer used to predictability, it’s unsettling.
The spectre of faults and the lack of guidance
The fiercest debate revolves around the real or supposed faults of natural wines. Reduction, Brett, volatile acidity… These traits, tolerated in small doses as a sign of complexity, are considered deal-breakers in conventional wine. Where does the “living” end and the winemaking error begin? There’s no simple answer.
One last obstacle, a practical one this time: organic and natural wines are often pricier and distributed through alternative channels — independent wine merchants, natural-wine bistros, farmers’ markets — far from the supermarkets. And the labels, often lacking a legible grape variety or appellation, leave the consumer without bearings.
WINE AS A POLITICAL ACT
Things are changing, slowly but surely. Natural-wine bistros are blossoming in every big city — from Le Verre Volé in Paris, a pioneer since 2000, to Odessa Comptoir on the slopes of the Croix-Rousse in Lyon, by way of more than 1,000 addresses listed across the whole of France.
« Natural-wine bistros and independent wine merchants are becoming the first places of taste education for the newly curious. »
A new generation of sommeliers questions, explores, embraces the unexpected. Figures like Pascaline Lepeltier, France’s Best Sommelier 2018, who champions natural wines on the biggest international stages, or Xavier Thuizat, France’s Best Sommelier 2022, who put around forty winemakers under 35 on the wine list at the Hôtel de Crillon, many of them working organically or naturally. The Guide to the Best Wines of France 2025 itself lists nearly half of its estates as certified organic or biodynamic — something that would have been unthinkable twenty years ago.
Choosing an organic or natural wine is more than a consumer choice. It’s an act of support for the men and women who have decided to work differently, even if it means giving up easy certifications, flattering scores and lucrative markets. It’s betting on diversity against uniformity. On the living against the standardised.
Natural wine isn’t perfect. It surprises, it disorients, it sometimes disappoints. But when it succeeds — and it often does — it says something no laboratory wine will ever be able to say: the truth of a place, a season, a human being who chose to trust nature.
Have you ever tasted a natural wine that won you over — or, on the contrary, let you down?
Share your experience in the comments.
Sources: Wikipedia — Biodynamic viticulture · Wikipedia — Biodynamic agriculture
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