Five wines that made me fall in love with natural wine
Or, how I became the most annoying friend in the group.
Being someone who is ‘into wine’ is very fun and cool. It feels good to have someone pass you the wine list and trust that you will pick something good for the table. It also feels good watching someone you love enjoy something you love, confident that they will also love it, because you chose it for them with their specific tastes, whims and things that you know they love in mind.
But it is also a little embarrassing. Both in the way our generation finds it embarrassing to be sincere about almost anything, but also because drinking wine and calling it a hobby could, understandably, be lumped alongside other mildly embarrassing (read: ostensibly middle class) pastimes, like playing golf, or “holidaying” anywhere.
The rise of ‘natural’ wine – so called because the wines’ origins, both in the vineyard and the cellar, are more hands off and led by nature – can largely be credited with opening up wine’s appeal to a younger, more diverse audience. Zeitgeisty bottles with fun labels and descriptions that sound more like vape flavours than wine styles have seen its popularity boom outside of wine’s more ‘traditional’ demographic in recent years. It was also natural wine that taught me to love wine more generally – the unique flavour profiles, the romanticism of how it’s made, and, at least for me personally, the far less brutal hangovers. But it would be remiss to ignore that the price tag on lots of these bottles – rarely retailing at less than £15 a bottle, compared to £6-9 for an average supermarket bottle – along with the esoteric language often used to talk about them, can still act as a barrier to learning about wine for those who are newer to it and aren’t sure where to start.
I grew to love wine over the course of a couple of years – initially, being led by my own tastes and figuring out what exactly those tastes were, before delving deeper and attempting to learn about wine in a more useful, ‘objective’ way (spoiler alert: trying to be objective about wine (or anything) is boring and defeats the purpose of doing something for enjoyment, but, like anything, it can be helpful to look beyond the horizons of what you know you like). I have spent more than I care to think about on wines by the glass and by the bottle, all in pursuit of the feeling that comes from finding a really special wine, or sharing it with someone at a really special moment. I am also, crucially, still pretty early on in my journey of learning about wine, so understand how daunting it can be to even know where to begin with getting into wine.
So, in an effort to save you both time and money, here are five wines that helped me fall in love with it, and that will hopefully help you become infatuated with it, too.
Ancre Hill, Pink Pet Nat – Monmouthshire, Wales (£19.50, Monty Wines)
If the novelty of being able to tell everyone you share this wine with that it was produced in Wales isn’t enough to win you over, then the sheer fun of it should. A beautifully soft sparkling rosé, bursting with delicious ripe peach, apricot and strawberry notes and a creamy, almost yoghurt-like finish, make drinking this feel like something between smashing a bag of those fizzy peach Haribos and drinking a Actimel, if drinking Actimel was fun and could get you tipsy. The first time I tried this wine, I spent the next three weeks thinking about it until I was able to get my hands on another bottle of it, and it continues to be my go-to bottle when I want a fun and easy crowd-pleaser. Also, it’s from Wales! Iechyd Da!
ABRACADABRA/Hannah Fuellenkemper, various – Auvergne, France (£28-32, Gergovie Wines)
It’s impossible to talk about Hannah Fuellenkemper’s wines without noting the significant hardships she’s had to overcome in her winemaking journey (which she details in her blog! Bring back blogging!), but it’s stories like Hannah’s that perfectly illustrate the romanticism of low-intervention wine making. As a result, Hannah’s wines come in very limited runs – so once they’re gone, they’re gone (to the point where the specific wine I first enjoyed from her is no longer available, so I sadly cannot link to it). These are the holiday romances of the wine world – the ones which stick in your mind years after the event and still make you feel a little giddy when you think about them. Forget about Hinge – have a short but passionate love affair with one of Hannah’s wines instead.
Daniele Piccinin, Monte Scarvi – Veneto, Italy (£17.50, Wayward Wines)
It’s often assumed that all natural wines are ‘funky’, taste like a craft beer and smell like a barnyard – the kind of thing your mum might call “a bit different” and that you wouldn’t be thanked for bringing home with you at Christmas. But if you, like me, also enjoy proving people wrong and being a smug little dickhead about it, you should buy this wine and share it with your sceptical loved ones. Clean and accessible without compromising on complexity, this is a beautiful wine with so much going on in the glass, and at a (relatively) friendly price point to boot – the perfect gateway natural wine (even if your dad will just end up drinking a Stella anyway).
Fleur Goddart, Putes Feministes – Alsace, France (£32.50, Juiced Wines)
Picture this: you are sat in the window of a wine bar after work, with a book and around 40 minutes to kill before meeting a romantic intrigue for dinner. You ask the person taking your order for a recommendation, for something a little different. They know just the thing. They return with a glass of a deep mustard coloured wine, bursting with tropical guava, passionfruit, Turkish delight(?!) and a slick salinity that makes you question how this could possibly have been made by grapes. You immediately text your beau, suggesting a quick change of location: “I know this great little place…”. They arrive, and are immediately blown away by your impeccable taste. They pay for everything, and when you get back to theirs, you have mind-blowing sex, unencumbered by the volume of wine consumed previously. You fall asleep, wake up with perfect hair, and do not get a UTI despite forgetting to pee, because you are God’s favourite.* This is that kind of wine.
Also, the name of the wine translates to ‘Feminist Whores’, which rules.
Paleokerisio, Ktima Glinavos – Ioannina, Greece (£15.80, Pure Wines)
I discovered this wine back when I used to take more of a panicked approach to choosing a wine from particularly extensive wine lists (in this case, the wine list at Lady of the Grapes, in Covent Garden). I went in, armed with two facts – first, that I knew I liked orange wine, and second, that I also liked having money left to pay my rent at the end of the month. So when I found the ‘rosé and orange pet nat’ section of the bottle list, I scanned for the cheapest option, ordered it from the friendly somm, and put the list down with a palpable sense of relief.
My initial concern when we were brought a considerably smaller bottle than expected – I’d failed to clock that I’d ordered a 50cl bottle, rather than a standard 75cl bottle – quickly turned into sheer, mind-blowing delight after tasting it. It was one of those wine moments that quickly lodged itself in my brain as one I would remember forever, and that, for me, epitomises the joy of learning about wine. Realising that orange wine could be fizzy! That it could come in funny little bottles! That grapes you’ve never heard of but that have been around for centuries could make wine that looks like Irn Bru and reminds you of everything from apples and cinnamon to honey and nuts to apricots and vanilla to something completely elusive that can’t really be captured with words alone!
It also reminded me there is really nothing to be scared about when delving into a wine list, or the shelves of a bottle shop, or a by the glass list, lest you make the ‘wrong’ choice. Choose your wine based on your budget, your tastes, the colour in the glass or the label on the bottle. Choose something you’ve never heard of, or something you always come back to. If you still don’t know what to choose, ask your somm to choose for you. There are no right or wrong choices when it comes to drinking and learning about wine – if you’re lucky though, there will be memorable ones, and these are the ones that will help you fall in love with wine. And for that, I can only apologise.
*Not based on a true story. I have never woken up with perfect hair in my life.
All prices and links correct at the time of publishing.