What Is Natural Wine? (And How We Prove a Bar Pours It)
Natural wine in one paragraph, why there's no legal definition in most places, and the evidence we need before we call a bar, restaurant or shop natural.
Natural wine is wine made with as little intervention as possible: grapes farmed organically or biodynamically, fermented with the yeasts already on the fruit and in the cellar, and bottled with little or no added sulfites. Nothing is added to change the taste, colour or texture, and many natural wines are not fined or filtered.
That's the whole idea. The rest of this post is about what that means in practice, what it doesn't mean, and how isitfunky decides that a bar, restaurant or shop really pours it.
What natural winemakers usually do
In the vineyard: no synthetic herbicides, pesticides or fertilisers, and usually hand-picking.
In the cellar: spontaneous fermentation with native yeasts; no added sugar, acid, tannin, oak chips or colour; little or no sulfur dioxide (SO2); often no fining or filtration, which is why some natural wines are hazy. See why natural wine is cloudy.
Organic, biodynamic, natural: not the same thing
Organic certification is mostly about farming. In the EU the organic rules also restrict some cellar additives and set lower sulfite limits; in the United States, "organic wine" means no added sulfites at all, while "made with organic grapes" allows them. Biodynamic farming (certified by bodies such as Demeter) adds its own practices on top of organic farming. Neither certification requires native yeasts or rules out filtration. Natural wine usually starts from organic or biodynamic farming and then goes further in the cellar. The longer comparison
Is there a legal definition?
Not in most countries. "Natural wine" is not a protected term, so a label saying it proves nothing on its own. France has a voluntary label, Vin Méthode Nature, approved in 2020, which producers can sign up to; most natural winemakers don't use it. So the useful questions are the practical ones: who made it, how was it farmed, and what was added.
How we prove a bar pours it
isitfunky only calls a venue natural when there is evidence on file. We accept four kinds:
- Its own website says it pours natural wine.
- Its wine list names natural producers we recognise. Our crawler reads venues' own sites and wine lists, PDFs included, and matches the producers.
- A named publication calls it a natural-wine venue.
- Natural-wine importers list it as a stockist.
Each place gets a stamp for the strength of that proof, a Funk Score from 0 to 100 that adds the proof up point by point, a source link and the date we last checked. An editor reviews the strongest stamps, and the wax seal needs an in-person visit. A single importer listing is marked "carries natural wine" and isn't counted as proven. How the Funk Score works · The stamps · The dataset
What we never do
We don't rank by popularity, star ratings or reviews, and venues can't pay to be listed, stamped or ranked. Sponsored work, when there is any, is labelled on the thing itself.
Where to go next
The short answer for each city opens its city guide: the best-proven places, with sources. Every city guide is on Cities. If you're new to the vocabulary, start with the glossary or the FAQ.
Pét-Nat, Orange Wine, Skin Contact: A Glossary in Plain Words
The words you'll meet on a natural-wine list, each in a sentence or two: pét-nat, orange wine, skin contact, zero-zero, glou-glou, brett, mousiness and more.
How to Find Natural Wine When You Travel
A practical method for any city: where to look, how to tell a real natural-wine list from a label on the door, the words to ask for, and what to check before you go.
The Beginner's Case: 10 Natural Wines to Start With
Ten bottles that teach you the whole spectrum — from juicy Gamay to Georgian amber — and the producers to look for on any list.
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