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Reading a wine list

How to find your way around a natural list: producers, cuvées, styles, and a phone camera to check who is behind a bottle.

3 lessonsCurious drinkers, new floor staff
Module 1 · On the page

Producer first, then cuvée

On a natural list the producer (often a vigneron, who farms and makes the wine) is the most useful word. A cuvée is one bottling; one producer usually makes several, from an easy glou-glou to a wine for keeping.

Négociants buy fruit rather than farm it; a new wave of natural négociants works with organically farmed fruit from growers they trust.

Sorting by style, not by colour

Many natural lists group wines as bubbles, skin contact, light and chillable reds, and fuller reds. If you know you like fresh and light, look for chillable reds, Gamay, carbonic maceration or vin de soif.

If a list is only a few lines long, ask what's open by the glass: it is often the most interesting part.

Module 2 · With your phone

Scan a list or a label

Photograph a wine list or a bottle label with Scan. It shows which producers are on proven venues' lists, and where else they're poured.

It reads what's printed; it doesn't grade the wine. Use it to find a producer you liked again, or to see who else pours them in your city.

Try this: Scan the list at the next natural wine bar you visit and open one producer page.