Every merchant selling natural wine faces the same question and most answer it with an adjective. The importers who built this category in the UK split into two camps: those who publish hard criteria, and those who call natural wine a spectrum and leave it there. Both are honest positions. Ours is simpler. If we use a word on this site, we tell you what it means here, and every bottle is placed by the same rules.
Two separate claims, never blurred
How the grapes were farmed and what happened in the cellar are different questions. A wine can be certified organic and heavily worked in the cellar. It can be uncertified and made with nothing at all. So we grade the two separately, and the word natural belongs to the cellar.
What gets a wine into this shop
The farming comes first. Every wine here is at least one of: certified organic, certified biodynamic, certified sustainable, or practising organic and sustainable farming where we hold the producer's own account of it. Certified and practising are labelled differently, always. Sustainable is a real claim about footprint and it earns its own badge, but we never call a sustainable wine natural on that basis.
Low intervention, the word that actually means something
When people say natural wine, what they are really describing is low intervention: a winemaker who does as little as possible to the juice. That is the term we lead with, because it describes a practice you can check rather than a philosophy you have to take on trust. Our low intervention family runs in three tiers, strictest first.
Nothing added. No sulphur, no additions, the wine is fermented juice. Fragile sometimes, thrilling often. The trade calls this zero zero, and you will see that on other lists. We say nothing added instead, because zero zero sits one shelf away from the alcohol free 0.0% bottles and we would rather be understood than sound like an insider.
Natural. To carry this word a wine must clear every one of these, on evidence we hold:
· Organic or biodynamic fruit, certified or practising
· Fermented on its own natural yeasts
· Total sulphur at or under 50 mg/l, as an actual figure, not a vibe
· No animal fining
If any one of those is Not declared, the wine cannot be called Natural here, however natural it may in fact be. It sits as Low intervention instead, with the gaps shown plainly, and it graduates the day the missing fact arrives. We would rather under-claim than guess.
Sustainable is the second pillar, and it matters just as much. A certified environmental or social standard, IPW, WIETA, HVE, carbon neutral and kin. It is a real claim about the footprint of the whole operation, it earns its own badge, and we never dress it up as natural.
Classically made. Good wine, conventional cellar. It says so.
Where our line sits against everyone else's
Our Natural ceiling of 50 mg/l total sulphur matches the strictest published standard in the UK trade: the RAW WINE charter and Pure Wines both draw their line at 50. The French mark Vin Méthode Nature allows up to 30 added. Most merchants publish no number at all. Ours is on every bottle, from the producer's own analysis, so you can apply any stricter line you like. Filter at 30 if 30 is your number. The data is there.
The count today
Right now the live range holds 2 Nothing added, 2 Natural, 90 Low intervention and 143 Sustainable wines. Those numbers move with stock and with evidence, and small numbers do not embarrass us. A short list we can prove beats a long list we cannot.
Explained, straight
Five short reads behind the Standard. No lecturing and no mystique, just what the words on a wine label actually mean, what is law and what is marketing, and how to tell a feature from a fault.
What natural wine actually means
There is no legal definition anywhere. Here is what the charters that do exist actually guarantee, and what they do not.
Sulphites, straight
What SO2 does, why the ten milligram label line exists, and why zero is not automatically better.
Organic, biodynamic, natural, sustainable
Four words, four different claims. Which are law, which are private, and why we never blur them.
Why some great growers have no certification
Certification costs money and takes years, and some of the best growers refuse it on principle. Absence of a logo is not evidence of intervention.
What to expect from the bottle
Cloudiness, spritz, sediment, a little reduction. What is normal, what is a fault, and how to tell them apart.