WHERE AND WHEN: TRYING AND BUYING NATURAL WINE

“I do not want a Chablis for the sake of it;
I want it to reflect what we do with the food.”

(CLAUDE BOSI, TWO-MICHELIN-STARRED CHEF, LONDON, ON WHY HIS LIST WENT NATURAL)

“In the beginning we had so much bullshit for it, you can’t even begin to imagine,” René Redzepi explains. René is the owner-patron of Noma, a restaurant that started listing natural wines several years ago. “We were one of the first in Denmark to embrace the idea of natural wine, although just because it is labeled natural, biodynamic, or organic doesn’t mean that it is tasty. But the guys who are very good at it, well…” René trails off. “Once you start drinking that sort of wine, it is difficult to go back.”

Nowadays, more and more restaurants are choosing to list natural wines because of their precision and purity of flavor. A couple of years ago, Brett Redman from Elliot’s—a local, seasonal restaurant in Borough Market, London—went entirely natural with my help. “It’s easy for chefs to get their head around natural wine,” says Brett, “because we work with produce and we care about quality and interesting flavors. The problem is that most chefs don’t understand the winemaking process. Before our list was natural, for example, I thought the winemaker was the most important person in the production process. Now I know it’s the farmer.” And, like René, Brett believes that once you drink natural wine, you don’t go back. “Most of the chefs in the kitchen, within three months of being at the restaurant, only drink natural wine.”

Nowadays, natural wines are exported worldwide, so you stand a good chance of finding examples wherever you are. They are such foodie wines that the best choices are often found in restaurants where care can be given to hand-selling them and explaining what makes them so different and special. Some of the world’s best restaurants, such as Fera at Claridges in London, Noma in Copenhagen, Rouge Tomate in New York, and Taubenkobel in Austria, have wine lists with large natural selections. But great casual dining places abound as well, including Elliot’s, 40 Maltby St, Antidote, Duck Soup, Brilliant Corners, p. franco, Naughty Piglets, Brawn, Terroirs (and its sister restaurant Soif) in London, Vivant and Verre Volé in Paris, The Ten Bells in New York, and Enoteca Mascareta in Venice.

Claude Bosi usually uses natural wines in his tasting menus as he believes their complexity and purity of flavor mean they often work best with his food.

Similarly, natural wine bars, which were initially the preserve of Paris, have now spread far and wide. They include The Punchdown, Ordinaire, and Terroir in San Francisco, Les Trois Petits Bouchons in Montreal, and Shonzui in Tokyo, among many others. (Japan is one of the largest export markets for natural wines.)

Retail-wise, lots of wine merchants stock the odd example, many inadvertently, and, while you might be lucky and stumble across a bottle in a large grocery store, this is unlikely because the tiny production quantities mean that these stores are generally reluctant to stock them (Whole Foods UK being a notable exception). What’s more, as things currently stand, you can’t tell a natural from a conventional wine simply by looking at the label, so the best solution, in the UK anyway, is to look online. In France, things are a lot more advanced, with specialty wine shops in most of the major cities, including La Cave des Papilles in Paris and Les Zinzins du Vin in Besançon. However, New York is close on France’s heels, with stores such as Chambers Street Wines, Thirst Wine Merchants, Discovery Wines, Frankly Wines, Henry’s Wines & Spirits, Smith & Vine, and Uva carrying the natural wine flame on the other side of the pond.

A natural wine hangout worth visiting is The Punchdown in San Francisco.

Pas Commes Les Autres in Beziers, southern France, with its 200 or so bins, stocks a good selection of natural wines.