Great news. After welcoming a baby into the world and going through a house move, I’ve finally found time to start doing some work for 2017. Thank you for staying in touch and asking about when my next event is. To answer your question, it is 4th May and we are going to look at Super Natural wines of Australia. 

Super Natural Wines?

I’ll admit, I have stolen the term ‘Super Natural’ from a supplier. It is a tongue in cheek term that describes the wines that are made with quality in mind but might be slightly unconventional. Natural wine has no legal definition but it is widely held that it should be single vineyard, organic, no input (yeast, sulphur, other things) and bottled as is.

Preserving what nature intended us to taste.

When this is done well the wines are amazing. But it can make it hard to consistently and reliably produce amazing wine. At every step the wine is exposed to the nasties that want to turn this pure and delicious thing into undrinkable muck. Once it is in the bottle and unleashed on the world it is uncontrollable by the winemaker.

Preserving the wine.

A lot of otherwise natural producers like to protect their wine at bottling with a small amount of sulphur. Does that change the wine from being natural? Or is the preserving process finished and the sulphur just a guarantee their wine is stable and presented to us wine lovers as it should be?
What about when a producer uses other processes or adds something? How much difference does that make? Keeping in mind that the minute we start cultivating a vine it is an intervention.
There are definitely firmly held beliefs but no right or wrong. It is a matter of what works best for each person. But how do wine lovers know what all of this means to them?

“When I open this bottle, what will it taste like?”

Welllllllll, let’s have a look at some great examples. We will taste through producers who embody a belief in quality and making great quality wine with the least amount of inputs possible. Therefore ‘Super Natural Wine’.

The Golden Rule

If a wine tastes good to you then it is good (for you, others will agree, more will probably disagree but it doesn’t matter).