Natural Wine Producers: Working With Nature
Portraits and interviews with the world's finest natural wine producers — farmers and winemakers who work in harmony with terroir, minimal intervention, and a deep respect for the land.
La Boutanche Martin Texier
Martin Texier, son of northern Rhône legend Eric Texier, launched his own domaine in Saint-Julien-en-Saint-Alban in 2014 and makes native-yeast, zero-sulfur wines from 5 hectares planted in clay, schist, gneiss, and granite.
Louis-Antoine Luyt
French-born Louis-Antoine Luyt arrived in Chile at 22, trained under Marcel Lapierre in Beaujolais, and has spent over two decades reviving 350-year-old País and Cinsault vines across Maule, Bío Bío, and Itata with dry farming, horse plowing, and zero intervention.
John Almansa
A Languedoc farmer who tends sheep, bees and olives alongside two hectares of old Cinsault, making zero-sulfur whole-cluster wines under his Domaine Zou Mai label.
Les Frères Soulier
Brothers Charles and Guillaume Soulier reclaimed four hectares of their father's vines in 2015 in the Gard, southern Rhone, farming by permaculture principles with horses and animals and making sulfur-free, unfiltered wines from Syrah, Grenache, and Cinsault.
Les Temps des Cerises
German-born Axel Prufer left East Germany for the Languedoc in 2003 and built a domaine of roughly 15 hectares above Beziers, farming granitic soils without systemic sprays and making zero-sulfur wines from Cinsault, Carignan, and Grenache with an easy, glouglou character all his own.
Mas Coutelou
Jean-François 'Jeff' Coutelou farms 14 hectares of ancient vines in Puimisson with certified-organic credentials stretching back to 1987, producing singular Languedoc wines from rare Mediterranean varieties with total commitment to non-intervention.