Natural Wine Producers: Working With Nature

Sandi Skerk farms 7 hectares of Vitovska, Malvasia Istriana, and Terrano on the windswept limestone plateau of Carso, just meters from Slovenia, making age-worthy skin-contact whites and refined reds from a cellar carved into bedrock.

In the medieval village of Gueberschwihr, four generations of the Gross family have moved from conventional Alsace farming to biodynamics and bold, unsulfured orange wines.

Slobodne Vinarstvo -- 'free winemaking' -- is a family estate in western Slovakia reclaimed after communist-era seizure and rebuilt over 25 years into one of the country's most respected natural wine producers.

Matija Žerjav, known simply as Matic, farms 9 organic hectares in the village of Malečnik in Slovenia's Štajerska wine region, championing the native Šipon grape and low-intervention winemaking in amphora and stainless steel with the energy of a third-generation natural winemaker.

A pioneer of skin-contact wine in Friuli's Collio, Franco Terpin farms marl-and-sandstone hills straddling the Italian-Slovenian border and macerates his whites for weeks to make textured, age-worthy orange wines.

Born from a market gap spotted by importer T. Edward Wines, this one-liter orange wine sold out in two months and turned skin contact into an everyday habit.

After a century of growing grapes only for the family table, Paolo and Giovanna Foppiani started bottling in 2017, making zero-sulfite wines with Giulio Armani of La Stoppa at their side.

Twelve kilometers from Slovenia, the Bastiani family farms 18 organic hectares in Collio, where the Aransat orange wine bridges tradition and modernity.