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.
Gradizzolo
On the Colli Bolognesi, the Ognibene family farms forgotten native grapes biodynamically and ferments them in beeswax-lined amphorae and bottle, ancestral method.
Domaine de la Petite Soeur
A tiny, horse-ploughed Anjou estate where Adrien de Mello farms schist vineyards biodynamically and makes wild-fermented natural wines with no added inputs.
Séléné
Sylvère Trichard took over his grandmother's 4 hectares in Blacé in 2012 and built Séléné into an 8-hectare certified-organic estate where carbonic maceration and concrete tanks coax pure, vibrant Gamay from sandy Beaujolais soils.
La Boutanche
La Boutanche is Selection Massale's natural wine label launched in 2012, pairing iconic animal-mascot labels with 1-litre screw-top bottles of native-yeast, low-sulfur wines made by a rotating cast of trusted producers.
Les Valseuses
Antoine Le Court-Chedevergne and Julia Naar make additive-free wines in a 250-year-old Jura cellar, naming each cuvée after music that guided them from Australia to Brazil and back to France.
Danilo Thomain
The only independent grower in Italy's tiny Enfer d'Arvier, Thomain farms steep alpine terraces up to 800m and makes one savory Petit Rouge red in stainless steel and fiberglass.
Fres-co
Sonoma native Jack Sporer launched FRES.CO in 2019 to champion regenerative farming in Sonoma Valley, making living, native-ferment wines from organically and dry-farmed vineyards.
Château de Béru
After leaving Parisian finance, Athénaïs de Béru turned her family's 400-year-old Chablis estate fully biodynamic, with a walled monopole at its heart.
Jess Miller
An Oregon grower-winemaker who trained at Clos Roche Blanche in the Loire and farms a small Eola-Amity parcel herself, making sought-after Willamette Valley Pinot Noir and pet-nat rose.
Paolo Fasolo
Alberto Buratti revived his grandfather's 1972 Euganean Hills farm under the Faedesfa label in 2020, farming 3.2 hectares on volcanic soils and making zero-sulfur pet-nats from rare local varieties.
Populis Wine
Shaunt Oungoulian and Diego Roig founded Populis in Orinda, California after European apprenticeships in Beaujolais and Languedoc, sourcing organic fruit statewide to prove California natural wine can be affordable and honest.
Broc Cellars
A pioneering urban winery in Berkeley's Gilman District that helped define California natural wine, fermenting organically farmed fruit with nothing added and little or no sulfur.