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.
Caleb Leisure
A former NYU fiction student turned California natural winemaker, Caleb Leisure ferments organic Sierra Foothills fruit in Georgian qvevri buried in his cellar floor.
Martvilis Marani
Winemaker Zaza Gagua left Tbilisi in 2015 to farm the subtropical lowlands of Samegrelo in western Georgia, cultivating ten indigenous grape varieties on four organic hectares and fermenting in qvevri to make wild, authentic expressions of one of the wine world's oldest regions.
Kortavebis Marani
A Kakheti winemaker building a living library of thirty-plus indigenous Georgian grapes, fermenting spontaneously in qvevri with zero added sulfur.
Lekso's Marani
Lekso Pitskhelauri makes qvevri wines in his grandfather's century-old cellar in the Kakheti village of Akhshani, coaxing rare indigenous varieties into some of Georgia's most honest and tradition-rooted natural wines.
Artana
Two sisters carry on their great-grandfather's Kakhetian cellar, fermenting indigenous grapes in buried qvevri with nothing added and nothing taken away.
Pheasant's Tears
Founded in 2007 by painter John Wurdeman and eighth-generation grower Gela Patalishvili, this Kakheti estate revives near-extinct Georgian varieties in buried qvevri.