Wine 101: Wine, Explained Well

Some natural wine has faults, and it has always depended on the producer. Many natural producers add little or no sulfur dioxide, which leaves their wine more exposed to oxidation, Brettanomyces and mousiness. Where a fault begins is also partly a matter of taste.

A wine fault is a smell or taste the winemaker did not intend, caused by a microbe, a chemical reaction or bad storage. The eight covered here are cork taint, volatile acidity, ethyl acetate, mousiness, Brettanomyces, oxidation, reduction and heat damage: what causes each one, how it smells and tastes, and which ones air can fix.

In the European Union, a wine sold under a protected name (DOCG and DOC in Italy, AOC in France, DO in Spain) has to pass a lab analysis before it reaches the market, and for most of these names a tasting panel too. Every lot of Italian DOCG and every lot of Rioja goes through both exams. Table wines such as Vin de France skip the exam but still have to meet EU limits. In the US, TTB does not require a lab test for an ordinary imported wine; it tests wines it buys from stores.

A pét-nat, short for pétillant naturel, is a sparkling wine bottled before its first and only fermentation has finished, so the carbon dioxide from that fermentation is trapped inside the bottle. It has one fermentation where Champagne has two, nothing added to sweeten it, a crown cap instead of a cork and cage, and it is usually cloudy because the lees, the yeast left behind by fermentation, are never removed.

The best pét-nats to try now: lively, low-intervention ancestral-method bubbles in every color, from house bestsellers to seek-out bottles.

Prosecco col fondo is Prosecco that finishes fermenting inside the bottle it is sold in and keeps its lees, the yeast left behind by fermentation. The name is Veneto dialect for "with the bottom," meaning the sediment in the base of the bottle. It is dry and cloudy, and most of it is lightly sparkling.

The best chillable reds to try now: light, low-tannin natural reds built to serve cold. Lambrusco, Gamay, and carbonic-style bottles for easy drinking.

Orange wine is white wine made the way red wine is made. The juice ferments together with the grape skins for days, weeks or months, and the skins give it an amber color, tannin and more texture than a white wine has. Good first bottles are Gulp Hablo Orange and Field Recordings Skins; for more structure, Radikon and Denavolo; for the oldest version of the style, a qvevri amber wine from Georgia.

The best natural wines to try now, from crowd-pleasers like Gulp Hablo and Folicello Lambrusco to cellar bottles from Radikon and Frank Cornelissen. Customer favorites and staff picks across red, white, orange, rosé, and pét-nat.

Sulfites are sulfur dioxide and its salts, used in wine as a preservative against oxidation and unwanted microbes. Every wine contains some, because yeast produces sulfites during fermentation, so sulfite-free wine does not exist. EU law caps total sulfur dioxide at 150 mg/l for dry red and 200 mg/l for dry white and rosé; US law caps it at 350 ppm for every style, and requires a “contains sulfites” declaration above 10 ppm. Sulfite sensitivity is real but presents as asthma, not as a headache.

Natural wine is made from organically or biodynamically farmed grapes and fermented with native yeast, with nothing added in the cellar except, at most, a small dose of sulfites. No law defines it.

Wine aromas offer insights into the wine’s varietal character, production methods, and maturation process. These aromas are classified into three categories: primary, secondary, and tertiary, each…