[Drinking] Natural wines

[Machiavelli]

Many years ago we did a tour around the champagne region to the lesser known producers.
This one really stood out, we had a tour around the cellars.
If you like blanc de blancs the basic is great. I think Selfridges stock it.

Blanc de Blancs - Champagne Veuve Fourny

White juice from white grapes (Chardonnay) harvested by hand, this wine reveals all the know-how of the Veuve Fourny house blended from different plots, and from different harvests: purity, finesse and elegance. An ideal companion for your aperitifs, it is […]

www.champagne-veuve-fourny.com

Looks lovely, but is it a natural wine?
I appreciate this is a difficult question to answer (well, it is for me at least).

 

[Goldstone1976]

Many years ago we did a tour around the champagne region to the lesser known producers.
This one really stood out, we had a tour around the cellars.
If you like blanc de blancs the basic is great. I think Selfridges stock it.

Blanc de Blancs - Champagne Veuve Fourny

White juice from white grapes (Chardonnay) harvested by hand, this wine reveals all the know-how of the Veuve Fourny house blended from different plots, and from different harvests: purity, finesse and elegance. An ideal companion for your aperitifs, it is […]

www.champagne-veuve-fourny.com

Indeed so. One of my go to growers. NY Wines of Cambridge stocks it for sure.

 

[Goldstone1976]

Looks lovely, but is it a natural wine?
I appreciate this is a difficult question to answer (well, it is for me at least).

Noooooo

 

[BrightonCottager]

We had some nice natural wines in Portugal at Easter. Friends who live in Provence, surrounded by a conventional vineyard, have started seeking out organic and low intervention wines after experiencing at first hand the amount of spraying and removal of any other vegetation (leading to the soil washing off) going on around them.

 

[portslade seagull]

My wife used to love wine but now cannot drink it as she ends up with migraines which last for 2-3 days and that's after less than one small glass. Can only assume it's the additives

 

[Herr Tubthumper]

Many years ago we did a tour around the champagne region to the lesser known producers.
This one really stood out, we had a tour around the cellars.
If you like blanc de blancs the basic is great. I think Selfridges stock it.

Blanc de Blancs - Champagne Veuve Fourny

White juice from white grapes (Chardonnay) harvested by hand, this wine reveals all the know-how of the Veuve Fourny house blended from different plots, and from different harvests: purity, finesse and elegance. An ideal companion for your aperitifs, it is […]

www.champagne-veuve-fourny.com

Thanks, I have just ordered 3 bottles of this.

 

[Nitram]

When we did the tour years ago one of the two sons that had taken over the running of the business gave us a wine tasting and tour of the cellars. His mother and her husband set up the business. As the husband was a Belgium working in the champagne region it was quite unusual at that time.
He indicated that the grapes after they used them for their wines were then sold to some prestigious houses, but was too discrete to mention.
He did imply Prince Charles, as was, was a customer.
At the end his elderly mother in her immaculate Chanel suit loaded up our car with our order
Enjoy.

 

[Herr Tubthumper]

At the end his elderly mother in her immaculate Chanel suit loaded up our car with our order
Enjoy.

Gotta love the French havn’t you?

 

[McTavish]

Would this be the Esprit Nature form Henri Giraud Champagne mentioned in this thread?

Yes that's right. And to be fair, it is only what I would call "accidentally natural" in that it met the low sulphur levels required to meet the standards of some natural wine organisations rather than being made to be specifically "natural".

There is no generally accepted definition of Natural Wine and so it becomes a fairly broad, if not largely meaningless, term. At one end you have the purists who believe that only wine that has been produced by dumping grapes in a dirty bucket and waiting to see what happens is truly natural. At the other end, are winemakers who produce wine with great care but minimal intervention and then add sufficient sulphur on bottling to ensure that the wine is stable - sometimes the added sulphur will be low enough to result in a wine which will meet some (but not all) definitions of Natural Wine, sometimes it won't.

You will have natural wine zealots who tell you that wines which taste of oxidised cider or vaguely fruity vinegar are "how they are meant to taste", but to me these are faulty. Personally, although I know that an increasing number of natural wines are very good, I would always be ready for some absolute rubbish if I was buying wine that was proclaimed to be "natural".