Plenty more wines, including our first natural wines

If you follow my blog, you read more than once of my frustration in not being able to find natural wines. I believe that a wine is first and foremost a wine, and whether natural or not, becomes irrelevant if the wine is not drinkable. Until recently, all natural wines I had tasted were either undrinkable or with an unjustified price, so we decided to wait despite the trend. Making natural wines is certainly more expensive compared to conventional wines, but also more difficult, since it follows the natural process and the wine maker can do very little to control and guarantee the outcome.

Unfortunately, due to the huge amount of undrinkable and with an unjustified price natural wines, the trend has almost passed, wine drinkers have been left disappointed, and many of these wines have, thankfully, disappeared but there are producers that are making natural wines as a life choice, producers that, have learned how to make natural wines and now make great wines, following the natural method, but well made wines first.

I recently attended a wine event in Italy and had a chat with one of these producers - I loved some of their wines, less others - and she said that they had to learn how to make natural wines and only now, after several vintages, they are happy with the final product. The reason I did not like some of their wines is because, sometime, being natural is also “crazy” wine making process, that do not always produce great results. When I asked her why I never heard of them, she answered saying that they did not get into natural wines because of the trend, in fact, they never released their wines despite the demand, they were not happy with them, and only recently have started bottling their wines. I believe that this is the right time to discover and embrace natural wines and we are planning to add more wines and wineries.

But together with our first range of natural wines, we also added two new wineries, one from Campania and another one from Tuscany and a few more wines from Sicily, including Etna wines. Since we already stocked wines from Vesuvio, the other Italian volcano, we now have Italian volcanic wines covered for all lovers.

We had been looking for wines from Campania for some time, and despite the number of wineries and wines tasted, we could not find one we were happy with. Campania is renowned for its white wines, Fiano di Avellino and Greco di Tufo above all, and it is home to Aglianico, a grape that can produce great wines, so we were actively looking for one and by pure chance, we found it. The other winery we added is located in Tuscany, precisely Monte San Savino, an area I am familiar with and have visited several times in the past. We were looking for big, complex, great, white wines and we found them where we least expected it, Tuscany is mainly associated to red wines.