August 20, 2026 - 0 comments
Slovenia’s New Wine Law Could Put Natural Wine at Risk.
Here’s why we’re supporting the petition. Something is happening in Slovenia that every natural wine drinker should be paying attention to.
A new wine law, ZVin-1, came into force in March 2026. Among its changes is a broader system of wine assessment, including analytical and organoleptic assessment of wines without a geographical indication, a category in which many small, independent and natural winemakers choose to work.
For Slovenian winemakers, this has raised concerns. A petition has been launched calling for the new rules to be reconsidered.
But the debate raises a question that goes beyond natural wine:
Who gets to decide what an acceptable wine tastes like?
What exactly is changing?
Sensory assessment of wine is not new in Slovenia.
What is significant about ZVin-1 is that its assessment framework explicitly includes wines without a geographical indication. The law says that wine assessment includes analytical testing and organoleptic assessment, as well as determining whether the wine is suitable for the market. Wine found unsuitable on the basis of that assessment cannot be marketed.
The law also sets out who carries out the sensory assessment. A five-person tasting commission must include at least two representatives of wine producers and at least two wine and viticulture experts. Assessors must meet specific requirements, including relevant professional experience or education and tests covering sensory ability, oenology and wine regulations. If a wine receives an unfavourable assessment, a second assessment can be carried out by a larger seven-person panel, with the original assessors excluded.
So this is not a system of five random people deciding whether they like a wine.
But there is an important question.
What exactly are they judging?
The law leaves the detailed methodology and procedure for organoleptic assessment to be established separately by the minister. Until those details are clear, it is difficult to know precisely what criteria will be applied, how sensory faults will be defined, and how much room there will be for interpretation.
And that matters when sensory assessment can contribute to a decision about whether a wine is suitable for the market.
Why does this matter for natural wine?
Natural wines can deliberately look, smell and taste different.
They may be cloudy, unfiltered, highly aromatic, made with little or no added sulphur, or show characteristics resulting from spontaneous fermentation, extended maceration, ageing choices or other low-intervention techniques.
Some of these characteristics can sit in an interesting grey area: what one person considers a flaw, another may recognise as a legitimate expression of a particular wine or winemaking style.
That doesn't mean every unusual wine is good. Natural wine is not a free pass for flawed wine.
But it raises an important question:
If a wine is legally produced, honestly labelled and otherwise compliant with the rules, how should sensory assessment determine whether it is suitable for the market?
And if sensory characteristics are part of that decision, whose definition of “acceptable” is being applied?
This isn't about conventional wine versus natural wine
It is important to be fair to the Slovenian government.
ZVin-1 is not presented as legislation targeting natural wine. Its broader objectives include oversight, traceability, consumer protection and the reputation of Slovenian wine.
These are reasonable goals.
Nor is sensory assessment unusual in wine regulation.
Across Europe, sensory assessment can form part of systems governing wines with protected geographical designations. In France, for example, AOC/AOP wines must conform to the requirements and characteristics established for their appellation.
That makes sense: if a producer wants to use a protected geographical name, there is a clear reason to assess whether the wine corresponds to the characteristics associated with that category.
And that is precisely why Vin de France exists. A producer can make and sell a legitimate wine without claiming a particular geographical designation.
The interesting question, therefore, is not whether wine should ever be subject to sensory standards.
It is where those standards should apply, what they are intended to establish, and who gets to define them.
Who gets to decide what wine should taste like?
There is an important distinction between assessing whether a wine conforms to the requirements of a particular category and using sensory assessment to determine whether a wine is suitable for the market at all.
AOC/AOP rules can legitimately establish the characteristics expected from a wine carrying a protected geographical name. If a producer wants to use that name, there is a clear reason for requiring the wine to meet the standards associated with it.
But sensory assessment ultimately depends on people.
A tasting panel can be made up of highly trained professionals, and that training matters. Assessors can identify genuine faults and assess wines according to established criteria.
At the same time, sensory judgement inevitably involves human interpretation.
In appellation systems, panels can include local producers and wine professionals who are part of the established wine culture of a region. This does not mean that they are automatically biased, or that conventional winemakers cannot assess wine fairly.
But it does mean that expectations about how a wine should taste can potentially influence judgement.
What is considered typical, acceptable or desirable is not entirely separate from culture, tradition and the history of a region's wines.
This is why the details of Slovenia's new system matter so much.
How are assessors selected and trained? What constitutes a sensory fault? How precisely are the criteria defined? How much room is there for interpretation? And when assessors disagree, how is that disagreement resolved?
These are not arguments against sensory assessment.
They are arguments for transparency.
Why is this different from a laboratory test?
There is also an important difference between analytical and sensory assessment.
A laboratory analysis can establish whether a wine contains a particular substance or falls within a defined chemical or legal limit.
Sensory assessment asks people to evaluate characteristics such as appearance, aroma and taste.
That does not make sensory assessment less legitimate. In many parts of wine regulation, it is an established and useful tool.
But when a sensory judgement can contribute to a decision about whether a wine is suitable for the market, the criteria and procedures behind that judgement become especially important.
The question is not whether trained professionals can taste wine.
The question is what standards they are applying, how those standards are established, and what happens when a wine falls outside conventional expectations.
Why should natural wine drinkers care?
This is where natural wine enters the conversation.
Many producers who have helped redefine contemporary wine deliberately work outside established categories. They experiment with fermentation, extraction, ageing, sulphur, filtration and grape varieties.
They make wines that can challenge expectations.
Some may be cloudy. Some may be oxidative. Some may be intensely aromatic. Some may be completely unfamiliar to someone accustomed to more conventional styles.
That diversity is part of what makes wine exciting.
The concern among Slovenian natural winemakers is therefore not necessarily that every natural wine will fail a tasting panel.
It is that a system in which sensory assessment can have consequences for market access could create uncertainty for wines that deliberately sit outside conventional expectations.
And until the detailed methodology is established and we know exactly how those judgements will be made, that concern deserves to be taken seriously.
A question bigger than Slovenia
Slovenia is not the first country to use sensory standards in wine regulation, and it will not be the last.
The interesting question is what those standards are being used to achieve.
Regulation should protect consumers, prevent fraud and ensure transparency.
But it should also leave room for wine to evolve.
A wine style that seems unusual today may become accepted tomorrow. Techniques that were once considered unconventional can become part of the broader language of wine.
The challenge for regulation is therefore to distinguish between protecting consumers from genuinely defective or misleading products and simply enforcing a narrow idea of what wine should taste like.
The petition launched by Slovenian natural wine producers, including Santei and Klinec, is calling for the new rules to be reconsidered.
At Raisin, we believe producers should be able to work outside conventional categories while remaining transparent about what they make and following rules that genuinely protect consumers.
We are not arguing that every wine should be accepted simply because it is called “natural”. Nor are we arguing that trained sensory assessment has no place in wine regulation.
We are arguing that when sensory judgement can affect whether a wine is allowed onto the market, the standards behind that judgement should be clear, transparent and open to scrutiny.
If you care about natural wine, diversity and the freedom to make wine differently, we encourage you to support the Slovenian winemakers asking for this law to be reconsidered.
Because ultimately, wine is not only a set of chemical measurements or regulatory categories.
It is also something people taste, experience and choose.
Perhaps the final judge of whether a wine is good should be the person drinking it.
