Why doesn’t natural wine have a single label?

November 13, 2025 - 2 comments

Why doesn't natural wine have a single label?

All over the world, associations and labels are emerging to try to give structure to the natural wine movement. But how can you pin down, with a single label and/or certification, something that is by nature local, dissident, alive, and constantly evolving? Let’s take a closer look.

Modern natural wine sits at a crossroads between history (Chauvet, the Beaujolais pioneers, the Georgian tradition) and a philosophy of living things (indigenous yeasts, minimal intervention, clean farming). The movement is plural by definition; every terroir, climate, and grower makes choices rooted in their own reality. Everywhere, associations and labels (AVN, SAINS, Vin Méthode Nature, VinNatur, Vini Veri, PVN, NWA, etc.) try to bring clarity and guarantees. But on a global scale, a single definition is an illusion; practices remain local, empirical, and alive. It’s better to understand and share clearly than to over-normalise.

From Beaujolais to the rest of the world

In the 1950s, as chemical agriculture began to flood the countryside with the promise of progress, a few vignerons chose to go against the grain. In the Beaujolais, the Loire, and the Jura, they carried on making wine without artifice, without additives, without chemistry.

The modern natural wine movement was born from a quest for aesthetic purity, that of Jules Chauvet. A specialist in chemistry and microbiology, a remarkable taster and a Beaujolais grower, he was one of the first to study the role of yeasts, to understand fermentation mechanisms in depth, to document the key role of temperature in the cellar, and to develop an analytical, scientific approach to tasting. His research and experience led him to conclude that wine is better without chemical additives or added sulphites. More alive. More real. He laid the groundwork for mastering spontaneous fermentations and producing quality natural wines.

Pierre Overnoy, Marcel Lapierre, Jean Foillard, Yvon Métras, and other disciples of Chauvet followed the same path, one of taste and natural mastery. At the time, they weren’t fighting a system; they were defending a sensory truth and a kind of peasant common sense, a healthy wine without additives and without sulphur respects fruit, terroir, and living things more deeply. It all starts with healthy vines, free of pesticides, which are harmful to soil life and indigenous yeasts. Activism and political or social demands came later, carried by other generations.

They didn’t invent natural wine. They set out to better understand and master how to make it.

Before the arrival of industrial yeasts, enzymes, stabilisers, high doses of SO₂, herbicides, and synthetic pesticides, all wine was natural. It was the norm, not the exception. Wine was made from grapes. Full stop. Fermentations happened on their own, carried by indigenous yeasts. Sugar was sometimes used as an adjunct. The wines weren’t perfect, but they were alive. The scientific contribution of Jules Chauvet, enriched by the experience of the first natural pioneers and all those who followed, has enabled us to master natural techniques more effectively, reduce faults without resorting to chemistry, and elevate wine to its purest expression.

The “movement” of natural wine is therefore, paradoxically, both countercurrent and conservative; it opposes ancestral know-how to industrialisation, enriched by modern knowledge of soil and plant microbiology.       

These practices are built on a sound understanding of microbiology and living systems, as well as on empirical experience passed down from one grower to another. Sadly, they are absent from most viticulture and oenology schools, where the prevailing message is still that you can’t make wine without sulphur and that chemistry is the fundamental backdrop of modern oenology, in the vineyard and in the cellar. They also receive little to no support from the INAO and the whole appellation system. In fact, a quick look at the INAO website shows that the Vin Méthode Nature label is nowhere to be found, while the Label Rouge (which is barely restrictive at all) is proudly highlighted. A simple oversight?

This is why so many associations, charters, and labels around the world are trying to bring these practices together and promote them locally. They show, all at once, the movement's diversity, richness, and energy, and the impossibility of defining a single global standard.

Let’s look at some of the main initiatives.

🇫🇷 France, between philosophy and structure

The French cradle of the movement was the first to organise itself, with mixed results.

L'Association des Vins Naturels (A.V.N), co-founded by Marcel Lapierre in 2000, was one of the first attempts to unite French natural winegrowers. The first-generation AVN charter demands organic farming, hand-harvesting, indigenous yeasts, and very low sulphur (maximum 40 mg/l for whites, 30 mg/l for reds). Though it lost influence after Marcel Lapierre died in 2010, it remains a historical reference. In fact, it is on this first-generation A.V.N. criteria that Raisin relies when referencing natural winegrowers.

Other associations and a label have since emerged:

• S.A.I.N.S. (Sans Aucun Intrant Ni Sulfite), an association founded in 2012 by Catherine Vergé, which goes even further with a charter demanding zero added sulphur
• Vin Méthode Nature is the only label created in 2020 to unify practices through a clear set of specifications and compliance analyses. To date, it is the only label recognised by the DGCCRF in France.

But in France, as elsewhere, the movement resists being standardised. Many natural winegrowers refuse any label on principle; a label always means compromise, negotiation with lawmakers, and the definition of a norm. Yet making natural wine is precisely about escaping a single recipe, understanding interactions with living systems without dogma, and accepting the inherent variability of working with nature and with geographical and climatic constraints. It’s about trust rather than control.

For them, only one rule really counts: do everything possible to make the best wine you can without killing the life in it, without stripping anything out, without adding anything in, with a pragmatic tolerance for a minimal dose of sulphur at bottling, which, for some, is preferable to losing a vintage, depending on weather conditions.

🇮🇹 Italy, VinNatur and Vini Veri, two paths, one fight

Italy was also one of the first to give shape to the natural spirit without betraying it.

In 2006, Angiolino Maule founded VinNatur in Veneto, the first international association dedicated to natural wine. Today, it brings together more than 300 growers from 12 countries.

The membership criteria are certified organic or biodynamic viticulture, hand harvesting, spontaneous fermentations, no authorised oenological additives, and SO₂ capped at 50 mg/l for whites and 30 mg/l for reds. Lab analyses are required to verify compliance, and growers must be members for three years before they can use the VinNatur logo. The admission process includes an assessment of viticultural and winemaking practices, followed by a vote from existing members. Every year, the association organises the renowned VinNatur Tasting, which brings together professionals and wine lovers.

On the other side, Vini Veri has chosen a more philosophical approach, based on mutual trust between producers rather than systematic analyses. The association prioritises dialogue, sharing experience, and a freer vision of “natural”.

The two structures coexist without clashing, proof that there isn’t just one way to embody natural wine.

In Italy, natural wine isn’t a fringe; it’s a culture that’s rapidly growing. From the Langhe to Friuli, from Sicily to Emilia-Romagna, hundreds of growers are working without additives, carried by a still-living peasant tradition. There are 739 natural estates among around 30,000 winegrowers, or almost 2.50% of all Italian domaines. The number of venues dedicated to natural wine in Italy has rocketed by +3,428% between 2016 and 2024. To explore the full 2016–2024 market analysis, head to the Raisin article.

🇪🇸 Spain, between micro bodegas and radical stances

On the other side of the Pyrenees, the Asociación de Productores de Vinos Naturales (PVN) was founded in 2008 around the vision of Benoît Valée, a French oenologist based in Barcelona. The association initially brought together Catalan and Andalusian domaines.

Their radical philosophy:

• « Vino natural es vino hecho con uva natural, sin añadir ni quitar nada a esa uva.»
• No authorised oenological inputs
• No additives at all, including SO₂ (recommended maximum, 10 mg/l naturally present)
• Total rejection of any official certification
• No logo, no sticker, no commercial label

For PVN, the “natural” can’t be certified; it has to be lived. It’s a way of life, not a marketing protocol. This radical stance has created tensions; Catalan members were expelled from the association, leaving one of Europe’s most dynamic regions without official representation.

In parallel, a regional collective called Vi Natural emerged to bring together ecological wines (hand-harvested, indigenous yeasts) and wines with no additives (less than 40 mg/l of sulphur) from the Valencian Community and to promote them.

In regions such as Priorat, Montsant, Ribeira Sacra, La Mancha, or the sierras of Gredos, a new generation of winegrowers is working on the fringes, between micro bodegas and ancestral know-how. Their wine is radical not because it is modern, but because it is archaic in the noblest sense of the word.

🇬🇪 Georgia, those who never stopped

In Georgia, natural wine never disappeared. In qvevris, the clay amphorae buried in the ground for thousands of years, growers have continued to let grapes ferment as they have for 8,000 years.

Archaeological remains show that as early as 4,000 BC, grape juice was placed in these underground jars to ferment over winter. No selected yeasts, no additives. Just grapes, clay, and time.

Natural Wine Association of Georgia

Founded to highlight this age-old tradition, the association notably organises the “Zero Compromise” festival, with the support of the National Wine Agency. It didn’t have to “convert” growers to natural wine; it simply put modern words to a practice that had never stopped.

Characteristics of traditional Georgian wine:

• Fermentation in buried qvevris (naturally regulated temperature)
• Long fermentation with skins, pips, and stems (maceration for several months)
• No additives
• Ancestral orange wines (macerated whites)

When a Georgian grower says they make natural wine, they’re not claiming anything revolutionary. They’re simply stating a fact, “I do what my grandfather did. And what my great-grandfather did before him.”

🌎 Latin America, a new scene emerging

Chile, Sur Natural and the rebirth of the South

In Chile, the Sur Natural association was founded with the support of Corfo (Corporación de Fomento de la Producción), a Chilean development agency. It brings together six pioneering estates from the valleys of Itata and Biobío :

• Zaranda (Itata)
• Tinto de Rulo (Biobío)
• Viña de Neira (Itata)
• Viña Doña Luisa (Biobío)
• Gustavo Riffo (Itata)
• Viña San Lorenzo (Biobío)

Their shared vision:

• Minimal intervention in the cellar
• Old dry-farmed vines (secano)
• Highlighting historic grape varieties: País, Cinsault, Moscatel
• Ungrafted vines (that survived phylloxera)
• The cool climate of southern Chile is ideal for natural wines

Roberto Henríquez, Pedro Parra, Leonardo Erazo and other pioneers are showing that you can make outstanding natural wines far from Europe. Latin America isn’t copying, it is inventing its own approach to “natural”.

Brazil, Naturebas Fair and a community of the living

In Brazil, the Naturebas Fair celebrates additive-free wine every year, bringing together producers, bars and artisans. In Serra Gaúcha and Campanha, a new generation is exploring natural wine with enthusiasm. There’s no formal association yet, but a tight-knit community is forming around the same values.

Mexico, experimentation without a framework

In Baja California and on the high plains of Querétaro, young winegrowers are experimenting completely outside any official framework. Their intuition is simple, make wine the way you cook at home, with your hands and your heart. Mexico is building its own natural wine movement.

🌏 The rest of the world is in motion

Japan: In Tokyo, Osaka and Kyoto, natural wine bars have become places of learning where wine enters into dialogue with traditional sake. A few Japanese producers work without sulphur, building bridges between living fermentations.

Australia: In the Adelaide Hills, Yarra Valley or Mornington Peninsula, “low intervention” collectives are reinventing the genre with a very Australian ease, less dogma, more pleasure.

South Africa: The Swartland movement is increasingly integrating natural practices, led by growers like Adi Badenhorst or Craig Hawkins who refuse industrial winemaking.

United States: In California, in Oregon, and in New York, winegrowers are abandoning recipes and formulas to rediscover the taste for risk and authenticity. The “USDA Organic” label, the strictest in the USA, is an agricultural and processing standard that bans added sulphites but allows certain additives and processing aids (enzymes, yeasts, bentonite, etc.).

Natural by nature, between tradition and future

What connects all these growers, from Beaujolais to Georgia, from Italy to Chile, isn’t a trend or a single definition. It’s an invisible thread running through generations, the peasant know-how that respects living systems. It proves that another, more ecological path is possible.

Making natural wine means refusing to industrialise something that carries emotion. It is also a never-ending quest, searching for the right taste, the one that respects fruit, soil and life. It means remembering that before the 1950s, every grower in the world fermented their grapes with the yeasts present on the skins and in the cellar, and that it is these yeasts that create wines and give a wine, a terroir, an appellation its identity. There’s no need for 50 additives to “correct” a wine when the vines are healthy, the soils are alive and fertile, and cellar practices are well mastered.

Natural wine isn’t an innovation. It is resistance to industrial madness, a return to the taste for work well done, to craftsmanship.

So why is it so hard to bring this movement together under one single banner?

A global movement, a thousand signatures, a single memory

Natural wine can’t be reduced to a standard. Every country, every grower, every climate invents and adapts its own way of interpreting freedom. They all draw from the same source, the know-how that predates the petrochemical era. They add to our modern understanding of microbiology and virtuous practices, knowing the good yeasts, the troublesome bacteria, mastering temperatures and ripeness, giving wine the time it needs and caring for the vine through life in the soil rather than smothering it with pesticides, which behave like true pests. Stripping away chemical armour to let authentic aromas shine through.

Labels and associations, whether French, Italian, Spanish, or Chilean, are just dialects of the same community. They all say the same thing with different accents, that the best wines are those made without chemical tinkering and with aromatic yeasts. The earth doesn’t need to be poisoned to produce grapes.

Label or certification, they’re not the same thing.

A certification checks that a product complies with a precise set of standards, as determined through audits conducted by an independent body such as Ecocert.

A label expresses belonging, a shared charter carried by a collective or association. It can include controls, as is the case for Vin Méthode Nature, but above all, it is based on a voluntary approach.

What kind of certification for natural wine?

Do we need a single label for natural wine? The question deeply divides the movement.

VinNatur believes that clarity comes through checks and objective analyses. PVN thinks that any certification betrays the spirit of freedom and turns a philosophy into a marketing product. Georgia doesn’t even understand the debate; for them, it’s just wine, the way it has always been.

The label question: necessary or impossible?

These labels, charters, and associations are all worthy attempts to make natural wine more legible and credible for the wider public. A label reassures consumers and gives them a landmark in a world where “authenticity” is often misused.

But faced with a movement in constant evolution and constant adaptation, the question remains, is it really possible, or even desirable, to impose a single standard on practices that change with climates, terroirs, and vintages?

Making natural wine in Penedès or in Georgia is not the same as in Alsace, the Loire or Piedmont: climate challenges, humidity, grape ripeness, indigenous yeasts, everything shifts. Natural winegrowers are learning every day how to work with these variables and deepen their understanding of living systems. How can we freeze into regulation something that is, by essence, empirical and in motion?

If all natural wines had to look the same, follow the same recipe, and respect the same thresholds everywhere, we would have missed the point; diversity is the beating heart of life.

The future lies in the past

Natural wine will keep growing in a scattered way, with varied approaches across continents. And that’s a good thing. It is, above all, a conversation between growers, distributors, and drinkers. It is a community of living beings.

Labels will keep emerging, structuring, and debating their criteria. But ultimately, the real story unfolds elsewhere, in the vines, when a grower decides to trust the power of nature and is supported by the community as they move in that direction. In the cellar, when the magic of yeasts gets to work. In the glass, when someone discovers that a wine can move them without cheating, without make-up.

Natural wine has no borders. It follows a single compass, the memory of the right gesture, the one that respects the vine, the land and all living things.

Explore natural winegrowers around the world with Raisin

From VinNatur members in Italy to the pioneers of Sur Natural in Chile, from age-old Georgian estates to Mexican experimenters and the Vin Méthode Nature label in France, on the Raisin app, you can discover natural winegrowers from all over the world.

Check out Raisin’s world map of natural winegrowers and explore more than 3,500 domaines near you or on your travels.

Related articles:

• What’s the Difference Between Organic, Biodynamic, and Natural Wine?
• DO Penedès Becomes the World’s First 100 % Organic Wine Appellation
• Natural Wine Market Analysis: 2016 to 2024.
• Is Jules Chauvet the Godfather of Natural Wine?
• The HVE label: “high environmental value” accused of deception and “greenwashing” [French]