Get the Dirt on Natural Wine

Perhaps Patrick Comiskey, at zesterdaily.com, says it best: “If you're more than a casual wine drinker, if you follow wine the way bookies follow horses and TMZ follows starlets, then you’re familiar with the Natural Wine movement.” But if you aren’t familiar with the term, and you’d like to know more, check out the following:

Naked Wine: letting grapes do what comes naturally by Alice Feiring (Da Capo Press, $28) — Feiring accepts a dare and tries her hand at natural winemaking, “making wine with nothing but crushed grapes. OK, maybe a little sulfur, but only a touch.” Along the way, she chronicles the evolution of “natural” wine.

The Battle for Wine and Love, or How I Saved the World from Parkerization by Alice Feiring (Harcourt Inc., $17.50) — Feiring details her “one-woman crusade for natural and artisanal winemaking,” and introduces readers to a handful of her favourite “rebel winemakers.”

Authentic Wine: Toward Natural and Sustainable Winemaking by Jamie Goode and Sam Harrop (University of California Press, $32.50) — Based in the United Kingdom, Goode has written several books and is the personality behind the popular wineanorak.com blog. Trained as a winemaker in New Zealand, Harrop is a Master of Wine and co-chair of the International Wine Challenge. They prefer the word “authentic” to the word “natural” when referring to wines made with minimal intervention.

Illustration by Steven Salerno