The 10 Best Natural Wines for Guys Who Think They Hate Wine
2024-11-26 · 7 min read
Natural wine gets a bad reputation from both directions. Traditionalists dismiss it as funky, flawed juice, while its most devoted fans can be insufferably pretentious about it. The truth is that natural wine at its best is more alive, more interesting, and more fun than the overproduced, over-oaked stuff that turned you off wine in the first place.
Start with a pet-nat, which is short for petillant naturel, essentially the original sparkling wine method. Domaine de la Garrigue's pet-nat rose from southern France is effervescent, slightly yeasty, and tastes like drinking a strawberry field. It is the kind of wine that converts beer drinkers because it has the same casual, unpretentious energy.
For reds, try a bottle of Marcel Lapierre Morgon from Beaujolais. Lapierre was one of the godfathers of the natural wine movement, and his Gamay-based wines are juicy, light-bodied, and meant to be served slightly chilled. It tastes more like fruit than wine in the best possible sense. No oak, no tannin assault, just pure drinkability.
Orange wine sounds weird but is essentially white wine made like a red, with the grape skins left in contact during fermentation. Radikon from Friuli, Italy, makes some of the best examples. The resulting wine has an amber color, a slightly grippy texture, and complex flavors of dried apricot and honey. It is a conversation starter that also happens to pair with basically everything.
If you want something closer to the conventional wine experience, try Gut Oggau from Austria. Their wines are labeled with illustrated faces representing different family members, and each one has a distinct personality. Theodora, the white, is crisp and mineral. Bertholdi, the red, is earthy and smooth. The whole range is natural, low-intervention, and free of the funk that scares newcomers.
The entry point matters. Start with lighter, fruitier natural wines before diving into the wilder, more funky examples. Think of it like developing a taste for coffee: you start with a flat white, not a straight shot of single-origin Ethiopian. Natural wine rewards patience and an open mind, and the payoff is a world of flavors that conventional wine simply does not offer.
