Le vin Naturel
The idea of “natural” wine emerged in the 1980s and 1990s in reaction to the mass production agriculture that had become dominant since the 1960s with its range of chemical products designed to replace traditional farming practices and optimise yields.
The culture of "wines of terroir" – a founding objective of the idea of Appellation d'Origine – is based on healthy viticulture that respects the soil, plants, and the environment, and does not destroy the microorganisms that make up the natural life of the earth and its products. This is how agrobiology developed in its different variants of organic or biodynamic farming.
The idea of “natural” wine was precisely born from the desire to extend in winemaking the philosophy that presides over organic farming, that is, to vinify without additives and without oenological techniques that modify the characteristics of the raw material. This desire has gained even more strength after the creation in 2012 of a European legislation on “organic wine” judged by the most demanding winegrowers to be too lax in many respects.
Faced with the “natural” orientations of wine production, the approval commissions that grant or not the labels of Appellation d'Origine (AOC/AOP) generally adhere to criteria that favor conventional manufacturing standards (specifications of each appellation) to the detriment of an authentic expression of the terroir, thus excluding – either by refusal of approval, or by the renunciation of the winegrowers themselves – many cuvées forced to take refuge in the simple appellation Vin de France (formerly Vin de Table).