Take a stroll through some of the hipper parts of East London and it appears as though every shop has a sideline selling natural wine. Whether it’s a café, record store, or even a clothing boutique, bottles of Chin Chin Vinho Verde or Gran Cerdo Tinto are stacked up alongside the single-origin coffees, rare-groove vinyl, and $300 sweaters.
Though “natural wine” might sound like a new trend, it simply denotes an embrace of the traditional, artisanal manner in which wine was always made before supermarkets homogenized the business.
“Natural wine is made with minimal intervention, where the wine-maker lets nature take its course as much as possible,” says Brodie Meah, founder and director of Highbury’s Top Cuvée restaurant, which specializes in such wines. “This means using organic or biodynamic grapes, fermenting the wine with native yeasts, and avoiding additives like chemicals and excessive sulfites. The result is a wine that often feels alive, and vibrant.”
What’s old is new, and London’s younger drinkers are opting for these energy-forward, vibe-heavy wines in all forms: red, white, pink, orange, or bubbly. They can easily be spotted by their graphically anarchic labels, a far cry from the traditional “five fonts and a château.”
Bottles of Chin Chin Vinho Verde or Gran Cerdo Tinto are stacked up alongside the single-origin coffees, rare-groove vinyl, and $300 sweaters.
Historically, Britain has compensated for its lack of a domestic wine-making industry by becoming one of the world’s largest wine importers and thus, arguably, the birthplace of wine connoisseurship (or pretentiousness, depending on how you view it). “London really is a unique market,” says Meah. “It sometimes seems like the center of the universe for wine, with it being so well connected globally but also on the doorstep of the great wine regions of Europe.” In January, The New York Times’s Eric Asimov declared London—in a tie with his home turf—“the greatest city in the world in which to drink wine.”
While England’s culinary reputation has always been dubious at best, the last decade and a half have seen London—in particular the more youthful east of the city—cast off that dishonor to become one of the most influential food destinations in the world. The vanguard of this restaurant revolution—institutions such as Shoreditch’s Brawn or Soho’s Ducksoup—were early natural-wine devotees. Even pubs in the East End—“proper old boozers,” in the parlance—that might have once shunned craft beer, now have natural-leaning wine lists, such as the Marksman Public House, another Shoreditch favorite.
Meah recognizes natural wine’s organic and sustainable credentials as big factors in its appeal. Ultimately, however, he suggests that wine made with these time-honored, old-school methods has become popular because “it tastes better. Simple as that.”
Spike Carter is a writer and filmmaker. His next project is a documentary about Eric Roberts
