Organic, biodynamic and natural wines can be tasted at many events in Europe and beyond. Late January and early February is the ideal time for natural wine lovers to visit France. Italy also offers many opportunities for tasting natural wines.
RAW wine, London.
All of us who have at some point felt the desire or need to know and learn more about wines have been faced with the dilemma of how to go about it. It could be a sommelier course, the WSET exam or something similar. And the possibilities for non-formal education are virtually endless. There is so much literature in print and electronically that the choice can be a real challenge, whether we are talking about wines in general or more specialised wines. Basic theoretical knowledge is certainly the foundation that allows us to explore and enjoy wine in depth and in practice. As well as visiting the winemaker, tastings, salons and festivals are the best opportunity to gain experience, train our tasting skills, meet winemakers in person, directly compare wines from the same or different regions and – last but not least – evaluate new vintages for ourselves.
La Dive Bouteille, Saumur, France.
France is the Mecca of festivals
Organic, biodynamic and natural wines can be tasted at many events in Europe and beyond. Late January and early February is the ideal time for natural wine lovers to visit France. Montpellier has been organising the Millésime Bio festival since 1993. The festival is basically aimed at importers, merchants, sommeliers, caterers and others who work professionally with wine, but a visit from a wine lover will not be a problem. In the days leading up to and during the festival, a number of smaller events and tastings take place in Montpellier and the surrounding area. You can easily find information online. From the south of France, we then move immediately to the Loire Valley, where, in the last days of January and the first days of February, you will meet practically everyone who matters in the world of natural wines.
There are several events worth mentioning. Nicolas Joly, world-famous for his family estate La Coulée de Serrant, brings together biodynamic winemakers at the Renaissance des Appellations festival in Angers. The group currently has 175 winemakers from 13 countries. The festival usually hosts more than 120 winemakers. During the year, the consortium also organises tastings on the sidelines of major wine festivals, such as ProWein in Düsseldorf or Vin Expo in Bordeaux. A few hundred metres away, in a beautifully preserved manor house, there is a small salon called Les Pénitentes, where you can taste, among other things, the excellent champagnes of Emmanuel Lassaigne, the chablis of Thomas Pico, the stunningly good wines of Meyer from Alsace, or taste the new vintages of some Georgians.
If your tasting concentration hasn’t waned yet, there’s also the Les Anonymes salon in Angers, where you’ll find around 40 winemakers and some really good cider producers from Brittany. Less than an hour’s drive away is Saumur, where the charismatic Sylvie Augereau hosts La Dive Bouteille in the long stone corridors of the Ackerman Cellars, organised by the charismatic Sylvie Augereau. The space itself gives the event a special character. A conservative, narrow-minded taster would probably complain about the lack of light and whatnot, but the corridors of the Ackerman cellar, where the tables, sorry, barriques, are set up on which the winemakers place their wines for viewing and tasting, are literally besieged every year. You will also meet Klemn Mlečnik, Paolo Vodopivec, Dario Prinčič and Saša Radikon.
Label Grand Karakterre, Vienna. (photo: Primož Lavre)
Italy, Austria and the UK
Italy also offers many opportunities for tasting natural wines. The most important is of course the long weekend in March or April, when you can visit
VinNatur
near Vicenza,
Vini Veri
in Cerea, and
ViViT
at the Vinitaly fair in Verona.
International distributor of natural wines in London
Les Caves de Pyrène
organises a biennial festival, usually in May
The Real Wine
where you can taste a good number of natural wines from the New World alongside European wines.
One of the best-known promoters of sustainably produced wines,
Isabelle Legeron
also in London, puts on an extraordinary festival every year with her team –
RAW wine
. In recent years, this has happened in March, as the festival has started to spread around the world. Berlin, New York and, this November, for the first time in Los Angeles. Dates can be found on the festival website.
In early December Vienna hosts a festival
Label Grand Karakterre
, which has its origins in Zagreb, where it was first organised in 2012 by Marko Kovač and Niko Đukan. The following year, the author of these lines joined them and the festival took place on the first day in Ljubljana and the next day in Zagreb. The same pattern was repeated in 2014. We then moved the festival to Vienna, where it will remain for the time being, thanks to the overwhelmingly positive response from both winemakers and professional and amateur visitors .
Orange Wine Festival, Izola, Slovenia.
We have the Orange Wine Festival in Slovenia
Slovenia is a must-visit
Orange Wine
in Izola, which is dedicated to white wines with extended maceration and includes a good number of winemakers that we consider “natural”.
And if you happen to be in Sydney in November, a visit to the festival
Rootstock
is practically a must. Australia is not only a large and important wine producer, but also an important market for European producers of natural wines, including Slovenian ones.
For lovers of vineyard-grown, naturally produced Champagnes, I recommend a visit to this beautiful region in April. In Reims you can visit the festival
Terres et Vins de Champagne
where you will meet some of the biggest names in Champagne, such as Léclapart, Lahaye, Laval, Pascal, Tarlant, Laherte, Agrapart, Chartogne … In the days leading up to the festival, a number of smaller tastings and events are organised in the surrounding area.
The myriad events listed above are by no means all of them, but they are the ones I consider among the most important. These festivals have stricter rules for the participation of winemakers year after year. Most also give wines for analysis. Just a few days ago, the VinNatur consortium announced that all 80 samples collected at this year’s festival and sent for analysis were clean, i.e. free of pesticides and herbicides.
I highly recommend a visit to at least one of the festivals and wish you much enjoyment.
Read more: Vitovska grganja – born for natural wine
