How to sell natural wine

I've been meaning to go to the Wholefoods store in Kensington for a while having heard it had a good range of organic and natural wines and finally made it this week which is part of Natural Wine Fortnight in the UK.

Like many other shops and bars they had a couple of natural wines open to taste - a Roagna Langhe Bianco and Dolcetto d'Alba, a bargain at £3.99 a glass and £13.99 a bottle, but it was their overall approach to natural wine that really impressed me.


First, they keep bottles with no added sulphites in the fridge.


They explain what natural wine actually is


And best of all, they flag up bottles which are low in sulphur which manager Peter Hogarth defines as under 50mg per litre with a Low SO2 label. This excludes a few bottles, he admits, which are natural in style but finds it a practical working definition.

He must stock about 30-40 wines that could be classified as natural but he's not doctrinaire about it and says there are several that he hasn't taken on that he knows would be too hard a job to sell. And he encourages customers to ask him or his colleagues if they're thinking of buying a natural wine so that they can explain what to expect and how to handle it.


I tasted a few others from their range of which I was particularly impressed by the Domaine de l'Ocre Rouge Pinot Noir 2009, a really gorgeous Pinot which had just come into stock and which I believe will sell for £17.99.

There's also a nice little wine bar where you can drink any of the bottles in the department for just £5 corkage with a plate of cheese or charcuterie from the next door counter - or a tartine. Apparently it's known as the Hidden Gem wine bar. With good reason.

The Bermondsey natural wine mafia

One of the most interesting things about the brilliant new clutch of artisanal stalls and warehouses in the Druid Street and Maltby Street area is that it includes two natural wine shops - Gergovie Wines and Aubert & Mascoli - both with first class foodie pedigrees.

Gergovie (pronounced jer-go-vee) is a partnership between Harry Lester, founder of the Anchor & Hope and Raef Hodgson, son of Neal’s Yard Dairy’s Randolph Hodgson (the name Gergovie comes from a plateau in the Massif Central where Lester has an auberge).

They have a few bottles open for tasting on Saturday mornings. Last week there were two whites, a quirky Pignoletto from Alberto Tedeschi near Bologna and a fragrant Durello called Montemagro from Daniele Piccinin in the Veneto that tasted oddly like a dry dessert wine.


Then three vivid young reds - a 2009 vin de pays de l’Herault Cinsault from Catherine Bernard, Les Orgues from Frédéric Gounand of L’Arbre Blanc in the Auvergne and Viti Vini Bibi a blend of Syrah, Grenache and Carignan from Domaine Benjamin Taillandier in the Minervois.

A couple of doors down you can find Aubert & Mascoli which also specialises in French and Italian wines and supplies the members’ club Blacks which Mascoli founded (and also, I discovered from their site, the highly successful Franco Manca pizzerias).

My star wines there were a lush Bourgogne Aligoté Vieilles Vignes from Jean Fournier and another bright breezy red with a delicious bitter cherry flavour - Le Rouge 2008 from Domaine de l’Ocre Rouge just north of Nimes (a blend of Grenache, Cinsault and Syrah)

And yet another natural wine merchant Six Wines Eight has set up in nearby Bermondsey Square though I haven't had a chance to check them out yet.

Druid and Maltby Street are just south of Tower Bridge about a 10-12 minute walk from London Bridge station.

Tasting with Kate Thal of Green & Blue

I’ve known Kate Thal for a good while now but it’s taken the fact that she’s into natural wines to get me down to her south London shop and wine bar Green and Blue.

Thal estimates that 48% of the wines she sells are organic or biodynamic and 20% of those natural which she defines as wines produced with natural yeasts, no or very low levels of sulphur, just at bottling and no new oak (“very important - new oak is not a natural flavour”) She’d like it to be nearer 60%.

She agreed with me that exposure to natural wines changes your tastebuds. “There’s no going back once you’re a convert but I can’t think of anything I’d rather be converted to.”

Here are the seven wines she showed me:

Pétillant Naturel 2006 Thierry Puzelat (£16.35)
I’m never totally convinced by Puzelat’s wines and this was no exception. Odd, cidery nose which smelt as if the wine was still fermenting but a much more attractive palate with rich, peachy Chenin-type fruit (in fact it was an obscure variety called Menu Pineau) Fresh acidity - very pure and clean (though see note below*)

Skeveldra Sancerre 2008 Sebastien Riffault £25.50
Save for the steely acidity and terrific minerality on the finish this is not a Sancerre that most people would recognise but it was a luscious wine - rich, peachy and apricotty (the grapes are picked quite late). Totally unsulphured, made in an oxidative style in open-top fermenters “What wine used to taste like” said Thal. My favourite wine of the tasting.

La Cuisine de ma Mère Chinon Rosé 2009, Domaine Grosbois £14.35
Very pretty delicate, dry Cabernet Franc-based rosé with a pure strawberry flavour. Very refreshing - the essence of summer. “A proper rosé” said Thal who imports the wine as an exclusive

Monte di Grazia Rosso, Campania 2007 £15.75
Made from Tintore di Tramonte and Pedrirosso - two of Campania’s 40 native grapes (there used to be 400, Thal told me) naturally farmed and trained on a pergola which you can see here. No new oak. Natural yeasts. Really meaty and savoury on the nose, dark, dense hedgerow fruits and sour cherries with a lovely fresh acidity. We reckoned it would go well with pigeon and other feathered game.

Rioja Rayos Uva 2009 Olivier Rivière £14.50
An untypical Rioja made by a French winemaker who worked with Marcel Lapierre. No oak. Recognisably Rioja on the palate though lacks that characteristic Rioja sweetness and mellowness. Very pure fruit but a little one-dimensional for this price.

Le Casot des Mailloles, La Poudre d’Escampette Vin de Table £20.50
A blend of Grenache, Carignan and Syrah made by Alain Castex in Banyuls. Incredibly luscious, sumptuously ripe but not remotely jammy fruit. It can be inconsistent, according to Thal. “When it’s in a sulky mood it can get quite animal and savoury not show its true character* but it has incredible energy.”

Les Foulards Rouges Glaneuses 2008 Jean-Francois Nicq £18.35
A bright intensely fruity blend of grenache and syrah from the Roussillon with a lifted, slightly floral note that reminded me of a Beaujolais cru. Controversially it’s made at a low temperature (12-13°) which some regard as an unnatural winemaking practice but there’s no sulphur and no filtration. Delicious though would benefit from being lightly chilled.

Thal runs regular wine tastings at the shop, some of which are dedicated to natural wine “but in every tasting I try to shoehorn one in because the wines need explaining”. The shop is in Lordship Lane, about 8 minutes walk from East Dulwich station (catch a train from London Bridge) or by bus from Victoria.

She also has a very useful video explaining natural wine on her website

One of the most interesting aspects of the tasting - or rather its aftermath - was that the Puzelat Petillant and the Casot de Maiolles didn’t show as well when I took the opened bottles back to my son Will’s house nearby - the Pet Nat tasting more cidery, and the Casot de Maiolles, sharper and less fruity. Possibly they'd been affected by the short taxi ride? Have you found this at all?