Lanzarote Low Intervention & Natural Wines

Natural wine is becoming a very common conversation, as we know via our wine tours. We have therefore decided to dive into this world of natural wine and see exactly what it is!

While natural wine seems to be a new trend, fermented grape juice with no additives goes back thousands of years to when wine was very first produced, so it is definitely nothing new. While there is no legal definition, winemakers see the process as more of a traditional route, or natural process, using a spontaneous fermentation and more often than not organic vineyard management.

In regard to additives in conventional wine; in Europe, commercially produced wines can contain a number of up to around 60 approved additives.  Theses additives can be used typically for the following reasons:

Sulphur - sulphites can be added to kill unwanted bacteria or yeast.  Note, sulphite also occurs naturally during fermentation, so it is impossible not to have sulphite in wine.

Tannin - tannin powder and oak chips are commonly used.

Sugar - can be used to increase alcohol in places where grapes struggle to ripen.

Yeast – and yeast nutrients, essentially vitamins for yeast.

Finings - help clarification and can incude egg white, isinglass, and casein

Stabilisers - used to stop yeast multiplying or re-fermenting.

Acids - alter the pH of the wine.

These may not sound great at first thought, but many have been used for hundreds of years in wine with safe practice.

So, moving back to natural wine, what we must also take into account is the vineyard. Natural wine vineyards are often certified organic or biodynamic because it is of utmost importance to have naturally healthy grapes and native yeast on the berries. Harvesting the grapes will usually be small-scale and hand-picked, which also ensures bad or damaged grapes can easily be avoided.

Lanzarote Wines

As a whole Lanzarote wine sees minimal intervention, both in the vineyard and within the wine making process.  An evaluation of our listed wines shows much lower than the legally permitted sulphite levels for instance.

There are now however winemakers who are producing wines on a "very" natural basis shall we say.  We’re happy to have recently started stocking some of these.  All of these wines are produced and farmed by the winemakers themselves, in an organic manner, either certified on non-certified.  Spontaneous fermentations are the go, and Bodega Cohombrillo 4/24 for example, don’t even filter the wine.  All of these wines are produced on a small scale with limited bottles and are often numbered, even by hand.

These wines are all original and distinctive from one another, showcasing the ethos, skill and desire of the winemaker to ply their craft.  You can see our list of Natural/ Low intervention wines from Lanzarote here, from Bodegas Cohombrillo 4/24, Bodega Erupcion, Titerok-Akaet and David Fernandez.