Imagine the situation, it is Saturday night, and you forget you host a dinner in 2 hours. The main problem is that you are running out of wine, Impossible to find a bottle in the house. Worst your favorite wine shop is close and other dealers are also closed. What can be your option in such a nightmare situation? Could you find a bottle of natural wine in a supermarket?

You can think that wine regulation is something recent, from the last part of our industrial and mass consumption time. But regulation was present since almost the beginning of wine history. Take the Roman Emperor Domitian in the first century or take the Duc of Bourgogne, Phillipe le Hardy during the 15th century, they concocted laws to regulate how and where wine can be made. Politicians and people in power always wanted to control how the wine could be produced or sold.

You probably see it, if you buy a bottle of French wine, you may have a colored capsule on the top of the bottle. You can see on it the French Republic symbol, Mariane, and the official name of France, “République Française”. There is some other cryptic information, you can find a letter or a word and several numbers and color codes. You have to know, that a capsule ascertains, that the winemaker paid taxes on alcohol and allows the bottle to be sent and sold anywhere in France.

With more than 1000 km long, the Loire is the longest river in France, from the Massif Central to the Atlantic Ocean. The river is operated as a commercial road since prehistoric periods, moving people and goods from the north of Massif Central to the Atlantic Ocean. The conditions in the Loire valley are one of the most pleasant you can find in France, warm winter, a few intense temperatures, and the absence of a dry season.

I was once asked to describe natural wine in more detail. From where and when it comes from. In short, the definition is simple, natural wine is a wine made using traditional methods and where there are no (or few) external additives. But if we want to go a little further is a little more complex. To explain Natural wine we may need to try to see what wine is. Wine is the result of the fermentation of sugar present in grape juice into ethanol by yeast.