Why you cannot find a natural wine in your supermarket?

Four bottles of wine among five are bought in a supermarket. People choose their wine during their grocery shopping. They put one or two bottles between tomatoes and eggs. Only one bottle among five is bought in a wine shop, all kinds of wine shops, from “Gal en Gal” in the Netherlands or “Nicolas” in France, the UK, Belgium, and Germany to your local natural wine dealer. The place of Natural wine is very small in this market, so is it possible to find Natural Wine in your local supermarket? Unlikely, there are at least five reasons why, but there are of course some exceptions.

When you enter the wine section of a supermarket, there is a chance this section is specially designed, with a specific decoration, one or more barrels, vine leaves, dedicated shelves for the wine, and a lot of bottles of wine. And here is the problem, how to distinguish a natural wine from an industrial one. There is no or little label for Natural wine (there is the “Vin Méthode Nature” in France but only for 430 wines). The only way is to know the wine before.

Worst, there are some wines you can find in a supermarket that are labeled without sulfite. You can think it is a natural wine, no! This kind of wine is very industrial. They are produced using very unnatural methods, forced filtration, and pasteurization for example.

The wine department manager may help, maybe. Well, not so sure, first only a few supermarkets have a wine department manager, and others have a wine, beer, and liquor department manager. Second, most department managers are not wine specialists, some of them may not drink wine at all. They are sales specialists, not sommeliers. They’re a very low chance that they understand or even know Natural wine.

And even if the department manager knows and values Natural Wine, there is another blocker that prevents the manager from putting natural wine into the supermarket, the supermarket brand policy. supermarket chains have purchasing policies, and generally, you need to be able to provide between 20000 and 30000 bottles to enter the chain catalog. Most natural wine vineyards do not exceed a few hectares. To provide one supermarket chain a winemaker should dedicate 3 to 5 hectares, in most cases it is impossible.

Last thing, if by chance a natural winemaker could produce the number of bottles needed to enter the catalog of a supermarket, and still have bottles left for wine shops and restaurants, there is still a problem. Most supermarkets do not have a wine cellar to preserve wine. Natural wine needs good conversation conditions, constant temperature, and no heavy light. The situation in the supermarket is the opposite of that, a lot of light to highlight products. That is not a good condition for natural and fine wine.

And finally, if a natural wine ends up on the shelves of a supermarket, without someone to explain what a natural wine is and provide bits of advice it is unlikely that many people will buy this natural wine. And wine natural wine lovers? they will go to their favorite wine shop and forget about the wine section while buying eggs and tomatoes.

But is it a general rule? Yes, most of the time, but there are some exceptions. Some supermarkets have a very huge wine cellar, managed by real devotion, where you can find surprises. Next time you go to Paris, you can go to the SO-Ouest mall in Levallois, in the local Leclerc supermarket you will find this kind of unicorn, with some Jean François Gavenat bottles.

This may be a problem for the democratization of Natural wine, or maybe not. On one hand, the natural wine movement is rooted in authenticity and minimal intervention, which doesn’t go well with the mass consumption culture, it will lose all authenticity. On the other hand, it holds immense promise for expanding wine enthusiasts’ horizons.

The natural wine movement does not pair very well with mass consumption. The real question should be, How do we introduce more people to the world of natural wine?