I was handed a glass of what looked like pond water. Cloudy, slightly suspicious, with the kind of murky golden hue that makes you wonder if you should be drinking it or performing a science experiment on it. “It’s natural wine,” the winemaker said, as if that explained everything.
Natural wine has been called many things—revolutionary, pure, alive. It’s also been called undrinkable, overrated, and an elaborate excuse for bad winemaking. So which is it? A return to ancient tradition? A hipster-fueled trend destined to fizzle out like oat milk in a decade? Or something Spain has actually been doing for centuries without making a big fuss about it?
What Is Natural Wine, Anyway?
First, let’s define what we’re dealing with here. Natural wine is basically the no-makeup, unfiltered, I-woke-up-like-this version of winemaking. No added yeasts, no chemicals, no fining, no filtering—just grapes, their own wild fermentation, and whatever happens after that. It’s raw, unpredictable, and sometimes smells like a barn.
For purists, this is wine as it was meant to be—nothing stripped away, nothing added. For critics, it’s anarchy in a bottle, a game of vinous Russian roulette where you might get something stunning or something that tastes like kombucha left in the sun too long.
Spain: The Accidental Natural Wine Pioneer
Here’s the thing: Spain has been making wine like this forever. Long before “natural wine” was a movement, Spanish farmers in regions like Castilla-La Mancha, Catalonia, and Galicia were already fermenting their grapes with wild yeasts, skipping additives, and letting nature take the wheel. They just didn’t think to slap a trendy label on it and charge double.
Take orange wine, for example—white grapes fermented on their skins, giving them that deep amber hue and a texture that confuses people who expect crisp Sauvignon Blanc. Spain has been making wines like this for centuries, quietly doing its thing while the rest of the world acted like they’d just discovered it in a basement in Brooklyn.
Is It Actually Good, Though?
Depends who you ask. Some natural wines are breathtaking—alive, vibrant, full of character, like they have a personality of their own. Others taste like someone crushed a handful of grapes, forgot about them for a while, and then bottled the results with a shrug.
The problem is that natural wine has no official rules. Organic and biodynamic wines have certification processes, regulations, standards. Natural wine? It’s the Wild West. One winemaker’s “pure expression of the land” is another’s “let’s see what happens if we do nothing.”
I’ve had stunning Spanish natural wines—inky, wild Garnachas from Priorat, crisp, salty Albariños from Rías Baixas that taste like sea spray, quirky Xarel-lo from Penedès that smelled like wild herbs and tasted like rebellion. I’ve also had bottles that should have come with a warning label.
The Controversy: Winemakers Weigh In
Winemakers in Spain are split on the natural wine craze. Some embrace it wholeheartedly, seeing it as a return to true craftsmanship, an antidote to over-industrialized wine. Others see it as an excuse for lazy winemaking, a way to cover up faults by calling them “character.”
“A good natural wine is like a great flamenco performance—raw, imperfect, but powerful,” one winemaker in Montsant told me over a bottle of cloudy, deliciously weird Cariñena. “A bad one? That’s just someone stomping around making noise.”
Meanwhile, in Rioja, where tradition runs deep and wine has rules, one winemaker rolled his eyes at the whole concept. “We’ve spent generations perfecting winemaking. Why would we go backward?”
Is It a Fad, or Is It Here to Stay?
The thing about trends is that the good ones tend to stick. Spain already had the foundation for natural wine before it became a global phenomenon, so the best parts of the movement—the focus on minimal intervention, on purity, on wines that truly express their place—will survive. The worst parts—the murky, overpriced bottles with “funk” that’s really just a mistake—will fade, just like bad trends always do.
The Final Sip
So, is natural wine a fad? Yes and no. The hype? That’ll die down. But the movement? Spain proves that it’s not going anywhere. The difference is, Spaniards were doing it before it was cool, and they’ll keep doing it long after the trend has moved on.
As for me, I’ll keep drinking it—carefully. Some bottles are a revelation. Others taste like a dare. The trick is knowing which is which.
And maybe, just maybe, giving that cloudy glass of pond water a second chance.