Natural Wine 101: What to Know and Where to Drink It in Indianapolis

Walk into Solely Wine on 16th street on a sunny summer afternoon, and you’re met with a whole new kind of wine bar. Instead of dark,wooden walls and leather booths, you’ll find comfortable couches, long tables, a small patio, and a pile of board games in the corner. It’s casual, warm and inviting. Along the wall, arranged in neat sections, you’ll also find Indy’s largest selection of natural wine.

“Natural wine” has no official definition, but it implies “low-intervention wine making” which can mean the grapes are grown without chemicals or pesticides, occasionally dry-farmed (no irrigation), and hand-picked. They have no additives and use little to no filtering or sulfites. Nothing is added, and nothing is taken away. It is quite simply: the oldest way of making wine. 

While the way of making wine naturally is over 8,000 years old, the term “Natural Wine” in the zeitgeist has only been around for 25 or so years. Major commercial wine makers in the US grew rapidly after the repeal of Prohibition, and by 1975, wine culture in the United States was booming.

In an attempt to create large volumes of consistent wines for mass consumption, these large-scale wine makers turned to science to ensure quality. Today, these practices include the addition of any of the more than eighty ingredients federally approved to be added to wine including a multitude of flavor agents (anything from oak to butter to berry), preservatives, sulfites, and a personal favorite: isinglass (a fining agent derived from fish bladders) to ensure that the bottle you buy is consistent, purchase after purchase. Suddenly, not all wine seems so natural.

Alongside the rise and eventual ubiquity of local craft beer brewers, farm-to-table restaurants, and organic produce farmers in the US, the interest in natural, “organic”, or low-intervention wines quickly followed. Consumers who were increasingly conscious about what they were eating naturally wanted to also be conscious about what they were drinking. Even though many wines globally were being made using low-intervention practices for centuries, the commercial availability and recognition of what we now know as “natural wine” did not appear until the early aughts, when wine bars in San Francisco, New York, and Paris started highlighting these wines as a feature, not a flaw. 

Today, local wine and spirit distributors like B-Side Selections, wine bars like Solely, and local sommeliers like Jan Bugher are sharing the love for these interesting, occasionally unusual, and most importantly delicious wines with Indianapolis. These smaller producers of natural wines often have more liberty to experiment in their wine making, utilizing unusual or overlooked grapes, experimenting with various styles of production, and bucking traditions that have held the wine industry tightly over the last fifty years. For the consumer, these producers blast away the expectations of what wine you “should” be drinking, and allow you to taste and figure out what you actually like, which if you think about it, is the most natural thing of all. 

Natural Wine Tips:

Take a class! 

One of the best ways to experiment with and try different natural wines in Indy is to attend an event. Below are a few favorites:

• Cork-Cork at the Kan-Kan –Pairing a film with a special pre-film wine mini-class 
• Weekly tastings every Wednesday at Solely 
• Good Omen’s wine events ​​and dinners

Label intimidation? Look for the Importers! 

Often, the easiest way to find a natural wine, whether at the grocery store or the wine shop, is to flip the bottle around and see who imported it. There are a lot of great natural wine importers bringing wine from Europe and beyond to the states, but a few great ones to look for when you flip the bottle around are Kermit Lynch, Louis/Dressner, Jose Pastor, or Jenny & Francois. 

Ask the Experts

Local bottle shops with curated selections typically hire people that are into wine and pretty excited to talk about it, so take advantage of their knowledge! Ask if they stock low-intervention or natural wines, and let them lead the way. Some great wine shops in the Indy area include Grapevine Cottage in Zionsville,  SoBro Spirits in Broadripple, West Clay Wine & Spirits in Carmel, Sadler Wine Markets (locations in Fishers and Broadripple), the Enoteca at Goose the Market, and Solely Wine in Indy.