In Alsace, we won the first step, which is to be known as a natural wine region. and I’m happy about that. But now we have to make a second step. It’s to say, “Yeah we can produce some cheap wines - and it’s also good to have everyday drinking wines” - but we also have to explain that we have great terroir and we can making f*****g good wines. - Christian Binner Christian Binner is the head of Domaine Binner, a 17ha estate in Ammerschwihr in the Haut-Rhin in Alsace, and the president and...

I don't understand, but I respect people that can sit and drink Coche-Dury in their left hand, and Axel Prüfer in their right hand. I can understand why they still find [the former wine] interesting, but for me it was something that I'd let go of completely. I couldn't have moved to only working with natural wine without letting go of that other part. - Mads Kleppe Mads Kleppe is the gravel-voiced Norwegian sommelier responsible for radicalizing the natural wine program at renowned Copenhagen...

Winemaker in English is a stupid word, because I don’t see myself as a maker of anything. I mean, we pick the grapes, we press them, we leave them to macerate; of course we do things. So we make stuff. But the wine? If you see the period of time where we actually work the grapes… Let’s say we work the grapes for six or seven weeks. Then it’s in barrel for four or five years. - Anders Frederik Steen Anders Frederik Steen is a Danish vigneron-négociant based with his wife and collaborator Anne...

There's a lot of interest for wine in Denmark. Since we haven't really been a wine producing country, [people are] eager to really go deeply down into what wine is. - Sune Rosforth Sune Rosforth is the head of influential Denmark wine importer Rosforth & Rosforth, which he founded in 1994, initially concentrating on wines from the Loire valley. Half-Parisian on his mother’s side, he hitchhiked around France as a young man and struck up what became a lifelong friendship while working for...

I was thinking of when I was really young, five to ten years old, at primary school, [of posters that were] just to explain to us the cycle of a tree, or a flower... I wanted to take that kind of academic way of presentation to explain carbonic maceration to people. - Mathieu Lapierre Mathieu Lapierre is the co-manager, along with his sister Camille, of famed Morgon estate Domaine Marcel Lapierre, which he has overseen since the passing of his father in 2010. Initially a chef by training,...

Despite the fact that I was in art before, I don’t perceive tending vines and making wine as art. And therefore I myself don’t feel comfortable excusing my prices because it’s a special little artsy thing... It’s not what I’ve been learning for the last fifteen years. - Stephana Nicolescou Half-French, half-Romanian, and raised in Chicago, Stephana Nicolescou is a well-traveled natural wine jack-of-all-trades who, since 2017, has been helping run the 5ha Ardèche estate of her companion,...

In Auvergne, the winemakers are very independent. I don't know if it's the Auvergne that makes you like this or if it's the people. Because not a lot of the winemakers in the Auvergne are actually from the Auvergne. They come from somewhere else and I think maybe they come to a place like this because they like to be alone. - Hannah Fuellenkemper There are, I often say, two ways to fall in love with natural wine, not mutually exclusive. One is to learn about it, taste widely, and begin buying...

When my two-year visa was over, I asked the Ganevats to help me with a working visa... During that time, I did receive some job offers in Canada. But there was still nothing that was as exciting as the wines we were making in the Jura. And I [figured] I would rather be a little vineyard donkey doing whatever at [Domaine] Ganevat than be the head honcho somewhere making wines that I don’t really believe in. - Katie Worobeck Katie Worobeck is a Canadian vigneronne (and fellow Substack writer!)...

It takes a whole set of skills to communicate at very big levels [in music.] But you sacrifice communication in certain ways to do that. And I'm sure it's the same with food and wine. You cannot assume that you can convey the [same] subtleties at scale. - Damon Krukowski Damon Krukowski is a musician and writer based in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Inscribed in the annals of indie rock since his time as drummer in the influential dream-pop band Galaxie 500, Krukowski has since released music...

I realized [natural] winemakers in particular were outsiders in their communities, too, in a way. And I’ve always been kind of an underdog, an outsider. - Crislaine Medina What does Crislaine Medina, the Cape Verde-born co-proprietor of Paris 19th arrondissement restaurant Le Cheval d’Or, have in common with legendary MCs MF Doom and 21 Savage? She, too, ran into trouble in the USA as a longtime illegal immigrant. In her case, after high school in Bucks Country, Pennsylvania, she found...

I think we started this change, this transition in natural wine in Paris. Because before it was established places, it was more restaurants. And we were more like a wine bar. And we decided to give a fair price… So young people could actually drink natural wine. - Oliver Lomeli Few could have anticipated that Mexico City native Oliver Lomeli, after studying film in Lyon and working as a barista, would emerge as the French capital’s most dynamic natural wine impresario of the last decade. As...

It was fantastic to sell natural wines to the crowd in Paris, because it is so international. You have so many people from all over the world… I think my role at the time was to pass on the natural wine love to many people, many young people and many older people. - Pierre Jancou An epoch-defining figure in Paris natural wine circles and natural wine at large, Pierre Jancou is the prolific, media-savvy restaurateur responsible for a slew of the French capital’s iconic natural wine...

My place was really laid-back, really laissez-faire. The idea was freedom of thought, movement. Also, people were talking about wine at the time. Whereas now it’s like, you go to a wine bar, and nobody talks about wine. - Kevin Blackwell Originally from Mountain View, California, Kevin Blackwell moved to Paris in 1996, and quickly fell in with the city’s natural wine aficionados, despite possessing no formal background in wine. He opened a cyber café in 2000, only for it to founder in the...

“I like the idea that people were brave enough to say ‘Let’s try [to make wines with zero sulfite addition]. We’ll lose wine, into vinegar, or we’ll dump it in the gutter.' But they still tried hard to learn and pass on their knowledge. To say, we made it: no sulfites from A to Z, and it works. - Michel Moulherat Now largely retired and living in the Touraine town of Loches, Michel Moulherat saw prominence among the second generation of natural wine advocates in Paris, starting in the...