Natural wine tempting drinkers looking for a healthier option

When Sarah Arian reaches for a glass of wine, she increasingly thinks about what the healthiest choice is. Lately, her answer has been natural wine, which is branded as a healthy and authentic alternative.  

“I would rather spend a little bit more money and get a good bottle of wine that’s not filled with artificial sugars and is natural instead of spending $12 on a bottle pumped with sugars and additives,” said the 21 year old student. 

Even as the LCBO’s 2024 annual report suggests people are drinking less alcohol, natural wine is catching the attention of more and more drinkers. 

“Natural wine has been on the upward trend for the last 10 years but has been made for centuries,” said Antoinette Davies, a sommelier and George Brown College professor.

“Eastern European countries like Hungary, Georgia and Slovenia are the birthplaces of the natural wine movement, which are the principals of the aptly named natural wine bars,” she said.

“These bars are safe spaces to learn and try ‘out of the normal/ hard to pronounce’ grape varieties, made in low intervention styles, more often than not with zero additives along the way [and] also showcasing organic or biodynamic farming practices to boot.” 

In general, natural wine is organic and unfiltered, is free of herbicides and chemicals and is made with minimal human intervention.  

“The upward trend for those that do wish to partake in the occasional tipple is that they are drinking less, and what they are drinking is better for them,” said Davies. “The consumer is more curious about what they are putting in their bodies as well as being more conscious about the planet we live on, and in turn they are choosing their wines with a more ethical mind.” 

In light of a six per cent wine sales drop according to the 2024 LCBO annual report, natural wines have been used to shift the narrative that wines are processed and artificial. 

“You get the health benefits from the natural end of this wine, but people tend to think that these wines are more authentic,” said Roderick Phillips, history professor at Carleton University and a wine writer who studies changes in alcohol consumption.  

“Young people are drinking less alcohol and the wine industry is feeling pretty hard hit by that,” said Phillips. “They’re trying to devise all kinds of ways of persuading young people to drink more wine.”  

“The consumer is more mindful of choosing a wine that is more holistically made in both the vineyard and the wine making space. It’s ultimately better for the consumer physically, and exhibits sustainable regenerative agriculture and wine growing techniques,” said Davies.

“Whether it is due to social media or taking wine courses to be a more educated consumer, people want to know that their wine has been made with as few interventions in the process as possible.”  

The next ‘craft beer’?

In 2024, beer sales dropped by seven per cent, the LCBO annual report found. Jordan St. John, beer expert, author and professor at the beer specialist program at George Brown College, said craft beers are a product of their generation and that natural wines are similar.

“Craft beer relied to some extent on venues. When you consider the shift in demography in Ontario, it’s evident that the Millennial generation is an echo of the boomer generation and for that reason fairly populous,” St. John said.

“Having reached a median age of about 38, many of them are not going out anymore in the way that they did. It’s quite difficult to justify spending $10 on a pint of beer or $80 on a night out.”

According to St. John, the rise of natural wines has many parallels to craft beers.

“Natural wine is a subset. You have wine, a category which includes cheap plonk, good wine which I’d equate to craft beer and then natural wine which I’d equate to something like Belgian Saison,” St. John said, referring to a more unique type of beer. 

Sarah Arian says young people are enjoying exploring natural wines.

“There’s a curiosity around natural wine, you have to go out of the way to expose yourself to these wines,” says Arian. “It would be nice to have [more of] them at the LCBO, but once you have things so easily accessible, you take them for granted.” 

Phillips says natural wine has mostly steered clear of the mainstream and embedded in café shelves, wine bars and specialty wine markets.

“Natural wine producers are generally small scale. People think that’s more craft and I think that’s the kind of impetus that drives people to them,” said Phillips. “The fact that [natural wine] is small production gives it something special: it’s not mainstream; it’s slightly out of left field and it gives them a certain amount of cultural value.”

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