Organic, biodynamic or natural wine, how to actually tell them apart

These are the three words you see everywhere, on wine lists and in the mouths of growers, and that most drinkers use more or less at random, as if they meant roughly the same thing. Yet they do not describe the same commitment, nor the same rules, nor the same guarantees. A wine can be organic without being natural, natural without being certified, biodynamic without saying so on the label.

Rather than pit them against each other like three rival camps, it helps to see them as the degrees of a single movement, that of a viticulture trying to do less and less, from the vineyard to the glass. It is this gradation that we will follow, starting with what is most tightly regulated and moving towards what is least.

Three ways of keeping a vine healthy

To grasp what separates these approaches, the simplest route is an image, that of a body one keeps in good health.

The conventional grower behaves like someone who waits until they are ill to treat themselves. As long as the vine is doing well, nothing in particular is done, and the moment a disease appears, downy mildew, powdery mildew or another, it is treated with the tools of synthetic chemistry, effectively and without hesitation. The logic is curative, you fix the problem when it arises.

The organic grower already reasons differently. Forbidden the synthetic chemical arsenal, they must prevent more, tending the soil and letting nature hold part of the ground. But it is biodynamics that pushes the reasoning to its conclusion. There, one no longer merely waits, nor even prevents, one seeks to strengthen the organism upstream, exactly like a person who sleeps well, eats sensibly and exercises so that illness gets no grip on them. The vine is no longer a patient to be treated, it is a body to be made robust.

Natural wine, finally, carries this philosophy into the cellar itself. Once the vine has been made sound and vigorous, the view is that it no longer needs intervening on its behalf, and one steps back to let it express itself. It is less a technique than a conviction, that a healthy grape, vinified without artifice, yields the truest wine.

Conventional wine, the starting point

Before turning to the other three, a word is needed on the one they define themselves against, because it is the norm, the vast majority of what the world drinks. Conventional wine is not a badly made wine, far from it, it is simply a wine produced with the full set of tools the regulations allow.

In the vineyard, this means the possible use of synthetic pesticides, herbicides and fertilisers to protect and feed the plant. In the cellar, a wide range of oenological inputs is permitted, selected yeasts, fining agents, various adjustments, and sulphur may rise to 150 milligrams of total SO₂ per litre on a dry red, and 200 on a dry white or rosé. The stated aim is consistency, a reliable, stable wine, reproducible from one year to the next, one that travels well and keeps for a long time.

It is precisely this interventionist logic that the three approaches below will seek to lighten, each a little more than the last.

Organic wine, the legally framed entry point

Organic wine is the only one of the three to rest on a full European regulation, which makes it the most solid marker for a consumer.

The principle starts in the vineyard. Synthetic pesticides, herbicides and fertilisers are banned, in favour of practices that maintain soil fertility and biodiversity, organic compost, rotations, cover crops between the rows. The aim is a vineyard that runs on its own cycles rather than on a chemical drip. Certification, in France the AB logo and its equivalent the European leaf, is obtained after a conversion period and guarantees that these rules are kept from the vine to the cellar.

It should be said that an organic wine is not a sulphur-free wine. Vinification allows added sulphites, the preservative that protects wine from oxidation and microbial spoilage, but at lower doses than for a conventional wine. On a dry red, the ceiling drops from 150 milligrams of total SO₂ per litre in conventional to 100 in organic, and on a dry white or rosé from 200 to 150. The difference is often felt as a greater purity of fruit.

Biodynamic wine, a philosophy of the living

Biodynamics goes a step further, and onto quite different ground. It rests on the principles set out by Rudolf Steiner in the early 20th century, which see the estate as a living, self-sustaining organism, in relation with natural and cosmic cycles. In other words, a biodynamic wine is always at least organic, but it adds to that base a dimension that organic farming alone does not have.

In practice, this runs through so-called biodynamic preparations, based on natural materials such as silica, manure or plant extracts like chamomile, nettle or horsetail. These preparations are dynamised before use, that is, stirred in a way meant to heighten their effect, then applied to soils and vines to stimulate their vitality. This is where the idea of a vine one strengthens rather than treats comes into play. To this are added particular care for biodiversity, with hedges and cover crops, and the use of the lunar calendar to time work in the vineyard, in the conviction that the phases of the moon and cosmic cycles bear on the plant.

In the cellar, intervention is kept to a minimum, with wines often neither fined nor filtered so as to preserve their aromatic richness. The benchmark certification is issued by Demeter, internationally, or by Biodyvin in France. It requires in particular that fermentation start with indigenous yeasts, those naturally present on the grape skins and in the place, exogenous yeasts being prohibited except to restart a stuck fermentation. On the sulphur front, a Demeter-certified wine is capped at around 70 to 90 milligrams of total SO₂ per litre, noticeably less than an organic wine.

Natural wine, minimal intervention taken to its limit

Natural wine is the culmination of this logic, and paradoxically the least regulated of the three. There is to this day no global legal certification for natural wine, which explains much of the confusion and debate surrounding it.

The philosophy, though, is clear. You start from a grape grown at least organically, often biodynamically, then vinify while forbidding yourself almost any addition or removal. Fermentation with indigenous yeasts alone, no oenological input, neither fining nor filtration in most cases, and sulphur reduced to almost nothing, a few milligrams at most added at bottling, if any is added at all. The most demanding charters go very low indeed, around 30 milligrams for the Vin Méthode Nature label in its version with sulphites, and down to a ceiling of 10 milligrams for the Association des Vins Naturels. This last has set a charter of striking simplicity, just two rules. A grape grown organically or biodynamically, and a wine vinified and bottled without the slightest input or additive.

This demand has a flip side that must be owned. Without the safety net of sulphur, a natural wine is a living wine, more fragile, one that asks considerable mastery of the grower to avoid faults. Done well, it offers an expressiveness and an energy that few wines reach. Done badly, it deviates. It is demanding work, with no right to error, and that too is what gives it its worth.

The three methods at a glance

Read this way, the gap between these families loses its look of a border. There are not three sealed boxes but a single gesture, carried more or less far, from the vineyard framed by organic rules to the wine vinified without adding anything at all.

What it changes in the glass, and at the point of purchase

For the drinker, these distinctions are not merely theoretical. As inputs are reduced, the wine tends to express its terroir and vintage more directly, sometimes with a texture and aromas less smoothed over than those of a wine heavily worked in the cellar. In return, it becomes more sensitive, both to storage and to service. A natural wine often calls to be served slightly cool and drunk within a reasonable time, and it can be disconcerting at the first sip before it opens up.

One last point deserves to be clear, as it is a source of misunderstanding. These labels are not marks of quality in themselves, but indications of method. An organic wine can be mediocre, a conventional wine can be remarkable. What these labels guarantee is a way of working and a relationship with the living, not a tasting score. That said, when they are well made, these wines are among the most vibrant one can drink.

The question of ageing

You often hear that a sulphur-free wine does not keep. The reality is more interesting, because it comes down to what sulphur actually does. Used since antiquity as an antioxidant and antiseptic, it protects the wine from oxidation and micro-organisms once in bottle. The more you add, the more you secure ageing. That is why a well-sulphured conventional wine offers the most predictable ageing, and an organic wine, barely less endowed, behaves very similarly.

As the doses come down, the wine grows more sensitive. A biodynamic wine, and then above all a natural wine, reacts more sharply to oxygen, to temperature swings and to transport. This dictates no single rule of service, because it all depends on the wine. Some fragile cuvées are better drunk quickly once opened, whereas great organic and biodynamic wines built for the cellar call, on the contrary, for long aeration, sometimes twenty-four hours, to reveal themselves. The common thread lies elsewhere, these wines ask for a more careful cellar and a finer attention than heavily sulphured wines.

But fragile does not mean short-lived, and this is where the shortcut goes wrong. A natural wine is not without protection, it simply finds it somewhere other than added sulphur. Its tannins, its phenolic compounds and good acidity act as natural antioxidants, which is why a structured red or a skin-contact white keeps far better than a light rosé. The condition is twofold, a grape of perfect ripeness and impeccable cellar hygiene, failing which the wine deviates. Well born and well made, a natural wine ages remarkably. Some pioneering estates, such as Overnoy in the Jura, Château Le Puy in Bordeaux or Radikon in Italy, line up cuvées more than ten years old of great complexity.

In short, sulphur makes ageing easier and safer, but it holds no monopoly on it. A conventional or organic wine will forgive lapses in storage more readily, a natural wine will demand more care while offering, when it succeeds, an ageing every bit as noble.

Conclusion

Organic, biodynamic and natural wine therefore do not stand against conventional wine in the same way or to the same degree. Organic frames the vineyard by law and reduces inputs, biodynamics adds to that base a conception of the estate as a living organism, and natural wine carries the approach into the cellar by renouncing almost all intervention. They are less three rival categories than the stages of a single, growing exigency towards the living.