France | French Natural Wine

The natural wine movement began in France as a push-back to chemical agriculture, but took off to evolve into so much more. Responsible for much of this was the so-called “Gang of Four”, a group of four Beaujolais winemakers (Jean-Foillard, Guy Breton, Jean-Paul Thévenet, and Marcel Lapierre) who in the 1970s committed to farming without the use of pesticides, adding minimal-to-no sulfur, harvesting grapes later, sorting grapes for quality control, and refusing to add to sugar to fermenting wine (this was commonplace to boost alcohol content), all of which were rather contrary to what other French winemakers were doing at the time.

In 2020, France was the first country to approve an official label for naturally produced wines - wines packaged with “"Vin Méthode Nature" must be made from chemical-free grapes, handpicked, fermented with native yeast, and only a small amount of sulfur dioxide can be added (with the final wine containing less than 30 milligrams per liter).