Natural Wines vs. Low Intervention Conventional Wines

Our portfolio is dedicated to offering a diversity and combination of "pure" Natural wines, but we also believe that in order for our wines to be diverse and approachable to wider audiences, we have a set of wines that are produced using Conventional European techniques, including aging in Oak and Stainless Steel, filtering and malolactic fermentation. The industry term for these is "Low Intervention Conventional" wines as we maintain strict winemaking controls on these wines, including only natural fertilzation, bio-dynamic vineyard management, spontaneous fermentation (no added yeasts), hand picking, sustainable farming, and minimal sulfur or other additives.

Natural winemaking has emerged as a popular approach to how wine grapes are grown and how they are turned into wine through fermentation, aging, bottling and distribution. There are many variables and decisions the winemaker must contend with, and depending on the expertise and decision-making, the natural wine methods can result in huge variability in the quality, shelf-life, and characteristics of the wine. There are many small (and large) winemakers who experiment much like the craft beer industry has innovated and evolved the diversity of beer experiences. In many respects, Natural Winemaking across the globe is a revolution in how wines are made, with natural methods deployed in different degrees and with diverse results. WHAT IS IMPORTANT ABOUT GEORGIAN NATURAL WINEMAKING IS THAT IT TOO IS EXPERIMENTING TO DIVERSIFY GEORGIAN INDIGENOUS VARIETIES INTO TERROIR BASED BUT UNIQUE WINES, BUT IS DOING SO USING GEORGIAN TRIED AND TRUE NATURAL METHODS (SUCH AS QVEVRI AND SKIN CONTACT FERMENTATION) TO SUPPORT HIGH QUALITY AND TRULY EXQUISITE NATURAL WINES.

We import a combination of Natural and "Low Intervention Conventional European" wines. Why? We believe that provides the opportunity to have a diverse portfolio of high-quality, scalable (production and characteristics dimensions), and healthy wines. It also affords us the ability to partner with both small, growing wineries as well as sponsoring the emerging commercial, innovative wineries that produce both Natural and Low Intervention wines.

Having defined Natural Winemaking, let us define "Low Intervention Conventional" European winemaking. In most cases, Low Intervention Conventional wines are following many, if not most of the principles of natural winemaking. The differences are as follows:

Vineyard Management: Natural vineyards abide by strict adherence to only naturally occuring water sources (dry farming), fertilization (compost and animal (sheep/goat winter grazing), bio-dynamic pest control (NO chemicals). Conventional vineyards may use some irrigation, natural fertilizers and minimal natural pesticides.

Harvesting: Generally no differences as grapes are hand harvested, crushed and sorted for fermentation by hand. In both cases, our wineries pick grapes by hand to harvest over days and weeks, only picking each cluster at it's ideal time.

Fermentation: Slight differenence in Low Intervention fermentation may include limited added yeasts to augment fermentation (versus Natural being purely the yeasts that exist naturally on the skins), fermentation in Stainless Steal (versus Georgian Natural wines almost always in Qvevri), may be without skin contact (whereas Georgian Naturals NEED skin contact).

Aging: Low intervention aging may be also done in stainless steel or oak more frequently than purely natural wine aging which is often done in Qvevri.

Bottling and storage: Low intervention wines may filter and use very limited fining at bottling, with potential for some limited additional sulfites added for preservation (but generally much more limited than standard winemaking, generally resulting in less than 50 parts per million (PPM) versus an average of 80 PPM for most wines made in the US and Europe.