Are 45% of Natural Wines Faulty?

Reactions to a new peer reviewed study comparing natural and conventional Spanish red wines

Apologies to all my subscribers: there was no newsletter last week due to ill health. To make up for it, I just published my latest piece from Noble Rot magazine, free for all to read.

So let’s get down to business. A new study analysed the results from French and Spanish winemakers who were asked to rate 24 Spanish red wines. Half were ‘natural’ and half conventional. According to the results, 45% of the natural wines were flawed. Or, if you’re a glass half-full kind of person, 55% of them were fault-free.

Of course this got my attention, especially given the headline reported at wine-searcher.com - “Natural wines can be clean, study finds”. It’s easy to get triggered by such seemingly fatuous statements, but I wanted to know more. Who conceived the study, what was the methodology, and did the results offer anything interesting to natural wine advocates?