A Beginner’s Guide to Organic, Biodynamic & Natural Wine

Walk into any wine shop in a major city and you’ll see these three terms on labels, sometimes interchangeably, sometimes with reverence. One of them is a regulated category with verifiable standards, one goes further than that, and one means whatever the producer using it decides it means on any given day.

Organic Wine: What the Label Covers

Organic wine certification covers what happens in the vineyard. An organically certified producer cannot use synthetic pesticides, herbicides, or fertilisers. In the US, USDA organic certification for wine adds a specific requirement that European certification does not: no added sulphites in the finished wine. Many producers who farm organically choose EU certification instead — it permits minimal sulphite additions as a preservative, making the wine more travel-friendly. Both are legitimate.

Biodynamic Wine: Farming as Closed System

Biodynamic agriculture starts from the organic baseline and extends it considerably — treating the farm as a self-sustaining organism with no external inputs. Demeter is the most rigorous and widely recognised biodynamic certification. The producers who farm biodynamically include some of the most acclaimed in the world: Domaine Leroy in Burgundy, Zind-Humbrecht in Alsace, Chapoutier in the Rhône. They farm this way because they’ve observed the results over decades.

Natural Wine: A Philosophy Without a Standard

Natural wine has no legal definition and no formal certification process. The term emerged from a reaction against industrialised wine production in France and Italy in the 1980s and 90s. Some natural wine is extraordinary — alive, complex, genuinely expressive of place. Some is simply faulty: volatile, microbially unstable, smelling of reduction that the natural wine community calls “character” but wine chemistry calls a flaw.

If you want to explore certified organic wine through subscription, Organic Wine Exchange is the best available option — certified producers only, real customisation options. For a broader education in the full wine landscape, take our wine club recommendation quiz.