Virtual festival dedicated to ‘low-intervention’ wine launches this weekend

By James Lawrence

Published: 29 November, 2021

France’s only female Master of Wine has launched a new virtual wine festival Alive!, due to take place on 5 and 6 December.

Organised by Isabelle Legeron MW, the festival will shine the spotlight on the expanding community of organic, biodynamic and natural wine producers, featuring insights into low-intervention viticulture and how vines respond to their immediate environment.

Described as a “Christmas must event for wine lovers, foodies and budding botanists,” tickets cost £40 (including access to both days).

In mid-November, Legeron opened her first online natural wine shop, rawwine.com. It is the UK's largest organic, biodynamic and natural wine retailer, stocking low-intervention brands like Theodora by iconic Austrian producer Gut Oggau; Varron Chardonnay by Peggy Buronfosse in the Jura, and Dinavolino by renowned Italian natural wine producer Giulio Armani.

Accompanying the bottles are tasting notes and serving suggestions, including food matching tips, to help make the most of each of these unique drinks.

The website is also promoting a RAW Wine Christmas Box, featuring the brands listed above, in addition to other labels.

“We have funky bottles available that could push even the most seasoned drinker well out of their comfort zone, but we have over 1,000 references on offer – the most of any shop in the UK – and this also includes many older vintages as well as wines from classic regions like Burgundy and Bordeaux,” said Legeron.

“Natural wine isn’t just a modern, trendy fad. It is what wine always was until the 70s/80s when most wine morphed into the mass-market, reproducible, scalable product it is today. The wines made by those in the RAW WINE community are not that. They are artisan drinks, grown and made in small quantities, without recourse to the arsenal of chemicals, additives and interventionist production technologies commonly used today.”

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