We Asked A Natural Wine Advocate Which Online Shops Stock The Good Bottles

While I’ll always maintain that going into a wine shop, chatting with the shopkeeper, and dutifully inspecting each bottle before purchasing is my preferred way to shop for wine, the current state of the world is not allowing us to have nice things. Fine! No matter: it’s 2020, and small, natural wine-focused shops around the country are shipping straight to your door.

The one thing I love about shopping for wine online is the opportunity to really spend time reading descriptions, which translates to learning about the wine. (Yes, that’s right, you can get a something of a wine education while shopping for wine—if you’re doing it in the right place.) Unfortunately, wine labels aren’t required to list the many additives that end up in most wine, which gives us all the more reason to shop from trusted sources that will tell you what a winemaker believes in, or at least how they make their wine. Low sulfites? Native yeast? Hand-picked grapes? Woman-owned? You’re about to be a kid adult in a candy natural wine store.

The best online shops love what they do and are eager to share their knowledge about an esoteric grape, region, or winemaker on their website and in their newsletters. Come for the wine, stay for the facts about foot-crushing and donkey-plowed land.

Shop from the comfort of your couch for a hazy, orange-like-sunset fizzy pet-nat (a natural method of creating a lightly sparkling wine) or the chilled, dusty red you’ve been meaning to make your house wine. These are the shops I’ve bookmarked and think you should, too. I also encourage a sign-up to their newsletters, where you’ll sometimes get subscriber-only discounts or early notifications about new arrivals.

Katherine Clary is a wine writer and editor focused on low-intervention and natural wines. She is the founder of the Wine Zine , a biannual print publication about natural wine and the author of Wine, Unfiltered .