Lo Fi Wine Movement

What's a lo-fi wine?

Wine is an amazing product, and yet it's amazingly simple. You get grapes, squish them, and then let the juice turn into wine. Voila! Lo-fi or minimal intervention/handling wines are meant to be made with as few human actions as possible. This idea sounds great, but it also requires a careful hand because there is nowhere to hide when ditching winemaking tools like filtration and cultured yeasts. However, there is a certain joy in knowing that what you're drinking is as unadulterated as possible and that the best lo-fi wines are bursting with life and purity. More than just a very pure expression of fermented grape juice, lo-fi wines are a way of life. Plenty of us love the unadulterated expression of lo-fi and 'natural' wines, which typically ditch any additions (bar a little preservatives at bottling, though that's also controversial). For this pack, we've pulled together a few lo-fi wines that are delicious without being divisive. They're charismatic and unique wines made with as little intervention as possible.

Three tasty minimal intervention wines

1. Lansdowne 'Petit Pet' Pet Nat NV Few handle Pet Nats as well as Eliza and Tosh at Lansdowne. These are always bubbly wines of joy, liveliness and character, without being too wild to be undrinkable. This Petit Pet is a lovely pink fizz too - made from Sauvignon Blanc with a little Pinot Noir for colour, it's bright and tangy with flavours of orange juice, pink grapefruit, red lollies and then a dry crisp finish. Refreshing is the name of this natural wine, and it's just lovely. 2. Château Peybonhomme-les-Tours 'L'Atypic' Malbec Blend 2023 Set on a hill overlooking the Gironde estuary, Château Peybonhomme-les-Tours farms biodynamically, the wines made with wild yeasts, no filtration or fining, very little new oak and minimal sulphur additions. The resulting wines are some of the most lively reds that Bordeaux can produce (and at very fair prices).L'Atypic is a great name for this unique blend of biodynamically farmed Malbec and Cabernet Franc - a combination that no one else does. Why not then, hey? Matured in concrete vats, it's a deliciously bright and purple-fruited red wine of pithy freshness and loads of ripe fruit. It's lush, but medium bodied, with so much charm and life. 3. Cobaw Ridge 'Pyrenees' Rosé 2022 The Cooper family have gone further afield for this rosé and delivered us deliciousness. A spiritual friend for the 'Il Pinko' rosé from Cobaw Ridge that we love so much, this is Shiraz from the Pyrenees is fermented in a mix of oak and terracotta amphora, and the wine is pale copper and full of character. Zesty and alive, tangy and a touch wild, it's all grapefruit and cherry stem, chalk and bitter herbs. A serious rosé.

Interesting to note

There's a subset of natural wines known as 'zero zero' which describe wines made with no additives of any kind that aren't naturally found in the grape. No added yeast, sugar, acid, or preservatives and no fining or filtration. Zero zero wines are fascinating, sometimes wild, wines that are so hot right now. We love 'em, but also know that they can be wildly variable. Wine's pretty amazing, hey?