All Natural, No Hangover?

It happened seemingly overnight: Suddenly, wine drinkers shifted their collective mantra from “Rosé all day” to “Do you have an orange vino?” 

Now, you’ll find a natural wine bar — complete with  Slovenian biodynamic, skin-contact varieties and low-intervention Gamays — in almost every city or, in the case of New York, San Francisco, or Los Angeles, in nearly every neighborhood. 

In case you’re unfamiliar, natural wine is a sweeping category emphasizing low-intervention techniques and no artificial additives. Natural winemakers use practices that involve letting the vines, then wines, do their own thing by avoiding pesticides and commercial additives and allowing the wine to ferment “naturally.” Compare this to conventional winemaking, which often uses mass production techniques to speed up the process and any of roughly 50 additives (like artificial yeast, sulfur dioxide, and colorants) approved for use in the U.S. and Europe to control the wine’s flavor. 

And there’s a lot to love about it: unexpected tasting notes, sustainable farming practices, fewer additives, and wineries that are often family- or cooperative-owned. But spend a little time in the natural wine world, and you’ll likely hear a big, beautiful promise: Natural wine doesn’t cause hangovers. 

But after a night of overindulgence, does natural wine actually make for an easier, or even non-existent, hangover? Not really.