What natural wine actually means
There is no legal definition anywhere. Here is what the charters that do exist actually guarantee, and what they do not.
Start with the uncomfortable bit. There is no legal definition of natural wine, anywhere in the world. No government body certifies it, no law protects the word, and anyone can print it on a label. That is precisely why we do not sell wine on the word alone. We sell it on the things underneath the word that can actually be checked.
What does exist is a handful of private charters, written by groups of growers who wanted to hold each other to a standard. They are not law, but they are real commitments, and each guarantees something slightly different.
The charters that do exist
Vin Methode Nature, a French mark validated by the DGCCRF in March 2020, is the strictest and clearest. It requires certified organic fruit, hand harvest and only the wild yeast that lives on the grapes. It bans a long list of cellar tricks including reverse osmosis and flash pasteurisation. It comes in two tiers, one with no added sulphites at all, and one allowing under 30 milligrams per litre added after fermentation. Crucially it is a private mark, not an official certification, and it requires the logo on the bottle.
AVN and VinNatur are grower associations, French and Italian, with their own charters and their own inspections. SAINS is the smallest and purest, a club of growers who add nothing at all, not even a trace of sulphur.
What this means for how we label
We only record a charter tier when the logo is on the bottle. We never imply Vin Methode Nature status from a taste or a producer's reputation. And where a grower makes natural wine but signs up to no charter, which is common and often a matter of principle, we say that plainly rather than dress it up.
The honest summary: natural is a direction of travel, not a certificate. The useful questions are the specific ones. How was it farmed, what yeast, what was added, what was taken away. Every one of those has its own line on every Broken Compass bottle.