Jenny Eagleton at Punch has the story. Apparently there is now a “natural-booze manifesto.” Developed by a Languedoc-based distilling collective that “aims to gather distillers who practice the same philosophy of spirit-making and to connect with other sympathetic members of the beverage industry,”
it is getting some uptake in Europe and North America. The tenets of the manifesto would be familiar to natural wine enthusiasts:
It could easily double as a list of natural wine criteria: quality farming (check), native yeast fermentation (check), unfined and unfiltered (check). Of course, alongside these well-understood (at least to a wine person) tenets are the addition of distillation-specific charges, like: “We distill in manually operated copper stills”; “We do not intervene in the mash”; and “We pay attention to the quality of our diluting water.”
Many natural wines have a distinctive flavor that indicates some deviation from conventional winemaking. Will natural spirits also be distinctive?
It’s not implausible to think the flavor congeners in the base liquid would be affected by the use of natural yeast, the quality of water, and the lack of adjustments to the base liquid. And a talented distiller can include them within the hearts, the distillate that ends up in the bottle. I have not tasted “natural booze” so I can’t comment from experience. It remains to be seen if the differences will be sufficient to make spirits connoisseurs care about this.
But it is an interesting development to watch.
Exploring the Philosophy of Food and Wine 